Community Collaboration, Influencing Policy, and Resilience with Mathy Stanislaus

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Mathy Stanislaus, Vice Provost Executive Director of The Environmental Collaboratory at Drexel University about Community Collaboration, Influencing Policy, and Resilience.   Read his full bio below.

Help us continue to create great content! If you’d like to sponsor a future episode hit the support podcast button or visit www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com/sponsor-form 

Showtimes: 
 1:40 - What drives your passion?
11:34 - Interview with Mathy begins 
19:22 - How to find meaningful work
33:30 - Field Notes!
43:27 - Power of experiential learning 

Please be sure to ✔️subscribe, ⭐rate and ✍review. 

This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Mathy Stanislaus at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathy-stanislaus/

Guest Bio:
Mathy Stanislaus, Esq., is the Vice-Provost and Executive Director of The Environmental Collaboratory at Drexel University that partners with community leaders to advance climate justice priorities and solutions.

Mathy served eight years as the Obama Administration Senate-confirmed Assistant Administrator for the U.S. EPA Office of Land & Emergency Management. During his tenure, he spearheaded the nation's first climate emergency preparedness plan and co-chaired President Obama’s Chemical Plant Safety Task that led consultations across the country to establiss to address the impacts on fenceline communities from chemical plant accidents.   

Before joining Drexel, Mathy led the establishment of a multi-stakeholder platform at the World Economic Forum to address child labor/force labor in the procurement of critical materials necessary to advance the scale of batteries and EV and renewable energy.   

He was a long-term member of the Board of the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance.  Mathy is an environmental lawyer and chemical engineer.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Hello and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental enthusiasts, Nick and Laura. On today's episode, Laura and I talk about accepting your passions. We interviewed Mathy Stanislaus about community collaboration, influencing policy, and resilience. And finally, KOi are intelligent. They are able to recognize their owners, remember feeding times, and can be trained to eat from your hands. They can also live to 30 years on average, but the record is 226 years. Yeah. So, if you get one, be prepared for a significant turtle-like investment. That's all I'm gonna say. I need proof of this. Well, you know what, the record started in 1770 something, so maybe it's not, but uh there's at least, there's more than one that's lived over 100 years. So how about that? 

Yeah hit that music. 

The National Association of Environmental Professionals is working on providing guidance and support for those affected by the changes in the government since the start of the year. If you are a member of NAEP, be on the lookout for a survey asking how NAEP can support current and former government employees. Also, for those who are. are either members or not members, look out for webinars about transitioning to the private sector, virtual job fairs, in-person networking, and an Ask Me Anything on YouTube. Check all this out at www.AE.org. 

Let's get to our segment. 

So our interview with Mathy was really good, really enjoyed that. And there's a phrase we wrote down at the end of it, right? One of the things he said was, school doesn't teach you passion. I thought it was a really great phrase. I thought that was something, it stuck with me. And I think it's not that you can't learn what your passions are through school, but I think his points really that that's what's really gonna drive you. What you've learned is just your baseline knowledge, but what you do with it very much depends on What you find interesting, what you care about. And I don't know, I thought it was something that I wanted to hear your take on and, you know, how do we find our passions? What do we do when we find them, and yeah, where do we go from there. Yeah, in my mind, that full phrase is education doesn't teach you your passion, life does. Yeah, yeah, there we go. I like it, yeah, not to brag, that's what you can see your face. I tell this to people all the time because people love to give this advice. Find your passion, because when people have gotten to a certain point and they look back, they just go, oh, things started to happen when I found my passion. But it came to them like they didn't go searching for it or, you know, pick up a rock and there it was like it came to them somehow. And so when you tell a younger person or even an older person who hasn't found their passion yet that they just have to find it, you can discover it through exploration and doing things, but Most people find their passion when their child gets cancer, or they see something horrendous happen in the news, or they see a problem that they want to dedicate themselves to solving. And you don't find that typically by reading a book or taking classes. Yeah, that is true. 

