Alumnus Spotlight: A Conversation with Beatriz Sampaio, class of 2021
What does a concentration in East Asian History have in common with environmental sustainability? A degree from the History program at Northwestern! Find out more about Beatriz's path to her current job at Pollination and her passion for servicing humans.
Video Transcript
Nathan Dent: Thank you so much for making time for this. It's nice to meet you. I'm Nathan, a senior history major at Northwestern—getting close to graduating, working on my thesis. I'm excited to talk to you and I'm excited to learn a little bit more about you and the work you're doing. I did a little bit of background research on pollination, so we have some stuff to talk about. But I'm curious to hear about you. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself?
Beatriz Sampaio: Sure. So, I graduated Northwestern in 2021.
I was a history major, obviously—primarily focused on East Asian history, and Chinese history specifically. I also minored in Chinese, so that kind of paired nicely. And halfway through undergrad, I got super interested in environmental studies, or sustainability, so I added on the ISEN (the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern) certificate and started taking classes.
And that's where I kind of decided that I wanted to focus my career. I had the opportunity during undergrad to pursue some public policy initiatives related to sustainability. After graduation I did PIP (the Public Interest Program) through Northwestern and I was placed at Chicago Public Schools.
I didn't really work at a school, though. I was in their admin office. And there I sort of explored my interest in public policy but also had the chance to kind of figure out if my interest was in public policy strictly, or also more of the sustainability side of things. And I decided that that's where I was most interested in continuing to explore opportunities.
And I figured out that I had a lot of great skills from my history degree, but I also needed some additional ones. For example, finance, and more quantitative things that I sort of avoided in undergrad. But I couldn't escape them now that I was interested in pursuing this field.
So, I got my master's degree, also at Northwestern. I did the MSCS program, which is in energy and sustainability. Because I felt like I knew a lot about public policy already, I took classes that had nothing to do with anything that I had taken before. So yeah, finance, entrepreneurship classes. And then after graduation from my master's, I joined pollination and, you know, have been working with different clients, both in the public and private sphere, and still figuring out what I'm interested in. But you know, I have been enjoying sort of exploring that. And you know, the things that are more interesting to me have a lot to do with history.
I'm interested in the intersection of, you know, climate and sustainability, but also people. I think you can't really talk about one thing without talking about the other, so topics like nature, resilience, adaptation, are the things that I am most interested in and want to keep exploring. And I think history sort of gave me a good background to connect with those pieces.
Even though I don't have the technical or scientific background to be working in sustainability, I can approach it from this different angle.
Nathan Dent: That's super cool. I mean, I think there's a lot to talk about there. You kind of mentioned halfway through your undergrad was when you first started to get interested in sustainability. Was there some turning point? Was there a class you took? What do you think it was that kind of first led you to be interested in that?
Beatriz Sampaio: I think it was at first sort of like my personal interests. When I got to Northwestern, randomly I stopped eating meat, mostly because the only time that I could go to the dining hall—because I was taking Chinese and it was five classes a week—was during the peak time for the dining hall. So, the only empty station was a vegetarian one. And I needed to get in and out super quickly. I sort of like realized that I was doing that, eating mostly vegetarian stuff. And then I was like, well, let me explore this more deeply. And then I kind of got interested in that side of environmentalism. I also, during undergrad, got super interested in running and then approaching sustainability and environmentalism and nature from that perspective as well—you know, air quality, green spaces.
So, it started out with more of like a personal interest. And then I kind of realized that you can actually help a lot of people from this perspective. Then the interest in history sort of paired up, because I got interested in history because I come from Brazil. Specifically where I'm from in Brazil, we have a very deep history and complicated history with colonialism. I'm from Salvador, the first capital of Brazil. The legacy of colonialism still persists and that's something that I couldn't really not think about when studying history and when I got interested in sustainability.
It was also something that I was thinking about a lot—the legacies of colonialism, industrialization, all of those things. And I realized that, in the current moment, working in environmentalism and sustainability, it's a way to sort of address those issues as well. Then I sort of combined all of these different interests, from a personal perspective, where I'm from, what I like to do with my free time. And then, yeah, I just couldn't stop talking about it and then just decided that it was what I wanted to keep doing with my career.
