Heather Korzun recently joined the Monmouth University Urban Coast Institute (UCI) as a community engagement fellow supported through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Coastal Resilience Fellowship Program.
In this role, Korzun will support UCI Associate Director Tom Herrington in coordinating project pipeline work for the Building a Climate Ready NJ initiative, which is funded by NOAA and led by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. In 2024, the UCI was named a partner in the initiative, which aims to harness statewide expertise to advance resilience planning, project design, construction, and education across New Jersey’s 16 coastal counties.
Korzun will work to ensure that multiple education, engagement, and training activities are planned and implemented in conjunction with Building a Climate Ready NJ core activities. She will work closely with Herrington and UCI Community Engagement Specialist Rachel Forbes to gather knowledge from residents, community leaders, and other stakeholders that will help identify resilience projects that are most needed and would be the most impactful. The recommendations will then be entered into the project pipeline for further study and eventual implementation.
Korzun most recently served as a planning fellow at the Land Conservancy of New Jersey, assisting municipalities across the state with developing open space and recreation plans and helping target lands that would be valuable for conservation. The communities she worked with ranged from rural towns with rolling hills of bucolic farmlands to some of the state’s most densely populated neighborhoods.
“What excites me most about this role is the opportunity to deepen my work in community engagement,” she said. “Working on Camden’s Coastal Resilience Plan helped me understand the community dynamics that impact planning efforts. I am grateful for the chance to learn from New Jersey’s coastal communities and help connect them with resources that strengthen their long-term resilience.”
A native of the Virginia Beach area, Korzun recalls first being drawn to environmental policy work as an undergraduate taking a sustainability in business course. She felt a sense of climate anxiety while delving into lessons about the ways climate change was disrupting ordinary people’s lives and felt a calling to act.
“I was really stressed about that for a while, but I realized that the only way to alleviate some of that anxiety was to do work that was directly part of the solutions,” she said.
Korzun graduated from Mary Baldwin University with a bachelor’s degree in sustainable business before completing her master of public administration at the University of Pennsylvania. As a student, she led community engagement projects and educational events about sustainability and has supported research projects on emerging contaminants and climate resilience.