This summer, I had the privilege of serving as a graduate student intern with Michelman, a global developer of sustainable specialty coatings, through the UC Center for Public Engagement with Science. My internship focused on building a Portfolio Sustainability Assessment (PSA) model, a structured scoring framework to evaluate the sustainability of Michelman’s packaging coating products, with the goal of helping the company prioritize where to invest, reformulate, and substantiate its environmental claims across its global portfolio.
The experience allowed me to engage with a diverse group of stakeholders, from R&D and technical teams to commercial, regulatory, and sustainability leads. Through data analysis, competitor research, and one-on-one discussions with my managers and colleagues, I gained valuable insight into the complexity of measuring sustainability in a real product portfolio. I learned how end-of-life recyclability, bio-based content, chemical safety, and regulatory compliance must be weighed together, and how a credible model has to be honest about the difference between what is verified by evidence and what is still an estimate.
By the end of my internship, I was able to deliver a working scoring model built on real sales and product formulation data, benchmarked against key competitors, and structured to grow from a spreadsheet into an automated, AI-assisted tool. I designed it around a gates-and-scored-outcomes approach, where compliance and safety act as pass/fail requirements and sustainability outcomes are scored and weighted and paired each product with an evidence grade, so the results stay defensible. Beyond the technical work, I developed a deeper appreciation for how collaboration, clear communication, and stakeholder feedback shape whether a sustainability initiative actually gets adopted in a corporate setting.
This internship reaffirmed my commitment to applying analytics to advance sustainable manufacturing and responsible business decisions. I am especially grateful to my reporting managers, Brian Copeland and Portia Yarborough, and to PEWS and Michelman, for providing the platform to apply my skills in a real-world industrial environment and to contribute to their ongoing journey toward a more sustainable future.
