Andrea Shipton

university of colorado - law

Andrea Shipton became interested in public land conservation due to enriching outdoor and conservation experiences as a child, teenager, and young adult in the Adirondack Park of upstate New York. From living alone in a mountaintop cabin and working as a summit steward to interning with the Adirondack Council, the largest environmental nonprofit dedicated to protecting the Park, she became passionate about conserving wildlife and outdoor recreation spaces. As she pursued her bachelor’s in environmental studies at Hamilton College, she became fascinated by the unique management structure of the Adirondacks: the interspersing of private and public lands, the constitutionally protected state forest preserve, and the jigsaw puzzle of land classifications determining allowable usage on each tract. Fascinated by this structure and driven by a desire to help protect such landscapes, she decided to pursue law school and study natural resources law—but not before taking a gap year to work as a ski instructor at Winter Park and a conservation associate at Resource Central, a Boulder-based sustainability nonprofit.

At Colorado Law, she has had the opportunity to intern with two federal agencies, the Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency, which have granted her key, up-close exposure to some of the nation’s most important environmental laws and conservation regulations. Outside of her studies, Andrea is the president of the Adventure Club, the vice president of the Environmental Law Society, and the incoming managing editor of the Colorado Environmental Law Journal. She spends nearly all her free time on public lands, whether running on Boulder’s incredible trail network, camping in Colorado’s state parks on summer weekends, skinning up mountains at sunrise, or competing in skimo and trail races. She is excited to return to the environmental nonprofit world this summer as a law clerk in Earthjustice’s Rocky Mountain Office.