Enlisting for her future
Chelsea Russ enlisted in the United States Navy at the age of 22 with one of her close friends after spending her young adult life training horses and competing in endurance riding competitions.
She joined the military, additionally prompted by the 2008-2009 recession, with the intention of building a career and pursuing her degree in higher education. She became an electronics technician and worked for six years before entering the reserves to attend college full time on the GI bill.
Chelsea started at the College of Charleston, studying geology, which she enjoyed but needed more flexibility, so she considered transferring elsewhere. She got connected with Service to School, a non-profit organization that assists veterans looking to apply to top universities and Ivy leagues, who helped her with the transfer application process.
When deciding on a new major, Chelsea reflected back to a moment during her military experience at the Norfolk naval base in 2016 while on shore duty. She watched a chunk of parking lot break off into the ocean and realized that the “treatment plan” was to just rope the area off and ignore the erosion. At that moment, she realized how the environment, specifically water, impacted military bases and troop readiness.
She applied to Cornell University and was accepted into their environmental and sustainability science program. Although her focus was water resources and watershed management, the structure of Cornell’s undergraduate program allowed Chelsea to take a wide variety of classes. She enjoyed loading her schedule with classes covering a range of subjects so she could learn about many different fields, subjects and interests while studying their interconnectivity under the guidance of her advisor Dr. Rebecca Schneider.
An unexpected interruption
In 2019, set to begin her junior year, her path was interrupted; she was deployed to Bahrain for 11 months. Chelsea had finally gotten into her dream school, was doing well in her classes, meeting people and getting settled into life at Cornell when everything was uprooted.
“It felt like I was living an alternate timeline in life,” Russ said. “You have to remake your whole life, with new people in a new job in a new place.”
Being a naval reservist offers individuals the chance to serve in the military on a part-time basis. It’s a commitment that sometimes includes interruptions, like deployment, but normally requires just one weekend a month and attending annual training two weeks a year.
The experience abroad ultimately turned out to be a positive one because her interest in water sustainability only magnified and she made many great friends, additionally crediting her great community and senior leadership for making it an enjoyable time. Observing water supply and pollution in Bahrain gave Chelsea an informal education in her ideal career field.
“It just confirmed what I had been learning about water concerns and aquifers [at Cornell],” Russ said. “Bahrain was like a case study of what not to do. [I thought] This is the absolute most important thing I could do with my life, and water is connected to everything.”
Seven months into her nine-month deployment, the COVID-19 pandemic began. Bahrain, being an island, was isolated and protected for longer than the rest of the world, but soon there were cases, and Chelsea wrestled with real fears about being able to get back to the United States in time to start her next semester.
The travel bans and travel claims, a large part of Chelsea’s job in the reserves as a Personnel Specialist, made life chaotic and the future unclear. Her deployment ended up becoming 11 months, but in July of 2020 she was able to safely return to the United States.
Finding her mentors
Once back in the states and settled into her junior year at Cornell, she continued her studies in water resources, focusing on water management. She was introduced to ecology professor Dr. Meredith Holgerson and her major advisors Collen Kearns and Suzane Wapner who, along with Rebecca Schneider, became Chelsea’s long-term mentors.
“Finding just a few good mentors can really make all the difference. I’ve had men and women mentors that have been wonderful, but finding some women mentors has been very empowering for me.”
Chelsea Russ
During her junior to senior year summer, Chelsea had an internship studying evolutionary ecology with Dr. Holgerson. She worked in Cornell’s artificial ponds and was published for her research on the capacity at which the artificial ponds and their sediment beds were storing carbon.
“They were like mothers to me, it was great,” Russ said. “They really encouraged me to start finding out who was taking [graduate] students, who was publishing papers in the field I wanted to study in grad school, and who had funding.”
The advice led Chelsea to Dr. Peter Stempel, an associate professor of landscape architecture in Pennsylvania State’s College of Arts and Architecture’s Stuckeman School. Stempel was researching sea level change, coastal resilience, and other environmental issues – all of interest to Chelsea.
