Kira Goldman

Kira Goldman is a senior honors student from Mansfield, Massachusetts majoring in Allied Health Science with a minor in Environmental Studies. After finishing freshman year online, she drove across the United States and was both struck by the beauty of the earth and disappointed by its underappreciation. She traveled with Volunteers Around the World to Peru in 2023 and was moved by the centrality of nature in Latin American culture. She noticed that worshiping nature is pivotal to leading movements to protect both the environment and women and minority rights, and in creating communities with people with balanced and happy lives. She came back to UConn with a desire to fire the same passion in her peers and founded a chapter of an international organization called Plan My Gap Year. Her goal is to take her peers to places with cultures that respect the earth, while simultaneously furthering their professional development in a hospital, conservation, or teaching setting through volunteer work. She took a cohort of students to Tanzania, Africa in 2023 and is currently planning the next trip to Sri Lanka in 2024. Kira is most passionate about the effect of anthropogenic developments on human health and biodiversity, specifically in regard to agriculture. She explores this intersection in her research alongside Dr. Kelsey Fisher at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. This project focuses on facilitating conservation of monarch butterflies, a flagship organism for pollinators that have seen massive declines over the past two decades. While at COP28, she is excited to investigate global initiatives on sustainable agricultural practices that work to protect human health and nutrition, biodiversity, and nature. On campus, Kira is a supplemental instructor for anatomy and physiology and is an academic mentor for STEM students. In her free time, she enjoys running, photography, playing outside with friends and being on Cape Cod.