Could you walk me through your professional journey - from your college years at Georgia Tech to where you are today? 

I graduated from Georgia Tech in 1985, the Institute’s 100th anniversary year. My parents joked that I delayed graduation by a year just to get that centennial seal on my diploma. 

I came to Tech as an 18-year-old from Georgia. Honestly, the only reason I chose engineering was because my dad was an engineer. Georgia Tech back then was tough; they let you in, but the real question was whether you’d stay. During orientation, they said, “Look to your left and right, because they won’t be here next year.” They were right. Two of my friends transferred out, and I was the one who made it through. 

I had an old-school academic advisor, a concrete professor, who was tough but fair. At one point, he even told me to take a break from school and go work full-time for a few quarters. He wanted me to see how hard the “real world” could be. I did that, came back nine months later, and told him, “I’m ready.” After that, I made the Dean’s List regularly. That experience taught me that engineering wasn’t just about equations, it was about people and problem-solving. 

What did you do after graduating from Georgia Tech? 

After graduating, I joined the Navy, which had helped fund my last year and a half of school. I went through Officer Candidate School, which was a crash course in leadership. You get thrown into it, by week eight, you’re teaching the next class what to do. Then I went to the fleet, where I suddenly had 40 people reporting to me, boiler techs, diesel mechanics, people from all walks of life. That’s where I really learned leadership. When deployed overseas, I saw how the issues that were driving conflict had to do with climate migration and resource scarcity. Later, I worked on facility management in Charleston. When Hurricane Hugo hit, I helped rebuild the base. That’s when I started dealing with environmental issues, asbestos, air quality from burning debris, storm recovery, and it opened my eyes to the environmental side of engineering. 

After the Navy, I joined the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). At first, they brought me in because of my background in contracting. One of my first projects was the LCP Chemical Superfund site in Brunswick, Georgia, one of the state’s most environmentally impacted areas. Back then, the EPA didn’t have community coordinators. We had to figure out how to translate technical information ourselves, how to make it real and accessible. Science alone doesn’t change minds; you have to engage the heart and align with people’s beliefs to shift perspective. Another site that shaped my thinking was the Cedar Town Municipal Landfill. The town was paying for cleanup out of its own tax base, while its fire trucks were 30 years old and barely running. It didn’t make sense. So, we found creative legal and financial pathways, bringing in the responsible corporations and getting the state Superfund fund to help the city recover costs. That was a lesson in thinking beyond the obvious and using every lever you have as a public servant. 

I was pulled into the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) program, which taught me about the intersection of environmental and economic development. When a base closes, that land is incredibly valuable, but also potentially contaminated. That work prepared me for my biggest role, rebuilding EPA’s solid waste program. I led that program for about 15 years. Toward the end, around the 2016 election, funding started shrinking. The agency’s focus shifted more toward emissions from tailpipes and smokestacks, whereas I’d been focused on emissions from production and consumption. By the time the Trump administration came in, my team was down to just a few people. 

So, I stepped out of management. My boss and I promoted someone I’d mentored to take over, and I became a senior advisor. It took me a while to adjust, as a former manager, you want to control everything, but I learned how powerful influence can be when you’re advising and setting the chessboard behind the scenes. I worked on community revitalization and “community-driven solutions” initiatives, including the Smart Sectors program, which encouraged industries to go beyond compliance. I focused on bringing circular economy ideas, what we’d now call “circularity”, to the community level. Later, I supported the development of the Community Change Grants and other similar programs before retiring. 

And how did you reconnect with Georgia Tech and SCoRE? 

I met Jenny Hirsch and Ruthie Yow at one of their Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) workshops. It sounded a lot like what I’d already been doing in communities for years, but they helped me see it in a new light. I’ve been hooked ever since. They’ve had a hold on me, and I’ve had one on them. I think what Jenny saw in me and Ruthie was this wealth of connections and understanding. I’d worked at Lifecycle Building Center, LBC had a grant from the EPA for workforce development, which was something of interest here. The problem was, LBC didn’t have the capacity to actually do the work. So Shannon Goodman, the executive director, said, “Hey, would you come help us do this?” And I said, yeah. But the way we were going to do it, it wasn’t that LBC would do it themselves; we decided to give the money to the community and let them run it. They’d get what they wanted out of it, which was deconstruction training, but the bigger idea was building a coalition.  

What keeps you engaged across boards and projects? 

I did forty years of federal service, and if you’re going to spend forty years in it, you don’t do it just for a paycheck, you do it because it’s a calling, to serve the public and the common good. Over time, that idea became central to who I am, because I spent forty years doing this work. It’s about responsibility for the common good. 

That opened up a broader concept, too. I was brought up Catholic, and Catholic social teaching emphasizes responsibility for the common good, human dignity, and humanity. For me, it became a way to activate my spiritual connection through people because I care about them. I fit the role of connector. I can see opportunities across organizations and think, if we can bring these things together, it benefits everyone’s common interest, not just one organization’s. That’s how I practice it, seeing the big picture, connecting dots, and building networks. 

Right now, we’re at an existential moment. Many people focus on the darkness, but what I try to do is build a path of opportunity and hope, and build the capacity to do that at the community level. It’s not about me; it’s about the younger generation seeing a better way to live than what’s been done since the Industrial Revolution. There’s a transition underway. 

What advice do you have for young people who want to do this kind of work?

For me, it’s about vision. There’s so much coming at people, they can’t declutter it all. You have to step back and say, here’s where I am, here’s the real world, and here’s what I can do. Build a vision around that. Focus on what’s meaningful to you and your community and figure out what actions you can take.  

We know the challenges, planetary boundaries, climate change, societal challenges, but how do we see opportunities to live better, maybe under a different economic system, where we thrive instead of just extracting from each other? As a species, we wouldn’t have survived if we weren’t interconnected. We need to recognize and value that. Community matters, like the human body; everything is connected. Even internally, the vagus nerve shows how body and mind are linked. We also need a connection with natural ecology. Renewables alone won’t solve planetary boundary problems. We need to live in harmony with natural systems and each other, in an economic system that defines wealth around well-being.

The concept here is “integral ecology,” from Pope Francis; it’s not just about nature; it’s about people, how people interact with each other and with nature, shaped around social justice. Being in nature, connecting with people, it’s a spiritual practice. Yoga, meditation, they’re ways to connect. I’m part of the Catholic tradition, but my spirituality goes beyond religion; it’s about human connection. We all need to get better at fostering that.