May 12, 2020
WestWater Welcomes New Staff in California and Colorado
Claire Madden, Research Associate
Sacramento, California
Claire Madden has joined our California office in Sacramento as a Research Associate, and will be focused on water market analysis, economic and financial modeling, and transaction research.
Ms. Madden holds a BSc in Community Development and Applied Economics from the University of Vermont, where she focused on ecological economics and food systems, culminating in an honors thesis analyzing the economic inefficiencies of water rights allocation structures in the United States. In 2020, Claire earned an MSc in Environmental Science and Management from the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where her focus was in freshwater management and environmental economics. As a recipient of the Sustainable Water Markets Fellowship at the Bren School, Claire has had the opportunity to investigate a multitude of intricacies related to water transactions and water market design that generate both economic and environmental returns. Claire’s graduate work included analyzing how water risk translates to economic risk for farmers and farm lenders in California’s Central Valley, how global trends in groundwater levels over the past half-century may inform best management practices, and how the implementation of SGMA may provide more opportunities to re-envision water management strategies in California.
Ellen Yeatman, Summer Associate
Fort Collins, Colorado
Ellen Yeatman has been chosen to serve an associate internship with WestWater’s Fort Collins Colorado office, where she will perform market research and assist with client projects, including valuation reports, economic studies, and policy planning efforts.
Ellen holds a B.S. in Environmental Science with a minor in chemistry and microbiology from Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. She has worked professionally as a water quality field technician for the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, Watershed Protection Program with the Surface Water Monitoring Team.
In 2020, Ms. Yeatman earned her M.S. in Agricultural and Applied Economics with a concentration in Water Resources from the University of Wyoming. While completing her degree, Ellen worked as a Graduate Research Assistant for the University’s Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics studying voluntary, temporary, and compensated reductions in agricultural water use in the Colorado River Basin. For her thesis research, Ellen worked with Professor Kristi Hansen to create a linear optimization model of wetland, return flow, and financial tradeoffs of compensated agricultural water conservation in the Wyoming-portion of the Colorado River Basin. Ellen developed the model through speaking and working with ranchers directly and understands the on-the-ground water quality and quantity management challenges facing the Colorado River Basin, and other basins across the arid West.
Peter Tomlin, Summer Associate
Fort Collins, Colorado
Peter Tomlin has accepted a position as an Associate Intern with WestWater Research and will spend this fall working in the firm’s Fort Collins, Colorado office.
Peter holds an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business with concentrations in Finance and Entrepreneurship. He also received his B.E. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.
Previously, Peter worked for McNally Capital, a Chicago-based private investment firm that partners with family offices and high net worth investors to make direct investments. Peter spent most of his time pursuing an investment thesis on the water/energy nexus and evaluated numerous transactions in the water and wastewater sectors. Prior to McNally Capital, Peter was a field engineer with Schlumberger and has experience working across five continents.
More About Summer Associates
WestWater’s Summer Associate program is a three-month internship open to qualified graduate and undergraduate students who have an interest in studying Resource or Agricultural Economics, Economics, Finance, Business, or a related field. The program is an ideal opportunity for those who are seeking professional experience in water rights marketing, water asset valuation, water project consulting, and water resource investments.
About WestWater Research
WestWater Research is the leading economic consulting firm providing valuation, market analysis, planning, and transaction advisory services to the water resources sector. We offer a national reach with five regional offices that connect strong relationships across the water resource and financial industries.
WestWater is the exclusive data provider for the Nasdaq-Veles California Water Index (NQH2O), which tracks the spot price for California water entitlements. The Index, the first of its kind, benchmarks the price of water in a way that supports price discovery and allows for the creation of a tradable financial instrument to manage financial exposure associated with water supply risk.