Working for the White House, Protecting Federal Grants, and Life Lessons From Mr. Rogers with Ryan Hathaway

Laura and Nic interview Ryan Hathaway, Director of Climate and Environmental Justice at Lawyers for Good Government, to discuss his time at the White House, efforts to protect federal grants, and the power of community-driven environmental action. From recovering billions of dollars for communities to lessons inspired by Mr. Rogers, this episode explores how decency, optimism, and meaningful support can drive lasting change.

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

This episode is sponsored by Lawyers for Good Government. Learn more at https://www.lawyersforgoodgovernment.org/.

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 Ryan Hathaway at ryan@l4gg.org. 

Guest Bio:
Ryan serves as Director of Climate and Environmental Justice at Lawyers for Good Government (L4GG),  and previously served as the Director for Environmental Justice and Director of The White House Environmental Justice Interagency Council at the White House Council on Environmental Quality in the Executive Office of the President. Prior, he served as the U.S. Department of the Interior Environmental Justice Coordinator, and also led the Department's Major Infrastructure, Permitting, NEPA, and FAST-41 Programs.  Ryan has served in several government leadership roles, including as Branch Chief for National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Land Use Planning at the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).  He has over 15 years of experience in federal civil service from local fieldwork and administration to program management, policy, and leadership of multi-billion dollar national and international permitting and environmental policy programs.  

Ryan has his Bachelor's in Wildlife Conservation from the University of Delaware, and his Master’s in Natural Resource Management and Master’s Certificate in Sustainable Development from Virginia Tech University. Ryan serves on the advisory boards for the youth led non-profits Climate Cardinals and Future Incubators, is on the Harvard Sustainability Program Advisory Board, the board of District Coyote Project, and has served as adjunct faculty at several universities, as a board member on many organizations focused on improving the world we live in, and addresses audiences around the world as a speaker and panelist on leadership, environmental policy, and building a better future.  His most important and enjoyable role is as a dad to his son Charlie, and husband to his wife, Jackie, a tremendously dedicated shelter veterinarian.  If you want him to talk too much, bring up blues guitar, star wars, or smoking barbecue. 

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

Transcript

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Hello, welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental nerds, Nic and Laura.

On today's episode, we talk about Nic's updates on being a new dad. We interviewed Ryan Hathaway about working for the White House, protecting federal grants, and life lessons from Mr. Rogers. And finally, here's some fun facts about Mr. Rogers. Coco the gorilla was a Mr. Rogers fan.

When Mr. Rogers met her, she reportedly hugged him and took off his shoes. Whoa, just like she had seen him do on TV. Stop it. Yeah, right.

Michael Keaton got his start on the show, which is amazing. I love him. One of Keaton's earliest jobs was working as a stagehand on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. He also appeared on camera as Purple Panda.

And the number 143 had a special meaning to Fred Rogers. He associated with I love you, one letter in I, 4 in love, and 3 in you, and oddly enough, he reportedly maintained a weight of the same 143 pounds. That's crazy, as do I. Woohoo. Probably more than that.

That music Special thanks to our sponsor for today. This episode is sponsored by Lawyers for Good Government. Lawyers for Good Government brings together lawyers, law students, and activists to advance environmental justice and protect equal rights for all. Learn more at www.lawyersforgoodgovernment.org.

Let's get to our segment.

OK, so nothing has happened at all in my life.

Only one thing, only one thing.

That's true. It's all you need, yeah.

So yes, I am a new dad. It is 90% amazing, 10% chaos, I think is the right word to use. All kinds of stress, good and bad.

I think there's a few things I would say to people who have never been parents, and I'm new to it, right? So it's I'm learning things. I wish someone had told me that projectile poop was a thing. Uh, I didn't know. Those, those butts can launch. You learn that, but, uh, yeah, that's a big learning curve.

I think there's a reason no one tells you that.

