This Q&A series highlights McKinney Climate Fellows alumni and their professional journeys within Indiana and beyond. The McKinney Climate Fellows program, administered by Indiana University’s Environmental Resilience Institute, connects IU undergraduate and graduate students interested in climate, sustainability, and community resilience with career experiences.
When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, Francisco Martínez-Márquez was away from his home island. In the hurricane’s aftermath, he lived in Indianapolis and worked as a biochemistry lab technician at IU Indianapolis, observing Puerto Rico’s arduous recovery process from afar.
Hearing about the experiences of people back home inspired Martínez-Márquez to shift careers from research to policy. While pursuing a Master of Public Affairs degree at the IU O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, he spent a summer working with the Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana (OKI) Regional Council of Governments as a McKinney Climate Fellow.
As a Fellow, Martínez-Márquez learned how to use GIS to visualize data and gained experience in stakeholder engagement. Today, he employs both skills on behalf of North Carolina’s State Energy Office, where he assists in the implementation of a new home energy rebate program funded by the Inflation Reduction Act.
What major projects did you work on during your placement with the OKI Regional Council of Governments?
I started in May of 2023 as a Fellow at the Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana (OKI) Regional Council of Governments and extended my fellowship through December 2023. I was in person, so I moved to Cincinnati for that summer. I wanted to be able to connect with people and work outside of Bloomington for a bit.
I worked mostly on GIS and planning. I learned how to use GIS and worked on updating their ArcGIS databases. I also reviewed their strategic regional policy plan and made recommendations on how to incorporate resiliency and climate change policy into their implementation plan.
I connected with a former McKinney Climate Fellow, Savannah Sullivan, who was working with OKI on their climate action plan as part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grants (CPRG) program. I started helping them gather data on utilities, worked with community leaders and government officials, and helped with designing their webpage for the CPRG program. I also did some fieldwork and evaluated some culvert sites.
What are some key skills you learned during your fellowship?
GIS is the number one skill I was able to learn and apply. Through my work on the CPRG program, a key program from the Inflation Reduction Act, I gained experience working with communities in the region and stakeholder engagement. I was able to talk to elected officials from all over the region, from Indiana to Ohio to Kentucky. This even helped me in my current role where I’m working on other Inflation Reduction Act programs.
My networking skills also improved. If I hadn’t met Savannah, I wouldn’t have ended up working on the CPRG program.
How did McKinney Climate Fellows inform your career path?
In addition to all the skills I was able to learn, I was also able to work on so many different projects that gave me the opportunity to figure out what I liked most. It helped me identify what I liked the most and what I wanted to pursue. It helped me realize that I was interested in state and local planning.
What is your current role and what responsibilities do you have?
I am currently part of the Department of Energy’s Energy Innovator Fellows. This is a one- to two-year fellowship program. I’m based in Raleigh, North Carolina at the state energy office. My main role is to assist in the implementation of the home energy rebate program that’s part of the Inflation Reduction Act. I connect utilities and community benefit organizations to the program. I’m also managing some GIS maps for the project to create a dashboard to keep track of where funding for projects is going throughout the state.
What do you enjoy most about your work?
Since I’m working for a state office, I get to interact and connect with people from all over with all sorts of backgrounds. I’ve been able to attend events and meet people at conferences. My fellowship sponsored me to go to a conference in New York, and I met another alum from Indiana University. Recently, I met North Carolina’s Governor at an event I helped plan. That was pretty cool!
What called you to pursue a career in the environmental field?
The 2017 hurricane back home in Puerto Rico really influenced where I wanted to go in my career. Looking at failures regarding policy decisions and leadership and how much unmet potential Puerto Rico had for solar energy inspired me to pursue energy.
I’m specifically interested in increasing energy access for families who might not be able to afford solar without some assistance. For example, hearing from my friend back home about how the lights go out often because they don't have a reliable grid is heartbreaking. It pushed me to work on energy and think about how we make reliable energy more accessible to people.
What advice do you have for someone interested in the environmental field?
Connect with people and be open to different areas in the environmental field. Sometimes when we’re in school, we’re hyper-focused on something, but a lot of the skills we learn can be transferable. I was intimidated when I was coming into an energy office because I didn’t focus on energy, but then I learned a lot of the people in my office didn’t necessarily start in energy and everyone had different backgrounds.
It’s important to not close yourself down to one thing, this way you’ll be able to connect with other people and understand how your project might affect another project. Being open to exploring all the different parts of the environmental field and how they all connect and affect each other is important.
About the Environmental Resilience Institute
Indiana University’s Environmental Resilience Institute connects a broad coalition of government, business, nonprofit, and community leaders to help Indiana and the Midwest better prepare for the challenges of environmental change. Together, we integrate research, education, and community to create environmental resilience and climate solutions—building a more sustainable, equitable, and prosperous future. Learn more at eri.iu.edu.
