Cole is from Fort Collins, Colorado, and graduated from Williams College with a degree in Environmental Studies and Political Science, concentrating in French. At Williams, Cole was the class of 2023 co-president, advisor to Williams’ flagship Global Scholars Program, and a student labour advocate who successfully organised to compensate residential life workers.
Cole is a published scholar on the social and environmental impacts of oil and gas extraction as a researcher in the Wylie Environmental Data Justice Lab. He has interned in the U.S. House of Representatives and at NGO Sustainability, and worked in his local community serving in a senior living center and leading a fourth grade classroom with the Boys and Girls Club. Cole is interested in community-led approaches to the energy transition and public land stewardship.
At Oxford, Cole has continued swimming as a member of the Blues and recently swam across the English Channel on a relay against Cambridge. Cole is a Rhodes scholar.