Yeah, yeah, it's probably should actually I probably shouldn't have said it. Yeah. Severe crash in population.

You know, honestly though, I think you need to go in, eyes wide open, you know, cause it, it, in that case, you probably need some protective goggles.

Yeah, yeah, maybe not never aim it at your face, never aim it at your face, uh.

Yeah, no, there's so much more to that, but yeah. It's been great. It's been good.

OK, that's very good.

Good things are it's like literally like the cutest little nugget and so uh which is one of my many nicknames I'm going to give her over her lifetime, um. And it's very humbling.

I think honestly it's a really nice, I don't even know what the right word is, when you do get her to sleep, it's the best feeling in the world. It's the best feeling in the world. When you don't, it's tough, but it's OK. It's the best feeling in the world when you do. And she sleeps like a little button and it's wonderful.

The birth story is kind of never, you know, it's like you don't wanna, I don't really wanna necessarily go into that, but all I'll say is they're all different. Ours was pretty intense and then it was fine. But it was scary and then it was fine and you know you go through all that and You're like, OK, wait, now what? We gotta take care of this thing? What? OK.

And that part's been kinda crazy, but it's been fun and it's been like kind of a shock and kind of not and kind of cool and very scary. But on the whole it's good. I can't say I'm sleeping well, but I knew that going in, and I'm sleeping better than some, so I gotta, you know, manage how I say that.

Yeah, well, you know, I can't help but have a flashback to uh parenthood with Steve Martin and just think about the grandma scene in that whole movie where she says that she likes the roller coaster and he doesn't understand what she's saying.

Yeah, yeah, it was a, yeah, I think someone described it as a ride. Like every, like life is a ride, parenting is a ride that you some people can go on, some people don't, and it doesn't matter. It's just you're at the theme park of life and You can get on it and you can get off of it.

Parenting is just a big ride. It's a very big ride. It's got a lot of ups and downs in it.

Yeah, sometimes it's scary. Sometimes it's fun. Sometimes it's both.

Yeah, the anticipation was terrible. Aftermath was scary, and then it was fine, and then. Yeah, I don't know. It's, like I said, I think that honestly the biggest word is, is humbling.

You, the baby doesn't care what you've done, doesn't care what you are, what your accomplishments are, doesn't care what you're saying to them. And it's like, you need to sleep does not matter.

And so there's a little bit of that too, which is what you're saying is there's a new boss in town, yes, 100%, which you know is healthy for me.

It's basically like it's like you learn that there's still some work you need to do as a, as a, as a person, or at least I do, you know, and not that I like, you know, it's like getting frustrated at something that's impossibly to control is like I thought I was good and then like Brian, get a baby to sleep and I'm like, why aren't you sleeping? I was like, why am I so upset, you know.

And it's just, you know, I gotta chill. I gotta chill.

I think that's actually another really fun thing I've thought about a lot. I'm like, oh yeah, I, I'm getting worked up. I'm doing it. The baby's not doing it. The baby's not doing anything. And um, it's just like managing your own emotions. And so that, that part's pretty funny, especially when you're tired. It's almost impossible sometimes, but it's been great.

On the whole, it's been really great. And she's very, very, very cute, starting to look around, looks right at me when she's trying to not sleep, and that's my favorite.

She's looking at me like, even when she's not crying, if she's just looking at me and she's like, I know you want me to sleep, but I won't. Look how cute I am. You know? So, yeah, it's great. It is genuinely a joy, so.

Awesome. Well, welcome to your new world for a while and um now let's get to our interview.

Sounds good.

Welcome back to EPR. Today we're joined by Ryan Hathaway, director of climate and environmental justice at Lawyers for Good Government.

Ryan, it's so good to have you back. Like we're just talking about, it feels like just yesterday and a million years ago that you were here.

It is so wonderful to be back, and I have been listening to and enjoying your all's meteoric rise through the podcast charts.

I think that's maybe what it feels like.

