Join the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability community for our Alumni Awards Reception and Dinner. Connect with Stanford students, faculty, staff, and fellow alumni and join us as we honor the 2023 recipients of our alumni awards: George Steinmetz,’79 Geophysics, 2023 Distinguished Alumni Award recipient, and Mehana Blaich Vaughan, PhD ’12 E-IPER, 2023 Early- to Mid-Career Alumni Award recipient.

George Steinmetz, best known for his aerial photography, has a restless curiosity for the unknown: remote landscapes, our changing climate, and how we can meet the ever-expanding food needs of humanity. His current projects are documenting climate change and the global food supply, primarily with professional drones. Since 1986, George has completed more than 40 major photo essays for National Geographic and 25 stories for GEO magazine in Germany. George has won numerous awards for photography during his 35-year career, including three prizes from World Press Photo. He has also won the Environmental Vision award from Pictures of the Year, a citation from the Overseas Press Club, and was named National Geographic’s Adventurer of the year in 2008.

Mehana Blaich Vaughan grew up in Namahana and Kalihiwai, Kauaʻi, where she and her husband are raising their three children. A former high school and middle school teacher in Hawaiian charter schools, Mehana is now an associate professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management and U.H. Sea Grant College program. Her work focuses on restoring indigenous-led, community-based natural resource management and relationships to place, which can in turn enhance resilience to climate change. She founded Kīpuka Kuleana, a nonprofit organization and community land trust on Kauaʻi that perpetuates kuleana to place through the protection of cultural landscapes and ancestral lands. All proceeds from her 2018 book Kaiāulu: Gathering Tides, benefit Kīpuka Kuleana.

Event Schedule:

2:00 p.m. Undergraduate Research Oral Presentations

3:00 p.m. Undergraduate Research Poster Presentations

4:00 p.m. Reception

5:00 p.m. Dinner and Ceremony

Alumni: Register here
Students, Faculty, and Staff: Register here