Raquel "Rocky" Baier is the Sustainability Data Analyst for the Office of Sustainability. She manages datasets such as campus greenhouse gas emissions, energy use, transportation, and waste diversion to build campus-wide sustainability reports. The main report is the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment, and Rating System (STARS), an internationally-used tool to track campus sustainability progress. STARS is developed and maintained by AASHE, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.

Following her love of writing, Rocky graduated from the University of Arizona in May 2020 with a B.A. in Journalism and minors in Spanish and Public Policy. However, she’s been passionate about environmental issues since she was a kid, and after reading the 2019 IPCC report, she knew she wanted to pivot and dedicate her career to helping the environment. Her first step towards this was working for the University of Texas at Austin’s Office of Sustainability as their data analyst, where her ability to tell data stories helped her create and communicate the STARS report. When the same position was created at her alma mater, she applied and is now happy to be helping the U of A become as sustainable as it can be!

Rocky also co-founded the Tucson Repair Cafe, a free place to get broken items fixed, out of her desire to keep items out of the landfill and build ways for the Tucson community to help the environment in their day-to-day lives. She went through Sustainable Tucson’s Ambassador program, and served on their Zero Waste Committee. She is fascinated with building sustainable systems that make sustainability easy and approachable, and is excited to do that at the U of A and in Tucson!