Nathan Dent: That's super cool. I've had that experience with some stuff too, of having the historical interest in something that really overlaps with something that feels very present that you're doing now. And I think being able to kinda like ground yourself, which was part of why the whole history curriculum was so interesting for me. So, what was your first kinda professional foray into doing this? I saw that you worked for the city of Evanston for a little while, right?
Beatriz Sampaio: Yes. That was an opportunity that came from doing Chicago Field Studies.
Nathan Dent: Mm-hmm.
Beatriz Sampaio: I worked there throughout the summer and then I had the opportunity to keep going throughout my (I think!) senior year. And I was working there during Covid, so there was also that layer of understanding how we could use environmentalism, sustainability sort of issues to address that as well.
But I was working in something completely unrelated. It was building electrification. I was mostly responsible for the building ordinance that we had, so checking a lot of data, which was something that I didn't know that I liked, but it was super interesting, and it made me feel very connected to Evanston.
I think sometimes, you know, Northwestern people are very much in the Northwestern bubble in Evanston. So, it was really fulfilling to get more of that connection to Evanston, learn more about where I was, and understand how I could use my interests at a more local level. I think it also helped teach me a lot about how we can address something so big like climate change in a very meaningful way.
Right now, for example, even with my consulting job, lots of things keep changing because of federal decisions and it gets a little stressful thinking about how we can't make any progress. But, I remind myself that a lot can be done at a much faster rate at the local level.
It's very inspiring and it gives me hope that we can keep doing things. But yeah, I loved my time at the City of Evanston doing more local public policy. It kind of felt fed my interest to sort of keep exploring that through different lenses as well.
Nathan Dent: So, you mentioned that now you're doing the consulting side. I saw pollination does a bunch of different things. They have investment advising, but they also do policy advising. So, are you more on the policy side?
Beatriz Sampaio: Yeah, I'm on the advisory team and I've worked with clients in both the public space and the private space, doing honestly so many different things. No project is like the other, which is something that I really like. And I think the history major sort of helped me in a way. But yeah, I've been helping with projects related to resilience, adaptation, decarbonization, public policy. Yes, everything and anything.
Nathan Dent: Do you have a favorite project that you worked on recently? If you're at liberty to talk about it?
Beatriz Sampaio: Let's see what I can talk about. Yeah. I think my favorite project is one where we've worked—I don't think I can say it explicitly, so I'll say it in a vague way—but it was a project where we've identified some different LDCs (Least Developed Countries), for example, and I like that international lens. We've worked to promote resilience and adaptation in those countries. And for me it was a really meaningful project because countries really needed that help. They needed finance to be brought to their countries. But we're really working on the investment criteria—what types of projects can be funded related to energy, like regenerative agriculture. But we're also working on creating—once projects are financed, down the line in a few years—working on creating the criteria that analyzes how effective they are. That has to do a lot with understanding the technical side of things, but also the cultural side of things. So that's where I think the intersection of, yes, trying to create a more sustainable world, but also uplifting people and understanding those cultural nuances. Not really trying to impose anything, but really work with people. So that's a lot of what we've been considering as well. And that process of creating something that is rigorous but also culturally aware, in a way has been really aligned with my personal beliefs, and is also something that I think will eventually strengthen the product that we're working on; it’ll really help both in bringing more finance, but also creating something that is long lasting and sustainable for people that really, really need it.
Nathan Dent: You've talked a few times about this skillset that you felt was sort of transferrable from what you did at Northwestern, as a history major, and also some stuff you had to learn on your own, which totally makes sense. But I'm curious about the skillset, because I think that so much of policy work, especially like in finance or data-driven jobs, tends to be so far from the humanities or the liberal arts or stuff like that. So, I'm curious what you found valuable and what stuck with you from that time.
Beatriz Sampaio: Yeah. Most specifically within what I learned from history, I think consulting, it's all about making sense of complex questions, drawing connections, communicating clearly. And I think that's a lot of what I was thinking about as a history major. When we work with clients, we're usually trying to translate very complex or technical questions, and turn them into clear narratives or actionable strategies. And I think history sort of taught me how to have that mindset and organize those thoughts very clearly.