I don't think there's ever, there's not been one test where I took a test and after the test, I was like, now I know what I wanna do. It's almost like, thank goodness it's over, right? That's always, always the case. But yeah, no, I love that. I think that's very fair. It's like, it's a cruel thing really to say you have to live to find your passion because everybody wants an answer right away. It's almost like the, how did you lose weight? Well, I ate better and I exercised. Nobody wants to hear that. It's not fun. That's not an instant answer. And that doesn't mean you can't do things to influence that, right? And I think a lot of ways, what we've advocated for on the show is just Being open, saying yes to things, being curious, following that curiosity. It's how we got on the show. It's how we started doing it. They're like, could we do this? Sure. Will it be good now that we talk to each other? Yes. And here we are, you know, so I totally agree with that. Yeah, it's definitely, you know, if you haven't found your passion, there's nothing wrong with you. Some people may not even find a passion. It's kind of like the notion for me, as someone with very broad spiritual religious beliefs, the notion that you have to have a purpose is a human construct. Yeah. It's great. It sounds good, but at the end of the day, we made it up. So you don't have to feel like a failure if you don't find your purpose. Now, if you're a person who thinks that you need a purpose to live a successful life, by all means, go for it, do it, find it, you know, but you don't have to feel like a failure because someone else has found a purpose and a passion and you feel like you haven't. Oh, that's a great point too, and I think for someone like me, right, I'm, I'm kind of a generalist. 

Like I just love learning new things, but that can be really hard to pinpoint like what am I passionate about learning new things isn't really, right, but it took me ages to like understand that that was OK, right? Oh, it's good to do that, and you can find a job that requires you to be, to think creatively in lots of different ways or be just know, just enough to have a conversation. And those are the things that I get joy in because every new person you meet is a new experience. And so for me that's much more interesting than, you know, being the best at putting a car together from scratch or whatever it is. But I will say when I was younger in particular, I would see other people who are, who are like, I am going to become a doctor. And that is, I knew that when I was 16 and I'm now 32 and I am doing it and it's exactly what I wanted to do. And I would, I would see those people and I would be like, wow. When is that gonna happen for me? Well, that was Dorie Larson who's been on the show before, you know, when her and I were in school growing up, I just liked to do art and I knew I didn't like math. I just, that was it. I don't know. So let me just explore things and see what happens. But she was, I want to be in public health. I want to be in public health, went all the way to her math when she was finishing her master's, I think I was starting my biology degree and uh and bachelor's. But then she actually did the work and didn't like it, you know, so you can never compare yourself to what someone else is doing because you don't know, they might on the surface look like they love what they're doing and they might be home miserable. And I think too, this is another thing why some people have, you know, the quote unquote midlife crisis is because they don't have a passion or a purpose and they feel like they're supposed to, or they've been doing something that they thought was their passion, they find out like, oh, I don't want this anymore. Yeah, 100%. 

People joke about this all the time. So we have to put labels on things like there's a quarter life crisis, there's a midlife crisis. I'm sure there's a, a late life crisis as well. It's just honestly, when you are doing something and you want to shift, it's almost like we're afraid to do that. It's a really scary thing. I'm gonna change careers. One of my mentors, I was telling somebody this the other day. He had two full careers, one of them in the public sector for 25 years and then 25, well, I think 20 years in Nipah and those are two different things, completely different. Like there, there's like some bare thread of, you know, some kind of environmental something, but not really. The jobs were extremely different. And, you know, when I met him, I was like, man, he knows so much about everything and I didn't even know that there was another entire life he lived prior to doing what he was doing and helping me learn. That profession. And so it's, you know, I think, yeah, so he found his passion two times over, you know, right. But going back to the human construct of it, who says you have to have one and only pick one? Why can't you be passionate about multiple things? That's, I mean, I think people who are passionate about multiple things feel like Outkast because that's not what society has termed as normal. So, and that's because the rule is, go to school, pick a lane, stay in it. Yeah, that's true. You know, and then that way you go to school and you pay a lot of money to go to that thing, and then you get a job in that thing. But you don't have to follow that. And so when somebody has a passion or 2 or 3, then people are like, What? I mean, I work much in arts and science. Yeah. And maybe I'm not even passionate about arts and science. Maybe I'm just passionate about making stuff. I know, right? Yeah. And it's really cool it's so funny because you, you made me think of it. We have an IT like the one of our leaders in the IT program is also an artist and sells his art and you know, it's commissioned artwork and those are two very different things, and he's great at both of them. And we have this tendency to compare ourselves to people. 

