Innovators in Rural Community Economic Development
  • |
  • |
  • Getting out in the Community

Getting out in the Community

Samantha and I recently joined our colleague, Matt Robbie from Skeo Solutions, to speak to an undergraduate class at the University of Vermont on place. Matt’s friend from school, Reese Hersey, invited us to come. We spoke about how we got to where we are now, what our firms do, and how we have attempted to collaborate across firms in pursuit of projects, building on the complementarity of our firms’ skills.

I also recently had the opportunity to speak to an Environmental Leadership class at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. A friend of mine from graduate school at the University of Vermont, Curt Gervich, is now an assistant professor at SUNY Plattsburgh; he invited me to come talk to his class. I spoke about my trajectory from college at SUNY Binghamton (in environmental studies) to working in Washington, DC for a variety of nonprofit organizations, to going back to graduate school in natural resources planning at the University of Vermont, to coming to work for Yellow Wood Associates, where I’ve been now for 11 years. We talked about leadership in solving environmental problems and much more. The students were engaged and had very thoughtful questions. I really enjoyed the opportunity to give back and provide some context for these juniors and seniors who are about to enter the world of work in the environmental sector.