Recently, I stood on Mount Hood’s Palmer Glacier with my 2-year-old daughter. If “where we’re from” means the place that most shapes us, then that’s home for me. Standing in 78-degree weather at 8,000 feet, the glacier revealed a blunt truth: this wasn’t the same mountain where I grew up ski racing. 

I studied environmental journalism at Western Washington University, then spent six years at POWDER, rising from associate editor to Editor-in-Chief. There I made climate and public lands central to the magazine, and our team earned three National Magazine Award nominations. I went on to lead New Mexico Magazine, then spent five years at Avocado Green Brands, where I grew the company's magazine to more than a million readers and worked with legislators on clean energy policy.

Today I lead editorial work on sustainability communications for some of the world's largest companies. The work has taught me how organizations actually talk about climate, and what it takes to make that talk credible.

What ties it together: I set the strategy, and I still do the work. I edit, write, and pitch. I know what makes a reader open an email and what makes a reader finish a story.

ILater that afternoon on Mount Hood, I skied down the slope with my daughter in a backpack, weaving through patchy snow. As we picked up speed, she let out a whoop of delight. Home had changed, but it was still home.