But I think, yeah, beyond the sort of more analytical thinking that history taught me, it also helped me add a human dimension to sustainability work. You know, behind anything that we're doing—whether it's a decarbonization strategy, or an investment strategy—there's also, you know, communities that will be affected, trade-offs that we need to think about.
I think it helps, you know, being a history major to sort of balance out some of the very financey sort of thinking, for example, adding that broader context and a bit of empathy as well. Which I think is really needed in sustainability work, especially when we're dealing with communities that we're not part of.
A lot of times, or most times, we do have our client, who has people on the ground, for example, that can help bring in that context as well. But I think as a history major, I'm more reminded of that than some other people who can be a bit more analytical and results driven. So, it's a good balance, I think, to the consulting type of work that I'm doing. And again, it just results in smarter, more durable decisions to have that balance.
Nathan Dent: Yeah, that totally makes sense. I think that, for me, one of the great things about history was that it taught me some sense of being able to think in frameworks of interactions, especially between people and the environment.
I'm reading Nature's Metropolis by William Cronin right now, which is this big environmental history of Chicago, its economic history, and then kind of its impact on a vast territory—what he calls the Great West. The whole central ethos of this book is that really to talk about people and their economic history is to tell an environmental history of the land, and to tell an environmental history of the land is really to talk specifically about people and what their relationship to the environment was. So, yeah, I think that kind of style of systems thinking is really good. I think that's something that I really got from being so focused on history while I was here too.
I think I'm also interested to hear about this whole quantitative skillset that you kind of took on and learned. You mentioned you kind of realized you liked working with data, and so I'm curious what it was like to find that new skillset.
Beatriz Sampaio: Yeah. Yeah. So, I actually took a class at Northwestern— I think it was called Bulldozed—and it was a class about the history of Sao Paolo, in Brazil, and Chicago, through demolished buildings. I think that class in specific was sort of a turning point for me in my history major journey, because it really expanded my understanding of what I could do with my history major. It was really like a central point of the class to learn how to use Arc GIS, and use that as part of the deliverables that we had for the class. I had no idea, obviously, how to use GIS.
It's a very specific type of program. I mean, I was used to looking at maps for history and some of my other classes, but I was never called to create them. And I realized that that was actually so much fun. Yeah, just understanding and trying to pull in data was challenging but also very rewarding and made me realize that there's actually so much critical thinking that goes into analyzing historical sources like we're used to, to looking at data sets and all of that. And from there, when I was working at City of Evanston, I had to look again at data sets that I wasn't used to. So, a lot of water data, electricity data, and all of that. Even though it was so scary at first, I was also surprised to find that a lot of it is that systems thinking of history, of finding patterns and sometimes when things don't look like what they're supposed to, there's an explanation for it.
It was so interesting. We would look at the footprint for the building. It was a smaller building, but it had an incredibly high electricity usage. And then we would go and look at even more data and try to figure out why.
So in some ways that data exploration was very much like finding some very small detail in a primary document and then trying to figure out why it was there and just, I don't know, it was in some ways very creative. Yeah, just try to figure that out. Obviously, I did not become a finance master, but through the few classes that I took in my master's, I think it really complemented what I had learned through my history major, just in adding a bit more context and really embracing the interdisciplinary way that I had structured my study so far.
And yeah, I just kind of thought to myself, you know, I don't have to learn everything, but whatever I learn will be useful and will add on to my knowledge and skills as a sustainability professional because it is such an interdisciplinary field. So, I really did need to learn this, but it was kind of fun at the same time.
Nathan Dent: I think that absolutely makes sense. I had a similar experience even. I'd always thought of myself as such a humanities and liberal arts person. I hated math in high school. Like, it never really made sense to me. And then I got to college and took the python coding class that I was required to, and I loved it. And I started doing more data science stuff and was so surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Because I think you're exactly right, it is so many of the same skill sets and I think, in the same way that so much of history is about asking why did this weird and exceptional thing happen, so much about looking at data is being like, how do you explain that?
