In September 2022, just a few weeks into her Duke career, Chloe Young walked into the fall mixer that the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability hosts annually to cultivate connections among students and faculty across campus. Nicholas Institute director Brian Murray had just presented senior Michael Wood (B.S.E. ’23) and two other undergraduates with the 2022 Clean Energy Prize for their development of Energy Terminal, a podcast focused on career exploration in the energy sector.
“Little freshman me was like, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna go talk to the person with the big check,’” the Chicago native recalls. Her conversation with Wood would prove foundational to her Duke experience.
Wood and co-founder Hope Pratt (B.S.E. ’24)—both veterans of the Nicholas Institute’s Energy Internship Program—planned to use the earnings from the Clean Energy Prize to grow Energy Terminal into an online platform to “build the next generation of energy leaders,” connecting like-minded students across peer institutions and providing career development resources. But they needed a team to make it happen. Impressed with the first-year student’s initiative and outgoing nature, Wood “just kind of took me under his wing,” Young says, asking her to join the team as Director of Partnerships.
At first, Young protested that she didn’t know enough about the field to take on the role, but Wood was unfazed. “You’ll learn as we go,” he said. Young did just that, exploring energy in Duke programs on campus and abroad. The summer before her junior year, she joined a DukeEngage project led by Nicholas Institute program directors Ashley Ward and Kay Jowers. The project put students to work in Utuado, a remote agricultural community in the interior of Puerto Rico recovering from the effects of Hurricane Maria.
“It was the most transformative experience in showing me just how important energy is to people,” Young says. “Many of the farmers we were working with didn’t have power for over 9 months. The area we were in had power outages all the time. What happens when you don’t have energy and your insulin is in the fridge? There are all these knock-on human effects of energy that really made me passionate about it in a way I wasn’t before.”
As Young began to recognize the crucial role of energy systems in building disaster-resilient communities, she also developed a parallel interest in insurance, which would become the focus of her senior thesis for the Climate Scholars Program at the Nicholas School of the Environment.
“Insurance just kept coming up every day at lunch [with the farmers],” Young recalls. “I think insurance is really unique in that it can both contribute to recovery and resilience, but it can also incentivize adaptation.”
Returning from a semester in Australia immediately following her Puerto Rico summer, Young dove back into Energy Terminal, taking over as co-executive director after Pratt’s graduation. “[Wood and Pratt] just made the biggest impact on me,” Young says, and she would continue their work, growing initiatives like the Emerging Leaders Program to serve and connect students at more than 40 universities nationwide.
Mentorship also played a crucial role as she explored her newfound fascination with insurance. Young credits Nicholas School professor Brian McAdoo and Ph.D. student Victoria Yanco with opening her eyes to opportunities in the space. Insurance executive and Nicholas Institute senior fellow Francis Bouchard opened doors for Young in lofty venues like COP30 in Brazil, which she attended in 2025 as part of the Nicholas Institute’s U.N. Climate Change Negotiations Practicum course.
In April 2026, Young presented her thesis on alternative insurance models for oyster aquaculture at the Nicholas School’s spring symposium. Not content to rest on the laurels earned through completion of the thesis—she will graduate with distinction as an environmental sciences and policy major—Young borrowed a page from the Energy Terminal playbook and created a vehicle to catalyze community-building and innovation among like-minded individuals. Several days after the symposium, she hosted the Triangle Risk and Insurance Meetup, which brought together dozens of professionals and students from across the area.
Following graduation, Young will move to New York to join Baringa, an international energy consultancy; she also looks forward to connecting with the insurance community in the city. She is quick to state that her trajectory was not inevitable; rather, it was the product of her willingness to follow her curiosity—to learn as she goes. Duke, she says, is a great place to do that. Her advice to students:
“Allow your interests to change, stay open to new things, and keep following your passions. I think I could do Duke a hundred times, do it differently every time, and love it every time.”
Profile by Bryan Koen, Assistant Director for Education & Experiential Learning, Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability