Kelsey Byrd '13

After college, Kelsey worked on a fishing island in Maine doing community based health. They had a community coalition, taken straight from her geography curriculum, that looked at community solutions for youth substance abuse, aging in place and fitness and nutrition. After two years in Maine she made a career jump to college coaching at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, CA. As a college coach, Kelsey engaged in issues of race and class every day working with athletes to help navigate a very privileged and white college campus. While it wasn't a big part of her job, she found her time as a geography major at Dartmouth very helpful to knowing how to talk about and facilitate conversations about difficult topics. Finally, Kelsey is currently in the process of making the shift back to community based work. In the fall she's starting an MBA program in Design Thinking at the California College of Arts that she hopes will be a spring board back into community based work. Kelsey feels a geography degree has stayed with her since her time at Dartmouth and continues to be useful in every job she's held. It has given her a framework to understand the problems she encounters and the experience to think through tough problems and determine possible solutions. She brags about her experience as a geography major at Dartmouth all the time!