It's like, wow, he's really great at two things. I'm only kind of good at 10, and I, well, who cares? It doesn't matter. Are you enjoying what you're doing? Do you like it? Do you want to have an 11th thing? And because I think people will look at you and be like, you're doing so much and it's just what you like. It's what you're passionate about and who cares? Yeah, and I personally think if you have the capacity to be passionate about multiple things, that's wonderful. Yeah, you know. And then you have to think about like, when you were 12, you were probably passionate about Batman and comic books. And then when you were in college, you were passionate about, I don't know, parties or like, you know, something, something else. And then every decade, it makes sense to me that what you are quote unquote, passionate about and where you want to spend your time and what you're going to spend 90% of yourself talking about is going to change. Yeah, and there's always like core stuff, I think. Sometimes we forget about that. It's like who I was as a person. Like I think it took me a long time to realize that I, I knew that I like to be funny, but like why I like to be funny and like how I use that in my day to day life changed a lot as I got, you get a little bit older, a little bit wiser, and it's just that I like to connect with people and I like to find the things that they enjoy. And so even now I'm just trying to say small little anecdote things to see if I can get Marley or Sam to laugh is kind of like just to make sure they're not sitting here being bored and it's like I just want to connect and it's like that's my big thing, not the only thing I like to do, but it's a really big part of who I am and I know that now. Yeah, and so that's you, so when you, you say like I'm passionate about comedy. You're not passionate about comedy, you're passionate about making other people happy, and you can do that through comedy or through community service or through other things. 

So that's when things start to go, how come you're doing so much stuff? It still serves the same higher passion. Right. Have a purpose for you or whatever that is. And yeah, so like, for anyone listening, if you don't have a passion, you probably do, and it's OK if it's Legos, you know, Mass ESG and Legos, you know, exactly, exactly. And it's OK if what you think it is different than it is tomorrow. It's fine, you know, just see what you're interested in, yeah, be your multidimensional self, just be, be curious, do stuff you're interested in, and try stuff and You'll either come out, you'll trip over something that becomes a passion, or you'll just have fun, a fun life, like, you know, what's the harm in that? Yeah, exactly. Uh, that's great. All right, we, we're talking too much. Let's wrap it up and get to our interview. Hello and welcome back to EPR. Today we have Mathy Stanislaus on with us. Mathy is the vice provost and executive director of the Environmental Co Laboratory at Drexel University and a former senior member of the Obama administration in the US EPA. Mathy, it's great to have you here. Thank you. Looking forward to this conversation. Yeah, yeah, it's really exciting to have you here. So you've been leading the, uh, environmental collaboratory at Drexel for a few years. I'd like to know how you describe the work that you do there and what are you focused on currently? The work that we do is really bring the assets of a university in a co-leadership model with community partners to drive climate justice solutions that really make a difference on the ground. So, can you kind of give me an example of what that means? Sure, over the last 2.5 years, we've facilitated something called the Philadelphia Climate Justice Collective with a number of community-based organizations. We work hand in hand with them to support them, to engage their communities to understand what the community's prior. in terms of the intersection of climate impacts and kind of the lived circumstance. 

So coming out of that, we developed recommendations around extreme heat, but short and long-term issues, the nexus between air quality and health, um, illegal dumping as a Symptom of systemic failure, particularly in the most vulnerable or lowest income neighborhoods, and the need for more of a community-led accountability mechanism. This then led just about two weeks ago to a town hall where we invited elected officials, agency officials. To understand from the voices of communities what their recommendations are, and then we're now going to translate that into policy recommendations and engage the policy officials, agency officials to implement those recommendations. So, when you work with the communities like this, how do you approach them? How does this process start? Like, if you have an idea on what you want to review or uh collaborate on, how do you actually begin that? Yeah, I would begin with the brutal truth and trust. Yeah. So we engage in this. Actually, you know, this is my first time in academia, and my initial engagement is like there's no reason for you to trust us, right? That you have been taken advantage of by the academic machinery. It's been exploited, it's been extracted, and it's the control of intellectual property. So that's the beginning point. So we, we spent 9 months just building the principles of engagement, uh, building a data sovereignty agreement with a community generated data is owned by the community and any use of that data requires consent. We began with a position of no publication unless the community wants to publish, right? So then we establish that trust, and then we establish uh an authentic whole leadership model. Which is unusual for universities where uh we make sure that they are in a powerful seat to say no at any way along the way. And then once you establish that trust, then you could do the work of supporting them. And then translated that. And now we have a trusted uh relationship where now they trust us to do the data analysis and recommendations and convene tables. So I guess I'll leave it there. Yeah, yeah. So that seems like a model that that requires a lot of internal trust at the university as well. That can't be something that just came out of thin air. So how did this start at Drexel and how did you get into this to begin with? Well, I was recruited to start the mom of the collaboratory, and those are my preconditions, right? It's very cool.

