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Occidental Graduate M. Grady Jackson Named Luce Scholar
Grady Jackson of San Diego, a 1996 Occidental College graduate, has been named a Luce Scholar, an award that will allow him to live and work for a year in Asia studying and working in environmental law. He is one of 15 winners nationwide.
Jackson, a law clerk for U.S. District Judge Irma E. Gonzalez in San Diego, was chosen from nominees representing 65 U.S. colleges and universities. Jackson is the sixth Occidental graduate in the past nine years – and the third in as many years – to win the honor. Since 2000, few liberal arts colleges have had three winners.
While fellowship details will be finalized in coming months, Jackson hopes to find an internship in his area of career interest: environmental law and policy. “I would be very interested in continuing my work in the areas of climate change policy or corporate environmental management,” he said. “I am interested in helping to negotiate contracts under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism, which enables developed countries to earn carbon reduction credits by providing lesser-developed countries with clean energy technologies.”
“In the area of corporate sustainability, I’m interested in consulting with corporations in the host country to develop environmental management systems and strategies to simultaneously reduce their environmental impacts while boosting profits. But beyond any career-building expectations, my primary hope and goal is that the Luce experience will give me another lens through which to view my work and life.”
“Grady is the perfect candidate for this program,” said Giorgio Secondi, assistant professor of economics at Occidental and the college’s Luce advisor. “He is an impressive scholar and natural leader, and he’s truly passionate about environmental law and policymaking.”
The purpose of the Luce Scholars Program is to increase awareness of Asia among future leaders in American society. Luce scholars have backgrounds in virtually all fields – other than Asian studies – including medicine, the arts, business, law, science, environmental studies and journalism. Which Asian country scholars will be placed in, in addition to stipend amounts, will be determined in coming months by the Luce Foundation in collaboration with the San Francisco-based Asia Foundation.
Placements this year will be made in the following countries in East and Southeast Asia: Brunei, Cambodia, China and Hong Kong, Japan, Mongolia, Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.
At Occidental, Jackson was a diplomacy and world affairs major who graduated summa cum laude. A recipient of Ford and Richter fellowships while at the college, Jackson went on to work as a journalist and paralegal specialist for the U.S. Department of Justice. He received his law degree from Stanford University in 2002.
Jackson has worked as an intern for the Natural Resources Defense Council, the EPA, and the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration. At Stanford, he led the Environmental Law Society’s delegation to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The New York-based Henry Luce Foundation was established in 1936 by the late Henry R. Luce, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Time Inc. It has assets of about $700 million. The foundation has a particular interest in Asian scholarship because Luce’s parents, Henry Winters Luce and Elizabeth R. Luce, were educational missionaries to China. The couple’s four children were born in China.