Emily LiaBraaten Accepted into Graduate Program at Georgetown University

Emily LiaBraaten, a Spring 2026 PPE graduate, was accepted into graduate school at Georgetown University for the Master’s Program in Environment and International Affairs – Global Sustainable Energy Technology and Policy.

Emily, can you tell us about your academic background at Virginia Tech?

I am completing dual degrees in Environmental Policy & Planning and Philosophy, Politics, and Economics through the Calhoun Honors Discovery Program. My academic interests center on energy infrastructure, environmental governance, and international policy. Virginia Tech has given me a lot of space to pursue that thread seriously. Outside the classroom, I have been part of the Consulting Group at Virginia Tech since the start of my sophomore year, which has been one of the most practically useful things I have done here. PPE students can go anywhere from law to business to public policy. I have also stayed closely engaged with PPE program events through the Kellogg Center, which have pushed my thinking in ways that seminars alone cannot.

On the professional side, I have been fortunate to apply my interests in real contexts: ESG consulting with a multinational tech firm in Italy and environmental communications work with an NGO in France. Those experiences reinforced that the problems I care most about are inherently international, and that working across languages and cultures is part of doing this work well.

How did you decide that graduate school was the next step for you, and at what point in your undergraduate career did that decision feel clear?

A lot of it traces back to a talk I attended by Dr. Ralph Hall, whose research centered on how universities could restructure their investment in energy and agriculture to transform their economic role in a region. His Binary Economics vision for Virginia Tech stuck with me, and I ended up approaching him afterward. That conversation turned into a research project on agrivoltaics that I have been working on for over two years through the Calhoun Honors Program.

Somewhere in the middle of that project, graduate school started feeling necessary. I kept encountering questions that required more depth and more time than an undergraduate degree allows for. I also knew I wanted to work in federal energy policy or international climate governance, and I recognized that a graduate credential would get me there faster and with more preparation.

I applied to Columbia University and Georgetown University, and I was accepted to both. I will be attending Georgetown University for the MS in Environment & International Affairs, with a concentration in Sustainable Energy Technology and Policy. It is a one-year intensive program focused on the policy-science interface in global environmental issues, which is exactly the kind of applied training I was looking for.

How did the interdisciplinary nature of PPE help you develop skills or perspectives that you see as essential for graduate level work? How did PPE set you up for success?

Adding PPE to my Environmental Policy & Planning degree transformed what could have been a narrow technical policy education. The further I got into my EPP coursework, the more I felt something was missing. Policy work without grounding in philosophy, political theory, and political economy is like knowing the rules of a game without understanding why the game exists. PPE gave me that foundation.

What PPE changed most was the level at which I engaged with questions. Before, I could look at a policy and evaluate it. Now, I find myself asking why we frame it that way, whose interests that framing serves, and what it assumes about people and power.

That shift matters enormously for the kind of work I want to do. International climate policy sits at the intersection of philosophy, politics, economics, and environment, and PPE gave me the tools to actually work at that intersection rather than just describe it. Thanks to the Calhoun Program, I had already internalized a systems thinking methodology early on, and PPE showed me how that applies directly to climate governance, where the hardest problems are never purely technical. Graduate-level policy work demands that kind of layered thinking, and I do not think I would have developed it as deliberately without PPE pushing me there.

What advice would you give to PPE students who are considering graduate school, based on your own experience?

Go to the talks and events, and do notleave without introducing yourself. My own research trajectory started because I attended a lecture and followed up with the speaker. That one conversation became a two-year research project, which became the centerpiece of my graduate school applications. The opportunities are there, but you have to show up for them and be willing to put yourself in the room. Virginia Tech offers an impressive network.

Beyond that, start building a research record. Graduate programs in policy and environmental fields are not just looking for academic achievement. They want to see that you have engaged with real problems and you can articulate why further study is the next logical step. PPE gives you the analytical foundation to do that kind of work, but you have to seek out the contexts to apply it.

I would also say: lean into interdisciplinarity rather than trying to specialize too early. It can feel like a liability when you are surrounded by peers who have one clear focus, but it is genuinely rare, and graduate programs in policy value it more than students expect. The ability to move across disciplines and hold complexity without losing the thread is exactly what this field requires.

Finally, do not underestimate your statement of purpose. This is where PPE’s training should show, not just in what you say you want to do, but in how precisely and honestly you explain why.

Admissions committees can tell the difference between someone who has thought carefully about their path and someone who is performing ambition. PPE prepares you to write the former. So, use that!

(Photograph provided by Emily LiaBraaten – used with permission)