Well, so how did you get into it then? How did this come to be? How did they uh say, yes, please do this? Yeah, well, you know, maybe I'll start in kind of the, the journey of my career. Uh, and so, which really goes back to when I was doing chemical engineering studies and two major events completely shifted the trajectory of my career. One was the Bal incident, one of the most horrific mad-made, avoidable incidents which killed Tens of thousands of people in Bhopal, India, maimed multiple tens of thousands, and it continues to be an issue. All avoidable, a union called by now Dow Chemical chose to not invest in the scrubbing technology which would have prevented that. You know, I was a chemical engineer, I was doing a chemical plant design, was really horrified at that. Uh, and that coupled with, I was born in Sri Lanka of Tamil descent, and the civil war broke out. I got thrown into it at a very young age doing human rights work, doing refugee work, and everywhere I, engaged, try to push the human rights issue, I encountered these pesky lawyers, you know. So, I chose to go to law school to have that training, not necessarily to practice, and I went to law school, practiced law, you know, for about 1214 years. I really didn't like the practice of law. I didn't like the transactional side. I worked in the public and private sector and particularly the private sector. I really hated the transactional side of the law. So, I was doing all this community-based work. I always talk about my work is centered on how You advance human rights. Um, and so I helped shape environmental justice organizations in New York City. I then was asked to stand up, uh, technical assistance, not for profit in New York City. We did that. That then got translated into leading policy work at the state level to develop policy to address the issues of overburdened neighborhoods. Then I was asked to join the Obama administration, and I kind of took all those lessons with him. Uh, I served as the assistant administrator at the US EPA and I led, uh, President Obama's chemical plant task force, which looked at the major impacts of communities from really haphazard operations of some of the worst actors in the chemical industry, you know, so I really traveled the country. I had the opportunity to travel the country to understand. The community experience translate that into policy. And then from there, I joined the World Economic Forum during the first Trump administration, which I decided to work internationally, which I didn't want to struggle as much as we do right now. I'm just saying the Trump administration. 

Uh, so really working on how do we scale up electric vehicle as well as renewable energy, but looking at some of the, the soft spots of dark underbelly, you know, the supply chain issues, child labor issues, forced labor issues, help stand up, something called the Global battery Alliance to advance these, the nexus of social environmental issues. We brought. Together some of the largest auto companies, battery companies with government officials and NGOs. So how can we build these bridges of making sure we kind of move to a decarbonized future, but make sure that there's not harm for communities who are most at risk. And, and that led me, and I was recruited to bring those experiences in my current role. So amazing. That is so amazing. Like your career history sounds super exciting and meaningful. A lot of people are looking for how do I do meaningful work. This isn't on our scriptive questions, but how would you tell other people to make their way and find meaningful work? Well, I would say start with that premise. Your career is gonna be so long. That if you don't find meaningful work, you will hate your job very quickly, right? I was, I always tell the students that I mentor is that one thing that is not taught in school is passion, right? Follow your passion. The other thing is like, you know, I always say, if you want to work in the private sector, that's OK, publish it, but early in your career, do some experimentation, work in different kinds of environments. So you're not really understand what you think is in your head, understand how it really is on the ground. And really, so I worked in, I worked in every possible sector, right? 

And you learn from that, you know, and I, I did some of my greatest learnings were actually doing volunteer work, you know. And so I, I think there's a whole bold world out there, you know, really get out there, experiment, talk to people. I tell students, you know, get a mentor, but talk to professionals in the industry. Professions in the industry are really willing to share their experiences. Oh, it's so true. That's so true. People love to talk about that, yeah. Yes, I'm telling people that all the time. Please, how do I, how do I know if I wanted this job? Well, you either do it or you have to talk to somebody else who's doing it. But like I, you know, you, like I said, you have this career, you have this in lots of different sectors, and lots of different angles, and so like, you know, like I said, you've worked globally, locally, basically for every region that there is, you have some experience in. So how do you take what you've learned and apply it to the communities that you're trying to help now? That's a great question. Um, I have learned so much from community leaders, right, about how to work with communities, first of all. And I think whether it's lawyers, engineers, or urban planners, they all always take this kind of paternalistic or missionary kind of approach to working with communities, right? So, the first principle is like, is to engage communities where they are and engage them in a leadership model, in a very humble model, right? And I feel I have a responsibility to overprepare for any meeting with the communities, to make sure that, as my wife says, you know, stop your legalese, OK? Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah. So to break it down, make it accessible, because at the end of the day, The solutions can only be created, adopted, and advanced by communities, right? It needs to be their solution, not my solution. 