This meeting began her graduate work at Penn State. She worked with Stempel towards her graduate research degree in the interdisciplinary field of landscape architecture and completed her thesis examining the benefits and drawbacks of using nature-based solutions and naturally occurring features in coastal communities.
“It was great! I really appreciated having such an attentive PI,” said Russ. “He has a great mind, really interesting experiences and thoughts, and I enjoyed my time in his lab. I think that the way landscape architects think brings a whole new perspective to many of the problems we are facing in the world.”
Two years later, she earned a Master of Science degree, a research-focused program that distinguished her from the broader group of Master of Liberal Arts graduates, which tend to emphasize more practical application.
“No one tells you how much you’re going to think about your thesis’ interviews, if interviews are a part of it – and they were for me,” Russ said. “I think about those interviews all the time in my work, in my life. The words and the time that we shared, they ring in my ears.”
Near the conclusion of her master’s program, Stempel suggested that Chelsea apply for the Knauss Fellowship program, recognizing her unique degree and skillset.
The Knauss Fellowship and her future
The Sea Grant John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship is a one-year paid fellowship that matches highly qualified graduate students with “hosts” in the legislative and executive branches of government located in the Washington, D.C. area, for a one-year paid fellowship. As part of the placement process, all Knauss candidates meet with representatives from each of the host offices. The purpose of the week-long process is to pair the fellow with the host office that best aligns with their interests and experience. At the end of the week hosts and applicants are paired.
She applied for the Knauss Fellowship and was also a finalist for the Coastal Zone Management Fellowship.
While Chelsea was waiting to see if she got the Knauss fellowship, she took long term orders that placed her in Suffolk, VA, where she worked for the Naval Information Forces as a navy reservist. During this time, she was able to put in her officer package to be a meteorology and oceanography officer and worked her way to the rank of chief.
So, when Chelsea was accepted to the Knauss Fellowship and discovered that the Department of the Navy in the Office of the Oceanographer of the Navy had a fellowship position, it was her first choice and one she felt prepared for.
Today, she currently serves her desired position as the international and interagency ocean policy liaison in the Office of the Oceanographer of the Navy. In this role she works in the Pentagon alongside a NOAA Corps Officer, a Naval Officer, two civil servants and a contractor to track policy changes that may impact naval oceanography. Their policy reports are given to the technical director, Dr. Christopher Ekstrom.
As a woman in STEM, the Navy, and now as a Knauss Fellow, Chelsea often finds herself thinking about the reassurance she got from Dr. Schneider during her time at Cornell University.
“She took my hands and said, ‘You belong here,’ and it was one of the sweetest things anyone has ever said to me. Because you really have a lot of imposter syndrome, and I feel it now, even as a fellow, I think, ‘Oh man, there are so many things I don’t know.’ But just thinking back to that moment, ‘You belong here, and you are good enough for this space,’
Chelsea Russ
it was super powerful to me.”
Chelsea also attends professional development events around the Washington, D.C., area covering topics like coral reef health and maritime transportation. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, travelling, reading and making a wide variety of recipes; but she never makes the same one twice.
At the conclusion of her fellowship, Chelsea would enjoy a role in the federal government, has considered being a contractor but ultimately wants to pursue utilizing her interdisciplinary education to combine her passions for the Navy and nature-based solutions on military working land.
“People are not going to protect what they don’t understand, and that is the big reason why we need to make this into something interesting and relevant to their lives,” Russ said.
She hopes to find micro and macro scale nature-based solutions that can be used on military land to make them more resilient and educate people as to why it is crucial for long-term resilience and national security.
Written by Grace Sawyer, edited by Kelly Donaldson
Grace Sawyer, summer 2025 digital communications CEI intern is a senior at James Madison University in Virginia, where she is working toward a Bachelor of Science in Media Arts and Design (Journalism Concentration) and a minor in Biology. Grace has also written feature stories about Sahara Rios-Bonilla and Nathaniel Edelheit-Rice, 2025 Knauss fellows. Grace also works with AKSM Media in Washington, D.C., as Chief White House Producer where she attends and photographs press events, conducts interviews, writes news articles, and navigates security clearances for other AKSM reporters.
