Portrait d’étudiant EnvIM option World
Let’s discover Maya MIKAIEL, EnvIM student World option
“Environmental issues are obviously transboundary: addressing this modern challenge is only feasible through international cooperation.”
- Where are you from Maya ?
To complement my engineering degree, in urban planning and environment (University of Tours, FR) and my specialization at Radboud University (NL) in environmental governance and politics and after having finished my internship at ENERPARC SOLAR, the EU’s largest photovoltaic asset owner, I applied for the EnvIM World Postmaster, knowing how much of an uplift this specialised degree could mean for my future.
“I stick to my inner child desires and expect contributing to a better and less-alarming future.”
By studying the decision-making process at the European level to model ecological transition, I learned the process of encouraging populations to change their behavior. In order to implement this outcome, my scholar view needs to be balanced with a practical viewpoint. As well as meeting teachers and lecturers in the Netherlands who worked within the United Nations, I found an interest in providing guidance to leader groups and big companies with whom I would wish to work for as the head of the environmental department.
I spent a year in the French Navy alongside my ninth grade. To this day I still cherish the work ethic they instilled in me: “Honour, Values and Discipline”. I also learned the values of hard work, the importance of team building and the deeply rewarding feeling of accomplishment. By experimenting onto real-life cases within companies and institutions, I would be able to grow as a stakeholder of the ecological transition.
The first time I heard about the EnvIM post master I saw how tailor-made it was for me. Entering this programme took part in the implementation of a healthy lifestyle, and help me to fulfill my professional and personal projects. I joined the post-Master EnvIM option World in 2023.
- How could you, with your own background and field of expertise, contribute to an interdisciplinary problem analysis and problem-solving ?
Resolving problems using innovation is the perfect definition of what an engineer should do. By graduating with such a qualification has taught me not only to think like an engineer, but also like a researcher thanks to my specialization and Erasmus semester.
In order to define the problem, an analysis of the different facets composing it is necessary. My tri-nationality broadens the horizons one could usually look for. I was raised in a home where France, Lebanon and England mixed every day, showing me from my youngest age that a given perspective can be shifted to reveal new angles that design new opportunities, thus new solutions.
Hence, my personal experience and cultivation helps me define an interdisciplinary problem by looking at multiple prisms that can be studied individually at first, then brought together to widen the final comprehension of the problem. My engineering background offers the whole technical expertise needed to apprehend a given situation’s complexity.
Scientific research has followed my curriculum during my three years in engineering school: in France, I centred my end-of-studies thesis around the problem of sky legal limitations, use of satellites and light pollution.
Analysing and answering an interdisciplinary problem is tantamount to a marathon: when the subject seems to be extensively studied, new perspectives arise from new pieces. I learned, from my whole experience as a student and as an individual, how to deal with intricate challenges, the hardest I have in mind being the answer to climate change and environmental urgency.
In a nutshell, before EnvIM my knowledges were very theoretical, and even if I could, with this qualitative amount of theory, attempt to analyse, better understand and solve any environmental and urban challenge, I had a need for gaining hands-on experience and training in companies and administrations: . EnvIM World is the complement I needed. To this very knowledge-based education, mostly oriented towards a professional finalization, the many projects helped me to assert my proactive stance by acting. Specifically, it will legitimize my applications to high consultancy positions connected with my ambitions
- What are your professional goals and career project? How could this program help you to fulfil your goals ?
My best-case scenario would be to join a leading company or a development programme of an International Institution, as a coordinator or consultant.
I am confident that the EnvIM Postmaster will have a big impact on my life, and I cannot really imagine myself without completing this programme. Being an EnvIM student drives the same ambitions I nurture in my life: to be this golden opportunity for me to make a real difference in this world.
