Her Story
About Jenn
I graduated from University of Hawaii back in 2007 and did a little bit of work at the Hawaii State Legislator's Office under a senator doing environmental work. I moved to San Francisco in 2008 wanting to pursue filmmaking with my journalism degree, but the Great Recession hit, so I ended up bartending to make a living while working on independent films and film festivals. In 2012, I transitioned to working in the private yachting industry for about 6 years, living on boats and traveling all over the eastern seaboard, the Caribbean, Canada, Alaska, Mexico, and pretty much every island in the Bahamas. It was very grueling, working probably 100 hours a week on average, sometimes for months at a time with no days off. I took time off in 2016, moved to Argentina, traveled throughout South America and Asia, and thought about my next move. I've always had an interest in the environmental field, so I applied to graduate schools, got into my top choice at American University, and moved to Washington, D.C. to start grad school. The pandemic hit when I was graduating, so I experienced being a new graduate in a really bad job market again. I started hustling, doing Instacart and DoorDash and all these little gig economy things, working 7 days a week for like a year and a half. I picked up my job at American University, which started part-time because it was grant-funded, and I was also doing communications part-time for another project focused on the economics of unpaid care work for women. Eventually I went full-time at the university, and with basically two people doing the work of 2.5 people in one position, we did all kinds of cool stuff there. Then I got this opportunity and came over to the EPA in 2024. I got hired to do community engagement work for a big grant program around Justice 40, ensuring funds and programs were benefiting lower-income disadvantaged communities. Then the Trump administration came in, we stopped doing all that stuff, the whole organization did a reorg, and now I work on training programs for the Clean Air Act. You have to be adaptable and resilient, and I've gone through a lot of changes in my life, so I'm just trying to draw off that to get me through.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Jenn
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to tenacity and a positive attitude. Throughout my career, I've had to be adaptable and resilient, going through a lot of changes in my life. Whether it was working 100 hours a week in the yachting industry, graduating into the Great Recession and then again during the pandemic, or working 7 days a week doing gig economy jobs while piecing together part-time positions, I've learned to draw on my experiences to get me through. You have to be adaptable, you have to be resilient, and you can't give up.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I've ever received is: You are not your job. If you died tomorrow, your job would be posted the next week. Although it's important to do everything you can to put your best foot forward, you can't sacrifice your entire being to your professional life, because that's not really living. This advice has helped me maintain perspective and balance, reminding me that while work is important, it shouldn't consume everything.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I'd like for my unconventional career path to be highlighted because I think for some of the more junior people, younger people who are just coming out of college, they don't know what they want to do, and there's all this pressure that you've got to kind of figure it out and go straight line. Your path doesn't have to be a straight line forward. You can kind of bounce around and still end up where you're meant to be. I went from journalism to bartending to filmmaking to the yachting industry to graduate school to environmental work, and all of those experiences shaped who I am and gave me the skills I needed to succeed.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
One thing that I think about a lot and a potential next move I'd like to make is working with communities around all these data centers that are being built. There's pretty much a complete lack of community engagement or input from the people that live around these centers, and I think that could have some negative consequences on both ends of the spectrum. It's really important to me that environmental justice communities are represented, that lower-income, disadvantaged communities are being represented and reaping some of the benefits of these things that are coming in, because they're the ones that are being affected by it the most in a lot of circumstances.
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