Yes, yeah, 100%. And you know, I've seen that time and time again where you have community, people come into communities and they're like, well, this is what we're gonna do, and it's almost like you, every community is different. I know you've seen, I'm sure you've seen that, and I'm sure you probably have examples of that, but like I, I think that's one of my favorite things when you meet people from different places is, oh, what might work here. Won't work in another place. I guess you get experience by doing that over time, but do you have a, and like you say, how do you stay humble, because even if you're doing well, you know how to do that. There's like that bias you have, you know, where it's like, I know how to do this, I know what I'm doing, but I still need to listen. So how do you kind of keep your expert brain from taking over? Yeah, I mean, I think you said the operative word listening and reflecting, right? You know, so I'm always asking for feedback. I'm always like reflecting. You know, I know this sounds really simple, but I do a detailed diary every day about my experiences of the day, you know, what worked well, what did well. And I learned so much from that, you know. And then I talked to my staff and I said, here's what I feel I'm feeling that happened yesterday. What do you feel? So it's really, you know, it's really important to Just be humble and just like reflect that none of us are gonna get it right all the time, you know, and all of our biases, all of our expertise, you know, education can sometimes get in the way of you want to do. That's so true. I mean, if you think of the people who built dams and stuff in the 50s, 60s, they were like, yeah, we're getting this right. And then we're all going, yeah, you get that right. Um you can doesn't mean you should. What are some of the, some memorable favorite projects you've worked on? Yeah, I, I'll tell you a couple, you know, I was, I mean, Deepwater Horizon, those who are not familiar with was, uh, British Petroleum BP spill in the Gulf in 2009, 2010, and I got thrown into that. I was the head of emergency preparedness and response for the agency, and my life got from April 20th to July 2. I remember those dates. I do not have a day off. OK. Oh my gosh, yeah. So I got thrown into incident command, helping manage so many aspects of everything from monitoring the impacts of that. But the most memorable was actually going around the Gulf and meeting people, meeting people where they everything from communities in, in Grand Isle with an accent, which is very hard to follow. You know, the unique Cajun accent which I've grown to love, you know, and, uh, meeting with them, the Vietnamese communities who are good fishermen there, you know, and just trying to like be present. And meeting them and trying to do something because they were all deeply fearful of both their health and their economy. It was so important to be on the ground just to engage them, listen to them, and take that back, and I took that back into White House meetings like these how people are going to be impacted, you know, and I was talk about the bias of being in DC is that It doesn't really reflect the people experience. And I, I was, well, my responsibility was to meet people where they are and take those experiences into these places that, frankly, many of the people who've never experienced that, you know, so many examples of that. I totally agree. I'm wrapping my brain around. 

OK, what does that look like working in the White House? Yeah. Which, my next question, so you have worked in two very different vibes for the White House. And so in the time that we're facing now with so much repealing of climate and environmental justice initiatives, and from your experience on both sides of the fence within the White House, like, how is the collaboratory adapting and what do you see as the future? Yeah, I mean, frankly, it's a tough and, and maddening time. It's hard. The work that I've done in my career to see it unraveled is really hard, you know, and, but I tell my staff, my friends, colleagues, is that we should be aware of what's going on. In terms of the unraveling of policy, we should really, and I, I've published things that deeply criticizes the administration that's really important to do. But we cannot let their madness control us, right? And so we really are focusing on what can we do at the local level to protect people? How do we lift our people. People, how do we look at this opportunities in state and local policy, and really wake up every day, not with the headlines, but what can we do to make a difference in people's lives. So that's, that's what we try to do on a daily basis. And so what does that look like? What are the things that you are doing? So, uh, one other thing that we were doing, we did from my emergency response and preparedness work at during the Obama administration. What I have flagged is that while there's, there was and it is globally lots of attention to greenhouse gas mitigation, there is very little attention to the preparedness infrastructure of how to protect people from death and injury and economic flight. Right. And so we convened, uh, did a regional convening, bringing together hospital officials, medical doctors, community residents who've experienced regular flooding, state and local government officials, national NGOs, and we asked them, how are you experiencing the extreme weather events. We, we had some experts talk about the increased frequency and severity. And so we're in the middle of developing a road map, and I could send that to folks who are interested. We're in the midst of finalizing that we are then consulting with folks around the country. 

