Wastes and Toxics

As an immigrant, issues of race, equity, and inclusion have always been central to my lived experience and values. As an environmental engineer and policy analyst, I feel grateful to align my convictions with my experience and to lead ERG’s environmental and climate justice solutions practice.

Solving today’s complex environmental challenges is a daunting task. It requires the delicate balancing of many competing factors, from cost and convenience to public health protection and resource allocation. At ERG, I am fortunate to be able to work on projects that get to the core of this balance, surrounded by clients and colleagues who are equally passionate about finding mindful, objective solutions for our complex world.

I find it motivating to be working at a time of both genuine need for better understanding human impacts on the environment and the emergence of tools and technologies that allow us to process data and understand the world like never before. I’m always excited to learn new skills and better ways to address complex problems.

I feel fortunate to work with so many dedicated researchers at EPA and other agencies on remediating contaminated water sources, adapting to climate change, and providing decision-support in related areas. While my particular expertise is groundwater, I’ve had the opportunity to lead projects in urban planning, coral reefs, climate change resilience, emergency response, stormwater, modeling, and more. Multi-disciplinary approaches are helpful for tackling all these issues, and I’m always learning.

In my experience, effective climate action requires invested leadership, multidisciplinary expertise to address all sources of greenhouse gas emissions, and equitable stakeholder engagement to guide and successfully implement new policies and strategies. I have had the pleasure of managing several climate action plan projects, guiding both municipalities and universities through the process of developing and implementing their unique plans, and I’m proud of the positive benefits those plans have brought to stem the effects of climate change.

Increasingly, organizations are applying life cycle assessment to learn how they can most effectively reduce the environmental footprint of their products and processes. I take great pride in contributing to techniques and open-source databases that help move the science of LCA forward and facilitate access to more robust, current, and regionalized public life cycle inventory data.

I always appreciate when our government clients ask us to help them quantify the benefits and costs of actions they are considering. The more complex assignments, such as accurately characterizing behavioral changes under multiple compliance scenarios, put a premium on our creativity and experience.

Growing up on a farm and showing livestock competitively sparked my passion for environmental advocacy. My greatest professional joy has been finding creative ways to collect, organize, and visualize complex data sets to translate how toxic exposures and releases affect our communities and the environment.

ERG’s commitment to respect, kindness, and compassion has given me an incredible foundation to serve our clients and help preserve the environment to the best of my abilities.

The synergy between my enforcement and chemical evaluation work is invaluable. Because of the overlap, I routinely apply my skills and knowledge from one field to the other. This makes my work more efficient and enables me to approach it more holistically.

Sustainability has been a central theme throughout my career. As an engineer, I particularly enjoy crafting approaches and tools to efficiently reduce chemical and energy inputs, guided by lessons learned from sustainability initiatives worldwide.

Each year, Americans generate millions of tons of waste and consume increasing amounts of resources. Educating and helping the public and organizations learn how they can reduce, reuse, and recycle has been a major focus of my career. I take great satisfaction in applying my extensive waste reduction knowledge to help my clients design and implement strategies to reduce the impact that waste has on the U.S. environment.

I deeply appreciate that I have been able to combine my love of the outdoors, desire to help others, and engineering background into a career dedicated to protecting the environment and human health from toxic chemicals. Collaborating with similarly passionate colleagues and clients has only added to the joy of my work.

I came to ERG an optimist with a thirst for learning, collaboration, and problem solving. Reflecting on my years with ERG, while progress may be incremental, I have found that the benefits of our work are irrefutable. My optimism for the future remains intact and stems from having colleagues and clients who are relentlessly dedicated to improving the world for every person in it.

Through my experience operating water systems, I have come to appreciate how dedicated utility staff are to ensuring that communities have safe drinking water. Whether I’m providing technical assistance or conducting a compliance inspection that may call out an issue, I have great respect for all who strive to protect human health under whatever site-specific challenges they may be working with.

Environmental science—especially figuring out how and where chemicals move through the environment—is continually challenging and endlessly fascinating. It’s extremely rewarding to know that our work helps protect human health and make sites safer for future generations.

I am driven to apply pragmatic, preventive approaches to preserve and protect our environment for the next generation. I enjoy seeing project results that lead to improved worker health and safety and a cleaner environment.

My passion for tackling environmental and social issues related to the circular economy stems from my belief that we all have an active role to play in protecting our environment and advancing toward an equitable future for all. Now more than ever, we must focus on circular economy policies and zero waste planning that will help build a more sustainable and resilient future.

Designing equitable solutions for sustainable environmental conservation and management efforts is a constantly challenging, rewarding endeavor. I love collaborating closely with our clients to develop strategies that promote environmental and climate resilience and justice—including evaluating environmental program effectiveness and identifying innovative best practices for coastal and ocean planning.

The amount and variety of waste generated across all industries is mindboggling, and its mismanagement has far-reaching consequences for both individuals and our society. I enjoy the challenge of working with EPA and regulated companies to help address environmental issues and ensure that industrial facilities are compliant with hazardous waste regulations. I am proud that this work helps improve the health and safety of our communities and the environment.

Bringing regulators and the regulated community together, educating them on each other’s concerns, and helping to find environmentally preferable and economically feasible solutions are some of the most enjoyable parts of my work.

Until recently, we have too often taken an “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” approach to waste disposal and overlooked the connection between surface and ground water, leading to contamination and depletion of both. We have to climb out of this history of environmental exploitation to a path of sustainability. I enjoy all my work to help get us there, including groundwater remediation, reducing sanitary sewer overflows, ensuring proper operation of injection wells, aquifer storage and recovery systems, and design of new water production wells.

Working in the service industry for nearly a decade showed me how much waste society throws away every day. Unfortunately, there is as no such thing 'away' and 'waste' is not just waste—it intersects with geopolitics, environmental justice, public health, climate, and much more. To create systemic change, we must find effective ways to channel our vision for circularity into developing and implementing practical evidence-based solutions.

Development of innovative assessment tools and methods is essential for protecting human health and the environment. At ERG, I’m excited to be at the forefront of these advancements.

My experience has taught me that engineering and environmental protection go hand-in-hand. They do not need to hinder each other, but rather should work synergistically to continuously improve our world and the environment we live in.

My passion for protecting the natural world stems from a childhood spent enjoying the outdoor expanses and natural beauty of Colorado. Now, I channel that passion into developing innovative approaches for collecting and analyzing large environmental datasets to help address many of the most pressing environmental challenges we face today. I am incredibly fortunate to collaborate with amazing colleagues and clients in pursuit of creative solutions for monitoring and protecting our environment.

Staring out of an airplane window not long after my first geology course, I was amazed at how the landscape features jumped out at me. I saw clearly how river flow, sediment, and time had interacted. That wonder is still with me as I apply what I know about geology and geochemistry to protect our nation’s groundwater, drinking water, and infrastructure. My work is diverse, and I like it that way because it allows me to bring a deep understanding of the earth and environmental sciences to a wide array of subsurface and surface environmental problems.

I find that field work is the best way to understand compliance issues. By seeing process operations firsthand, we can help EPA get to the root of issues and support the agency in determining the best ways to minimize waste generation and disposal across industrial sectors.

Both companies and the public sector have to assess environmental tradeoffs in the face of limited resources. LCA is a great tool for assessing those tradeoffs and making choices consistent with values. By generating high-quality public data and LCA tools, we provide the underlying data necessary for effective decision-making.