College of Architecture, Art, and Planning
Skye (Tonawanda Seneca Nation, Snipe Clan) is a first-year Master of Regional Planning student at Cornell University, where she also received her Bachelor of Science in Urban and Regional Studies in May 2018. Her childhood in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a city riddled with inequitable planning decisions in a state facing the impacts of climate change, motivated her to pursue planning. Skye’s academic and professional interests focus on Indigenous issues within planning and climate change work, and she was named a 2017 Udall Scholar for this ambition. From 2016-2018, she received funding through Cornell University to pursue independent undergraduate research on planning with urban Native American communities with a focus on Seattle, Washington. As her masters exit project, she hopes to implement the findings of this research on the ground with Seattle’s Native community.
Aside from her academic work, Skye has interned for Partnership for the Public Good in Buffalo, New York, where she researched the environmentally sustainable and socially equitable community development work of another Buffalo nonprofit (PUSH Buffalo); and Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County, where she assisted over a dozen municipalities with two state climate certification programs. She currently works for the Town of Ithaca as their Planning and Sustainability Intern. Skye served as a leader for Native American and Indigenous Students at Cornell (NAISAC) during her undergraduate years and is currently involved with the Indigenous Graduate Student Association (IGSA).