Our plan is to roll that out in climate week in New York, and then possibly the climate conference in Brazil. Yeah. Oh wow, very cool. You know, you made me think of this. I saw someone give a speech at a conference theater who said that, you know, like one of the things that they've changed is like, well, we don't say climate change, we say changing climate. And he's like, I don't know why, but we're allowed to say that, and it's like almost, almost the same, but not quite. But his message was really more like, we can talk about it all we want, but if you put your head in the sand and you don't do anything, the water level's gonna rise up and you end up drowning in the sand. So it's, it doesn't really, we can talk about how there is things aren't happening, but the reality is it is. Um, so I, I think at the local and the community level, we're seeing differences than you see on the national level sometimes. And so, has that been your experience as well with the communities you're engaging with? It's quite interesting that even the reddest counties are seeing. Normal weather that creates flooding, right? Or seeing extreme weather events. So in an ironic way, extreme weather is an area where more common ground can be brought together. So for example, the deconstruction of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has been criticized in a bipartisan way, right? Um, people want support at that time of crisis, you know, and there's ridiculous attack on all government. I think people are seeing that you cannot deny people's experiences of extreme heat, of flooding, and the need to be protected. So we see it as an opportunity to build common ground. I mean, Pennsylvania is kind of, is a purplish state, and we see the opportunities to Looking at emergency preparedness of extreme weather preparedness as a way of building common ground, building coalitions, and then we can get into deeper issues, right? You know, in terms of how do you then translate that into investment in adaptation or investment in solar installations, those kind of things, you know, so. Yeah. You have such an amazing broad experience background and knowledge of all these things. How do you stay focused and positive when you've seen so much and been through so much and continue to see both sides of of humanity? Um, what advice do you have for people listening on how to to stay positive and motivated and moving forward? Yeah, I'm, I would say, you know, I meditate morning and evening, first of all, uh, I, as I said, I, I do a detailed diary every day. I always focus in on the process. 

And a belief in the process, you know, if you're authentically believing in kind of the mission in human rights and environmental justice, you have to be committed to the process, so the process of engaging communities, process of translating communities to policies, process of. Engaging policymakers, process of translating that into implementation. We have to be really focusing on action, you know, and the process of action, not the near term results, you know. So I think we can get really bogged down in the, the headline of the day, the attack of the day, and that actually serves those who are attacking us, right? And we have to own our own future, right? And I choose to own our own not only my future but the future of the communities that we work with. Right. There have been a lot of, I've heard that a few different ways as well. It's almost like you can say that you can't talk about environmental justice, but you can talk about communities. Mhm. And you can talk about impacts to communities and if there are communities that are impacted, they're going to let you know about it too. There's avenues for them to do that. And so, yeah, I mean, I, I talked about environmental justice, you know, I was, I did this national event that included the former general counsel. During Trump won, he kept talking about environmental justice as anti-DEI. I said, listen, you know, you are with, like, what is a data show? You know, what is the data show of the communities at the fence line of chemical plant exposure? What is the data show of the demographics of people living next to hazardous waste sites and Superfund sites. 

What is the history of redlining, right? So let's just have a database conversation. Let's have a historic-based conversation. To me, I don't really care what you call it. Let's look at the data and respond to the data, you know, let's not talk about labels, let's not talk about whether DEI environmental justice. Let's agree to the data. And then figure out what we can do to help the people who need most help. And have you had anyone, uh, disagree on the data even? Is that stuff that you have to kind of work through as well, or is it's been pretty universally positive? Well, I mean, those that want to counter it don't want to counter it on the data, right? They want to counter on the narrative, but we have to go back to the data, to the history and action. There's gonna be a lot of people who want to create their own narrative. You know, I tell people like this is not a campaign stop. This is about doing work, OK, yeah, exactly. I like that. Oh, amazing. Well, we have a segment on the show that we call Field Notes, and we like to ask our guests to talk about memorable moments in the field. And for our listeners, we would like you to send your funny or scary or awkward field stories with us, and you can email them to us at info@environmentalprofessionalsradio.com. And Maddie, you mentioned you were working on the Deepwater Horizon response for months. Do you have any standout moments or things that happened during that? plenty. That's a telling laugh. Yeah. So, you know, I mentioned the work with people and responded to people. Um, I, uh, you know, in incident command, which is quite intense. I remember the day when the former CEO of BP made a statement along the lines of, kind of Like, why are we being bothered? I was just on vacation who, who soon got fired. Oh great. Well, I will also say this for those who are attacking the federal government and government generally, you're gonna attack government until you need government. Yeah. And government experts in various spaces. 

I do believe there are inefficiencies in the government, but that is not the same thing as needing. Government is needed because the private sector cannot fill those roles. That's a historic role of government, right? So, so those are some of our memorable, uh, experiences. So. Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, along those same lines is there. That's probably an unfair question to ask you, but is there something that you've worked on where you had the most pride, where at the end you're like, I did a great job there, I'm really proud of what we did. Would it be uh Deepwater Horizon or something else? During the Obama administration, there were a number of chemical plant accidents. And these were impacting frontline communities. So the president, we worked with the president and the White House to establish an executive order. I chaired that. Some agencies were not actually willing to go and meet communities. So I pulled all these. Agency folks, we had meetings in the communities in the Houston Channel in Baton Rouge in Richmond, California, the places of chemical clusters. We met with responders, we met with plant managers, we met with industry officials and It was hard work to try to like, how do we address these and so we were able to push through a rule that I think was balanced. In fact, the leadership, the leading companies applauded that. So I was really happy with that and I, and the sad part is Trump won, then stalled that. Then I've worked with the Biden administration to renew it and advance it, and now the chemical industry is now attacking it again. I will say this, you know, as my commentary. Washington fails in significant ways because you have trade associations who really represent the worst actors of that industry, you know, and I, I think that there's a difference between the best companies out there. And the DC mindset of of lobbying, which tends to look protect. 

