Olivia Tandon

Olivia Tandon is Pingry’s Assistant Director of Experiential Education (Sustainability). In her role, she manages the composting and farming programs at Basking Ridge, and coordinates sustainability initiatives across all three campuses. She works with faculty to develop sustainability-related curriculum. She also teaches Environmental Science and Advanced Geoscience: The Science of Natural Disasters.

Olivia received a B.A. from Columbia University, with a double major in Environmental Biology and Creative Writing. She went on to earn an M.A. in Earth Science Education from Brooklyn College and another in Private School Leadership from Teachers College at Columbia. 

Olivia is passionate about sustainability in her personal life as well. In her spare time, she grows many of the vegetables and fruits she eats, plus tends her small flock of chickens. She enjoys hiking with her two border collies and her partner.
 

Melissa Tier

Melissa Oberon Tier is a 5th-year PhD candidate at the Princeton School of Public & International Affairs in the Science, Technology, & Environmental Policy program. Her research on climate adaptation policy interweaves topics in multi-level governance, environmental justice, urban planning, and decision sciences. 

Melissa is a research affiliate of the multi-institutional Megalopolitan Coastal Transformation Hub (housed at Rutgers), the Center for Policy Research on Energy & the Environment (Princeton), the Behavioral Science for Policy Lab (Princeton), and the NJ State Policy Lab (Rutgers). She is also the lead instructor for a co-taught Environmental Justice course with the NJ Prison Teaching Initiative. 

Prior to her PhD, Melissa served for 5 years as the first Sustainability Program Manager in the Office of Sustainability at Swarthmore College. She holds an MSc in Sustainable Urban Development from the University of Oxford and a BA in Psychology from Swarthmore.