Clara Chae ’27 and Teagan Smith ’28 did more than study climate change this summer. Internships made it possible for the environmental analysis majors to take direct action to fight global warming.
Chae, a Boston native, and Smith, who hails from Tucson, Arizona, interned with Tradewater, a certified B-corporation and Pomona College partner whose mission is to prevent powerful greenhouse gases from polluting the atmosphere.
An important part of Tradewater’s work is to “collect and destroy old refrigerants that warm the planet up to 12,500 times more than carbon dioxide on a pound-by-pound basis,” says Eli Etzioni, the company’s senior partnerships manager and a graduate of Claremont McKenna College, a fellow member of The Claremont Colleges. These gases, he notes, have been responsible for nearly half of human-related global warming since 1970.
Helping Higher Education Climate Strategies
Chae helped Tradewater’s market development team with research, data analysis and business proposal development for their carbon credit sales. Her largest project explored how Tradewater could help higher education institutions critically evaluate whether carbon offsets could enhance their climate strategies.
Chae learned about Tradewater while interning with Pomona’s Sustainability Office in summer 2025. Her duties included helping the College document the results of its environmental efforts. She later met Etzioni when he gave a career talk in Claremont and worked with him to tailor an internship aligned with the company’s needs and her own interests.
“To be honest, the internship seemed almost too good to be true,” she says. It provided a broad view of how elements of the climate ecosystem work together and confirmed her interest in a career combining “market-based solutions, climate strategy and real-world implementation.”
Funding from the Pomona College Internship Program (PCIP) supported Chae’s summer opportunity.
Tons of Impact
Smith, who has spent previous summers as a lifeguard in Southern California, wanted an internship related to an area of personal passion that would have a very concrete impact.
She found that at Tradewater, where she took the initiative to create a database of ice rinks that might need a partner to decommission old chilling chemicals. She also helped build the company’s relationship with the city of Irvine’s Sustainability Department.
“I loved how direct the Tradewater work was,” Smith says. “I was able to calculate the equivalency of carbon dioxide that my work contributed to removing from the atmosphere—1,556 metric tons. That is equal to saving [emissions from] four million miles of driving.”
After Pomona, Smith plans to attend law school and build a career in environmental law or policy.
Pomona’s Carbon Neutrality Goal
In 2014, Pomona College set a goal of carbon neutrality by 2030. Part of its multi-faceted effort involves the purchase of highly rated carbon credits to offset unavoidable travel in areas such as study away and admissions. Pomona includes carbon credits from Tradewater’s refrigerant destruction work in its portfolio.
“Tradewater emerged as a perfect partner because of the quality and affordability of their credits and their willingness to engage with Pomona academically,” says Alexis Reyes, the College’s director of sustainability and energy management.
Chae and Smith reaped the benefits of that academic engagement.
“My summer,” Chae says, “felt like a strong example of how the 5Cs can help students turn academic interests into meaningful professional opportunities.”