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Anne-Elisabeth Baker

Master of Environmental Management, 2024

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Concentration:

Environmental Economics and Policy, with a Community-Based Environmental Management Certificate

Employer:

North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources

Role:

Policy Analyst

 

“I feel like I’m in my dream job right now,” says Anne-Elisabeth Baker, a policy analyst for the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (DNCR).

Baker coordinates sustainability efforts for DNCR, leading its agency-wide Green Team, while also supporting policy development for the department. Her purview is vast: The agency manages over 100 sites across the state, overseeing “everything from our state park system, state historic sites, museums, aquariums, the N.C. Zoo, the Natural Heritage Program, African American Heritage Commission, American Indian Heritage Commission, state library, archives and records, and many other programs supporting education and stewardship in North Carolina,” says Baker, who lives in Durham. 

One of her projects is , a statewide litter cleanup initiative led by DNCR in partnership with , a yearlong commemoration of the nation’s 250th anniversary. (Duke is also marking the milestone with its initiative.)

The cleanup project ties in to the Green Team’s ongoing goal to reduce the use of single-use plastics across DNCR sites. Recently, Baker and colleagues received grant funding to install water bottle filling stations at more than a dozen state park sites. She is also leading a pilot program to transition park visitor centers from selling plastic water bottles to reusable aluminum bottles.

Baker’s interest in plastic waste reduction stems from her childhood growing up near a petrochemical refinery in a small coastal Texas town and recognizing the ubiquity of plastic waste. “This industry was essentially in my backyard, so I spent a lot of time as a kid thinking, what can I do about trash?” she says.

As an undergraduate industrial design student at the University of Houston’s College of Architecture and Design, Baker was eager to explore ways to develop new types of sustainable packaging. But as the semesters passed, she became more interested in the policies that govern waste.

“I felt that my next step was to study something at the intersection of sustainability and policy, but I didn’t have a sense of what that looked like for me, and so I sent out applications to quite a few grad programs,” Baker says.

The Nicholas School won her over during a campus visit, when she received a warm, personal welcome from the ���Ĵ�ý Services team.

“I walked in, and everyone knew my name and seemed excited to see me. I thought, oh this is actually where I want to be — part of a community. It was very homey, and I immediately felt very cared for and seen,” she recalls. “It was just such a gut feeling, that this is where I was supposed to be.”

As an MEM student concentrating in Environmental Economics and Policy, Baker conducted that ultimately informed a recent on the social costs of plastic, authored by members of Duke’s and published by the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability.  

She was also a student consultant in Duke Law’s . Under the mentorship of co-director Michelle Nowlin and staff scientist Nancy Lauer, Baker collaborated on a plastic-reduction pilot program for DNCR aquariums and museums.

Through her work with the clinic, Baker learned about a post-graduate opportunity administered by North Carolina Sea Grant, a coastal and watershed stewardship organization. She applied and was selected to serve as a with DNCR her first year out of grad school.

In 2025, Baker moved into her current, permanent position.

“It’s the people that I’m meeting every day and learning from that make this job so special,” Baker says. “One day I’m interacting with the state’s renowned historians within our archives, and then the next day I’m outside at a state park, getting a crash course on native seed preservation from a park ranger. Every day is so different and dynamic.”

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This article is part of a Nicholas Narratives series called “Earth Ambassadors,” which profiles alums from the Master of Environmental Management and Master of Forestry programs at the Nicholas School of the Environment. Find more profiles here.