As an undergrad at Carleton, Amy’s environmental leanings led to an interest in site-specific art and earthworks. After graduating, Amy attended graduate school at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to study landscape architecture.
An internship with a National Park Service heritage commission in southwestern Pennsylvania dedicated to restoring the landscape and transforming the economy of this industrial region exposed her to grant writing and set her on her way to a rewarding career securing funding for all sorts of sustainability efforts and spaces for the greater good.
Amy currently serves as a Foundations Officer for the Environmental Defense Fund at their headquarters in New York City. She’s worked for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the National Audubon Society, and the Rainforest Alliance.
“My job has involved working with brilliant scientists, lawyers, policymakers, educators and, yes, artists, to protect the environment. I’ve traveled to beautiful natural areas, and seen intensely degraded landscapes as well. I’ve worked closely with leading national foundations, philanthropists and government funding agencies. It’s been extremely rewarding work.”
She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Kimber, and two boys, Sterling and Jules, and, as a Frederick Law Olmsted aficionado, enjoys living near and playing in the green space that they both consider his finest work, Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.
She adds: “Carleton’s writing requirement, and the art history department’s requirement of re-writing a paper over the course of a trimester, were essential in honing my writing skills. Effective communication, and compelling writing in particular, is essential to a fundraising career.”
Amy is working on a fictional memoir about a young woman in an all-girl rock band in the mid-west in the early 90s, “in the wake of Riot Girl and Nirvana,” based loosely on her own experience in her band Corndolly that she formed while at the University of Illinois.
“Don’t forget to be in a rock band before you get out of your 20s. You only live once.”