The lowest common denominator, and this is what the American people don't realize. This is not an anti-corporate thing, but this is the way the DC loop works. And frankly, the trade association's monetization model is really about how do I get more and more members, right? To get more and more members that are protecting the lowest sector of the that leads to either reversal of policies or terrible policies. Right. Yeah, and then it takes something very dramatic to undo that. And so like how we got our environmental laws in the first place, for example, you know, if you keep pushing communities, eventually they push back and yeah, very, very interesting stuff. But yeah, I mean, like, do you work with DC? Do you go to DC in general in your current job as well? I do, cause I, I, I still stay connected with the leadership of environmental organizations nationally. I actually serve on a couple of boards, the Environmental Law Institute and Friends of the Earth, so assisting them to develop a kind of strategy. So I still stay connected and help trying to influence strategies and policies, you know, I think it's really important. I still serve on the board of the Global Battery Alliance to address kind of global policies as well, so. So how, how do, because I get this, you know, I hear people say this a lot, like, I want to influence policy and I don't have a great answer for how people can do that. So what would you say if someone comes to you and says, I want to influence policy, environmental policy in the United States. How does that actually happen? Well, first, change the I to the we and then figure out who the we is, right? So, so policy is really can be driven. By creating cohorts of stakeholders, getting agreement among those stakeholders, and then bring that stakeholder view to policymakers. And it's very much, you know, policies should reflect solutions to a constituencies. That requires a deep work of working with Building coalitions, how do we then build that trust in coalitions, translate that trust to policy, and then my best role is helping that and be behind the community coalition when they meet with policymakers. Wow, that's gotta be really rewarding when you get to the, to that point. I mean, does that take years of work in the community or, you know, months? 

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, this is, you have to commit to the time, you know, sometimes it does take years. I mean, even like a single policy to do it well, building the coalitions, identifying the issues, translating them to policy, engaging the policymakers, you know, in general, it's not a three-year window at a minimum, you know, so. Wow, yeah, yeah, and I think that's kind of, it's hard to say that that it's like, OK, you wanna help policy 3 year minimum and you're like, wait, what? But I wanna do it now. I want to do it today, and that's much different. That's very hard. Well, yeah, can I add to that policies fail. Because people want to do it quickly. um, and so many policies are so narrowly written. So one of the historic failures of policies, it tends to be what's called single stage, right? It addresses the symptom in front of you, not the underlying systemic conditions. Yeah. Yeah. So for example, you could say, well, water quality in river is bad, let's clean up the water quality. But what's the reason for that? Because of land use policies and infrastructure and crap people put, I mean, so it's a systemic problem, you know. Oh, that's so true. I mean, it's. Even like, I think I've even brought this up on the show before, but like DC actually has a a wastewater treatment plant right at the corner of the Anacosty and the Potomac River. When it rains, it spills out into the river. That's why there's a lot of contaminant in the, you know, fecal coliform in the rivers, and it's a lot. 

That's the problem. That's not an easy one to fix. Where are you gonna put a water treatment plant and you see, where is there space to put one? How can you do that? Well, that's interesting. That failure is because of the historic failure to understand. How best to develop a comprehensive system, right? So if you had, like, for example, Germany, right, when they build new developments, they create mechanisms to collect rainwater at the location of the development through some infiltration there, right? So we, we have designed a system where all the water goes in the sewage systems. Yeah, yeah, that's true, as opposed to separating. Rainwater from sewage water. So, and when you do that, then the infrastructure cost goes into the billions as opposed to requiring a fee. I hate to say it requiring a fee on developers to pay for the burden they are putting on society. Right, right. And I'm never gonna run my shower the same. Again, yeah, yeah, you just gotta move to blew my mind. It's totally true. It is, it's you don't think about that kind of stuff sometimes, but that's exactly it. That's what I love about working and traveling other places. You get that perspective of like, so many people who don't travel a lot think like this is how it is everywhere, or this is, you know, how it's best done and just assume that America does it all right and the best every time. And then you go somewhere else and you're like, wow, that's a cool way to do that. And even like localized waters is like uh. So when I went to Sri Lanka, after a long time, so the sink water goes out to the garden, right? And that's natural water, right? 

