My Career At the US Environmental Protection Agency: The Path to Sustainability.

My Career at the US Environmental Protection Agency: The Path to Sustainability

After receiving a bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Cincinnati in 1980, I began working for the US Environmental Protection Agency in Cincinnati, Ohio (across the street from the UC campus).  After working in waste management research for several years, my research turned to industrial pollution prevention. In 1989, this work introduced me to a novel approach to environmental management, called Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). LCA helps decision makers apply a holistic (system wide) and comprehensive (multi-attribute) approach to environmental management. This broad perspective is essential if we are to attain environmental sustainability goals and not merely shift burdens from one place to another. Through years of research, networking, and publishing, I attained the status of international LCA expert. My activities and hard work have contributed to the EPA's growing reputation as a leader in LCA and toward building awareness both within and outside the Agency regarding the important implications that LCA has regarding the protection of human health and the environment. I have authored and co-authored numerous papers and book chapters which address the LCA concept and its applications, and presented EPA's activities in LCA-related research at technical meetings across the US and in Europe, South America, South Africa, Asia, and Australia. Also, I serve as the Subject Editor (Cleaner Production Tools) for the Journal of Cleaner Production and on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, and Management of Environmental Quality, and the advisory board of the on-line journal Sustainability. Through the Agency's training program, I lived in Lund, Sweden, for a year while earning a masters degree in Environmental Management and Policy at Lund University (1996). In 2005, I lived in Cape Town, South Africa for six months conducting research toward my doctorate which I earned at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, The Netherlands (International PhD program on “Cleaner Products, Cleaner Production, Industrial Ecology and Sustainability” 2008). In this talk, I will share some stories about my perhaps unusual path to success, the hurdles I have encountered along the way, as well the opportunities that have come my way (and which I made for myself).