📍 Summit of Mount Saint Helens, 2022 — my second date with my husband, climbed on a whim, like most of my best decisions.
The Heart Behind the Work
“My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent.”
—Ruth Bader Ginsburg
The Story Behind the Drive
In 2019, I packed up my car and drove across the country by myself. I was 22, had just left engineering school, and knew deep down that staying in Kentucky wasn’t going to lead me toward the life I wanted.
I didn’t have a job or a clear plan, just a strong pull toward the mountains, the water, and a place that felt more in sync with who I was becoming.
That move reshaped everything. I had to grow up quickly. I learned how to rely on myself, how to build community from the ground up, and how to stay steady even when nothing felt certain. Somewhere in the middle of all that, I started to figure out what kind of impact I wanted to make.
That version of me, resourceful, driven, and unwilling to settle, is still the one behind every project I take on today.
From Systems to Sustainability
I spent years managing vendor contracts, building systems, and leading enterprise-wide IT rollouts. I knew how to make things work at scale, and I was good at it. However, I eventually began asking more challenging questions.
Who benefits from this work? What kind of impact do I want to have? And could I use the same skills to build something more meaningful?
That reflection is what pulled me into the climate space. I didn’t need to start over. I just needed to point my experience in a better direction.
The final puzzle piece was my graduate capstone project, which involved developing an enterprise architecture framework to enhance the management of renewable energy companies’ wind assets. It gave me the clarity (and proof) that this is precisely where I’m supposed to be. Now, I bring the same systems mindset to projects that align with my values: clean energy, equity, and resilience.
The Path That Shaped Me
I grew up between the salt air of Florida and the hayfields of Kentucky. Some of my earliest memories are walking orange groves with my grandpa or watching my dad quietly pick up litter at the beach. He never made a big deal about it; it was just what you did when you cared about a place. Later, life on the farm taught me what hard work looked like and instilled a deep respect for land and rhythm.
One summer in middle school, my siblings and I joined my dad on one of his voyages as a chief engineer for Maersk. We spent a month living aboard a container ship, traveling through Alaska and Asia. That trip cracked the world open for me. I saw just how interconnected everything is, how much teamwork and infrastructure go into keeping things moving, and how deeply human those systems are.
Years later, I married Danny at an elephant sanctuary in the mountains of Thailand and eventually found my way to Vermont, close to the forests and seasons that have always felt like home.
Sustainability isn’t just something I work on. It’s how I move through the world—how I cook, how I plan, how I take care of people. That thread has been there all along. I just had to recognize it for what it was and move forward with it.
A Life Lived Outside the Lines
I’ve never been one to color inside the lines—my fashion choices (like turning 3D movie glasses into sunglasses) made that pretty obvious early on.
My life’s been stitched together with grit, curiosity, and many unscripted moments. I’ve swum with dolphins, manta rays, and one very territorial seal. I cleaned boilers on my dad’s Maersk ship off the coast of Asia, and had my full “Jeff Probst” moment riding a motorcycle to my wedding when the car bailed last minute.
But it’s the smaller memories that shaped me just as much—my grandpa calling me “Scary Mary” after I stole the show in a church play, hiking up Whiteface Mountain with my mom, spelunking caves in Florida, and ten years of annual trips with the same college friends who’ve long since become family.
This page is just a glimpse of the unfiltered reel. A little wild, a little weird, and fully me.