So some basic simple systems that we are, our presumed sophistication gets in the way of simple solutions. Right. Yeah. Well, it's, I mean, we were talking about engineering earlier, right? And it's like, oh, we can make this river instead of bending, we can make it go straight and you're like, that's great, except for when it floods and you just take it like what would normally would help reduce flooding elsewhere is now coming straight to your house because you changed the way the water goes and it's like you don't, like you said, it's like a, a challenge to be like, no, no, no, I know that solves one problem, but it creates 8. Yeah, we don't do that. Yeah, I mean, like, I could say this because I was trained as an engineer designed the world in a straight line. The world is not a straight line. Oh, that's really cool though. I, I mean, so even like understanding that probably takes some perspective that you may not have had when you were younger. So, I mean, how do you get to that point? Because I think it was like, why, why, why wouldn't we make it a straight line, you know? And then the years of experience teaches you, maybe it's not always, it's not as simple as it seems. Is it really just experience? Is it just time? The collaboratory in Drexel University, we really try to promote this idea of experiential learning, right? So students at a very early. Early age, I mean, early time at the university, we bring them into projects, right? And we really try to promote this idea of multidisciplinary-based approach. And I frankly, I think students come to us thinking in a multidisciplinary way, and we beat that out of them. And they be telling you about you can do this, you can do this, you can do this, right? But I think we have to nurture the students inherent multidisciplinary approach. I mean, when, when we brought students to do our, they do fabulous work. The ability to do this multi-issue research and connect dots, frankly, that their professors are unwilling to connect, right. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, I totally see that. Like we call it beginner's mind sometimes. You have this fresh perspective that has a much broader scope. No, I love that. I do career coaching and so often they tell me, they always tell me what their weaknesses are, and I have to tell them why they're not their weakness. 

But one of them is, I have too broad of experience. I have done too many things. So you cannot do. Too many things. This is not a problem. Yeah, I, I tell the students all the time and sometimes their parents probably going to get mad with me, is that, get your degree, but realize your degree is going to be more and more useless down the road. Your career is gonna change 345 times in your career. Unless you have an adaptive. mindset, you will not be able to adapt. And the world is changing so quickly. Like the historic model, I do one career from a, that's gone. That is gone. Heck yeah. One of my mentors like had two full careers basically. In his 50s, he decided to work for 20 more years doing something completely different, completely different. And even that felt like a revelation at the time. No this is my 4th career or 5th career depending on, you know, yeah, then the, the lines get blurred and this is kind of my 3rd, so there you go. Yeah, well, this is awesome. I, I could ask you a million more questions, but we're running out of time and you're a busy man. So one thing I do want to ask though, we like to ask about things that you do for fun. We're not all here to just do work all day and all night, I hope, but you like to build or have built koi ponds? Yeah, you know, so I, I, I, going back to my chemical engineer, I built a koi pond in every single house that I lived in like in the house or like in my mind. And so just yesterday, I went out and like, you know, I, I bought a a coin and a goldfish but I didn't want to overpopulate. Then I see like 5 additional small fish. How did this come from? It happened in my pond. I finds a way. Well, I would say another fun thing that I do. So my wife and I, we love jazz, so we just went to the New Orleans Jazz Festival and the Lafayette Music Festival. 

So while we were down there, we went to a Cajun cooking. I love cooking as well. So I'm gonna like expose some guests tomorrow to my first try at Cajun cooking. Oh wow, yeah. That's very cool. I mean, if it's hot enough, it won't even matter. No, I'm kidding. I love it though, it's so good. It's such good food. Yeah, that's awesome. Thanks for sharing that. It's too fun, but OK, well, I know we're running out of time, but is there anything else you'd like to talk about that we haven't asked you? Yeah, maybe I'll just reinforce, you know, I, I know at this moment, you know, it could be really depressing, but we had to really focus, you know, the promise in ourselves, in our communities, in our families, and really work to address the conditions of the most vulnerable. So, yeah, yeah, I think it's a great message and I really appreciate you saying that. And uh I guess last but not least, where can people get in touch with you? Sure, I'll give um the website address of my unit. Uh it's draxel.eduvial-collaboratory backslash and you can also just send me an email, first name M A T H Y, last name Stanislaus S T A N I S L A U S at Draxel.edu. Perfect. Thank you, Mathy. I really enjoyed it. You're welcome. I enjoyed this conversation. And that's our show. Thank you, Maddie for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. 

Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review. See you, everybody. Bye.