Like, the numbers don't look the way you'd immediately expect them to. And you know, I think historians and data scientists are doing something very similar in that they really are not trying to seek frivolous explanations or, say, “it could have been this…” But they really wanna find a way to look at everything systematically and then kind of figure out what the relevant details were. So, yeah, I think that totally makes sense and it's nice to be able to get outta your shell a little bit and explore that way of really solving many of the same problems. So that's super cool.
What does the actual day-to-day of your job look like now? What do you like about it? What do you spend your time doing? What would you like to spend your time doing? I'm curious to hear about all that.
Beatriz Sampaio: Yeah, I think what I like the most about working at pollination so far, I like that it's project based because really no day is like the other.
I do have some shorter term projects that are more like sprints, and some that are a bit longer term, but I like changing up what I do a little bit. I find that it was a bit scary at first, kind of jumping into something, not knowing a ton, but for where I'm at in my career, it's also very exciting to be paid to learn in a way.
And yeah, I'm just very grateful for that, that I can just jump into a project, spend some time asking questions, learning about something new, and if I don't like it, it's short term and I'll get another project in a few months. So I love that. I think consulting in a way can be a bit limiting, especially because we do advisory. So advisory is really about the strategy behind things, so we don't see the execution. And I miss that a little bit. Sometimes you don't know if what you spent so much time thinking and stressing out about is actually gonna play out like you thought it would.
So, I do miss that side of things, especially because I'm interested in the human intersection, and I don't get to interact with the people that I'm actually benefiting through my work, if that makes sense. But yeah, I do like the constant turnaround of projects and the exploration of new topics and just kind of getting surprised with what I find interesting.
I never thought that I would be interested in looking at data so much or, you know, be interested in learning more about very specific nature things. But now, I love mangroves. Who thought I would love and appreciate mangroves so much, as a resilience and adaptation tool?
So, it's cool just to get to think about weird questions like how do we quantify nature and monetize it? That’s what I like the most, and the people that I get to work with also, they're very cool and interesting. We're an international firm, so I do love to have that perspective as well, of, you know, if we work on an international project, we usually have someone who can offer at least some perspective from wherever they're from. I like that as well. I don't like imposing anything on anyone, so that sensitivity to the work is also very important to me.
Nathan Dent: Yeah, that's super cool. I'm realizing that we're nearing our time limit. I'll just go to my last question 'cause I don't wanna take up too much of your time either. But I was just curious, you know, if you had advice for somebody who is maybe a junior or senior in college who has your interests, who's looking to do this kind of work, who's maybe looking to kinda leverage what they've learned as a history major. What would you say to that person? What advice would you give them? What encouragement or discouragement, if that's the direction you're going, would you have to offer?
Beatriz Sampaio: I think two main things. One is don't limit yourself regarding career choices and always lead with curiosity. I think more specifically for history, I think a history degree teaches you how to think. It's really versatile. You can go into policy, business, tech, anything. I think I'm realizing actually how valuable those skills are and how many people in the working world actually lack them. So, yeah, my biggest tip is just be open to where your interests lead, and don't be afraid to put yourself out there and really try more unconventional paths.
Nathan Dent: Awesome. I think that's great advice. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this.
Beatriz Sampaio: What's your thesis on, just out of curiosity?
Nathan Dent: I am writing a global history of self-immolation as political protest.
Beatriz Sampaio: Oh wow.
Nathan Dent: Yeah, so it's, it's a little grim, but I’m tracking it from the beginning of the 1960s through 2011, in the Arab Spring, and I'm kind of talking about it in the context of how this became an intelligible political gesture rather than just a specific and isolated form of suicide. And then kind of how developing a global understanding of it became a vehicle for facilitating its spread to countries where it had historically never really happened before.
Beatriz Sampaio: So, wow. That's, yeah, that's …
Nathan Dent: … It's heavy. But it has been interesting and I'm almost done. I have a few more weeks to revise and then I submit at the beginning of next month, so we'll see.
Beatriz Sampaio: Good luck. I hope you have some other things that you're working on to balance that out.
Nathan Dent: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for, for taking the time. It was great to talk to you.
Beatriz Sampaio: No worries. Thank you. This was so fun. Yeah, I loved talking about history.