Wednesday, 6 Oct 1999
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.
Today's inbox is not so bad. Only 23 email messages came in overnight. Mostly junk, a few important things from the west coast, and some messages from people working at home at night.
A photo from a recent business trip to the Haida Gwaii islands off the northwest coast of British Columbia. People call the natural formation in the center Sleeping Beauty because it resembles a woman lying on her back.
Twenty-three emails overnight is pretty typical for me. I make a concerted effort not to get on too many email lists. I hear lots of stories from W. Alton Jones Foundation grantees about the 200 messages they have in their email boxes every morning. They end up spending hours just wading through the electronic pile, most of which is garbage.
Today I have to set up a bunch of appointments for myself and the new circuit rider at WAJF, Todd Koym. I am going to D.C. with him for a few days to introduce him to some other circuit riders and make some site visits with grantees. Also today I have to update the WAJF circuit-riding website with a few new links. And I want to check out some new online services that people have told me about recently. I am always on the lookout for free services or really great pay services that might be useful for our grantees.
Another item on my list today is making calls and sending email to several grantees in Europe. One of WAJF's grantees recently discovered some pervasive Y2K problems and is looking for some assistance in solving them. Finally, I am remotely troubleshooting some communication difficulties with Eco Bolivia's satellite phone and ISP.
This is a pretty full plate of different activities. Like most days, it will be fun for me, checking out new web offerings and talking to interesting people. It is really the people that make my job so fun -- everywhere I go I feel like I meet dynamic people who are true believers in their cause. It is very refreshing and energizing to empower people who are trying to make a difference in the quality of our environment.
This tree in the Haida Gwaii islands was left standing because a bear den was found at the base of it when clear-cutting was underway. I wonder if the bear has noticed that the other trees are missing.
Strangely, it was my love of the environment that landed me a job working with technology. In college (at the University of Virginia) I studied environmental science, then in grad school (also at UVA) I specialized in tropical forest ecology. I hoped to work in the nonprofit sector on environmental issues. However, when I finished my Ph.D. I realized I really needed some more experience to get the kind of job I was interested in having. So I took a post doc at Princeton with the famous, brilliant, and wacky Steve Hubbell, a tropical forest ecologist and conservationist.
At Princeton, I realized I needed to broaden my horizons. So I pursued several other opportunities, including an apprenticeship at an investment banking firm in Princeton and a post as the finance director on two congressional campaigns for Rush Holt (D-N.J.). I then accepted the circuit rider job at WAJF.
You are probably wondering where the technology comes in to play. It is nowhere in my bio before this job. One of reasons I think I can be effective at convincing people to use technology to help them work for the environment is that I am not approaching them as a propeller head, but as an environmentalist. I want to understand the issues they work on and I care about them. I see technology as a facilitator, as a means to an end, not as an end in itself. Though I have strong technical skills and knowledge, I hope that my lack of formal technical training shows that anyone can learn to use technology. It does not require a degree in computer science or membership in Gen X. If a thirty-something academically trained ecologist can set up a LAN, configure Windows NT laptops, and learn remote communication methods, surely anyone can!
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