From Panama's Rainforests to America's Solar Farms: Clare Lister's Path Out of the Lab
Clare Lister, who grew up in the Midwest, was drawn to Tulane by the natural environment of the Gulf Coast, a landscape unlike anything she'd grown up around. "The natural environment in Louisiana was super interesting and new to me," she said. "The types of species that are in the Gulf Coast are so different from the ecosystems where I had grown up that I wanted to learn as much as I could about them."
That curiosity led her to Tulane's Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department, where she double majored in environmental biology and math. She graduated in 2018.
One course in particular stood out. "This class, ‘Natural History of Louisiana,’ was probably the best class I've ever taken," Lister said, describing weekly Friday field trips built around birding and plant identification. "That kind of experiential field trip-based learning and seeing these ecosystems was really engaging for me."
Lister also spent years working in the campus lab of Sunshine Van Bael, eventually completing her senior thesis there, titled "Resistance to fungal pathogen damage in young and mature tropical leaves." The lab's research centered on endophytes, the bacteria and fungi that live inside plants without harming them.
For her thesis research, Lister traveled to Panama, where she studied anthocyanin, a pigment thought to help young leaves resist damage from fungal pathogens.
Lister once considered pursuing a PhD, but ultimately chose a different route. Data analysis and coding, a core part of research work, didn't suit her the way fieldwork did. She also found herself drawn to work with a smaller timeline to impact. "I wanted to do something where I felt like my work had a direct impact on climate change within a shorter period of time."
That search led her into solar energy, where she has now worked for about seven years across several companies. She started as an assistant project manager at an electrical solar company building solar farms across the country, work that required learning the fundamentals of electrical systems on the job. "I realized I enjoyed the fast paced energy of construction, but the work was still aligned with my values because we were building renewable energy," she said.
Today, Lister works as a preconstruction manager for a solar company that owns and operates its own projects. Her role involves identifying contractors capable of building a given project, evaluating their pricing and setting up their contracts.
Lister pointed to battery energy storage systems, known as BESS, as the innovation that excites her most in the industry right now. "This allows you to have solar panels collect energy when the sun is shining, store it, and then use it when demand is high," she said. "I think battery energy storage is going to make accessing renewables substantially easier across the world."
However, she was clear about the industry's challenges as well, particularly the rollback of the Inflation Reduction Act, which included solar investment tax credits that subsidized a significant share of project costs under the previous administration. "A lot of solar companies built their business models around these tax credits," she said, adding that the industry has responded by "safe harboring" projects to preserve eligibility under older tax rules.
For current EEB students who may not see an obvious link between their major and an industry career, Lister's advice is direct. "I think that a science degree is relevant and helpful across a lot of different industry careers," she said. "The ability to look at technical issues and understand data... is super helpful for someone like me in project management." She encouraged students not to feel locked into a single path based on their undergraduate studies.
Reflecting on her time in the EEB department, Lister offered a broader takeaway for students who share her passion for the environment. "Academia is a great way to pursue that [passion], but there are a lot of other options," she said, "and other opportunities to make an impact on environmental issues."