Um, well, there's so much to talk about, but I think the very first most important thing since Nic is here, which shocked me honestly from his baby sabbatical, and then I learned that you also had a child in the last few years, so I just want to congratulate both of you. On that, and uh if you have any words you'd like to say about your newly earned fatherhoods, like now's the time.

Words of wisdom. How about that?

Let's just Ryan's got the wisdom for me is really what that's great actually, Ryan. How about your words of wisdom for Nic?

Sure. Well, I think we should have a moment of silence for Nic's sleep, um, first and foremost, and realize that he is giving us a, a great portion of his 3 hour window between naps.

Yeah, 100%, um, you know, I will say it's something that I didn't know I wanted if you had talked to 20-year-old me, but now I look back at it and I'm like, gosh, could I just have 1000 kids if I had research like I love my son Charlie's amazing, the fact that he got to come. And before my father passed of cancer and meet my dad, who is his namesake. It's just wonderful.

And he is, you know, having a kid keeps you so honest and focused. And like, at the end of a bad day, I will say, Nic, you have to look forward to coming home and having your kid be like, I just want to play Magnetiles. And you're like, Yeah, I don't know why my day felt so bad. Like, this is perfect. Let's let's let's build a tower and then run through it at full speed. This is good.

That's awesome.

That is awesome.

Well, all right, let's get into things. This is your second time here, as I said, and it was almost 4 years ago in October. It's almost exactly 4 years ago, which is crazy, and it sounds like a lot of life has happened to you in between life and death and new jobs.

So at that time you were at the DUI as the environmental justice coordinator for the Office of the Secretary, which was very interesting. And now you're at Lawyers for Good Government, which sounds really interesting. So what happened? How did this transpire?

Well, so in between, I spent about 2.5 years at the White House as director for environmental justice, which was just a wonderful opportunity to work with some folks that I was actively working with when I was at the Department of Interior. You talk about a professional opportunity. And challenge, you know, I always go back to this manual I got when I was at Bureau of Land Management called Opportunities and Challenge Challenges.

Yeah, it was amazing to help oversee rolling out Justice 40 initiative and the CJ tool and to be the director of the White House Interagency Council on Environmental Justice and I got to oversee and help all of the cabinet agencies on their approaches to environmental justice, to the executive orders that came out, but I think most importantly it was nice to see a common thread of decency be put into federal government programs and grant programs and be like how do we actually make sure that we are considering the human impact of what we are doing in a positive way and encourage getting investments and federal investments. To the communities that need them the most, you know, it's like it's always the underwriting of what we want to do, but to make it be like this is the foremost focus and we're going to set some really clear targets.

I think it was a fun challenge to work with and it was an honor to do it for 2.5 years and then in 2005 a different administration came in and decided they didn't so much, you know, they looked, I think they did Control F for climate and environment and maybe also justice and found my role after a few weeks and were like, I don't, I don't think we need this. More, so I was fortunate to have had good mentors and advisors and to have a wonderful team and to have all of us found places where we can go and continue this work.

Lawyers for Good Government is a really small nonprofit. I think we are at 50, almost maybe 60 people, but nationwide, fully remote. Our focus is we have 125,000 pro bono attorneys. In our network and our goal is to leverage them to help communities, to help governments basically continue the mission of government should be for all people and be to benefit all people. That's a fun, that's a fun challenge.

No, it seems easy.

It's a, it's a fun challenge, but it's also like, I feel like, do you guys wear capes to work around the house like.

I think, yeah, my team should. My, my, my team should. I am privileged to have some really incredible people working for me. That make it so that my job is basically to just try to give them runway and allow them to execute some really awesome programs.

Um, but I should, we have, I have an L4GG hoodie, but you have given me the idea that maybe we should get capes for the staff.

Yeah, so you're helping them do their work and enabling them. What type of work are they getting into?

Yes, so in the environmental justice program that I oversee we have some pretty interesting work streams. The federal government has been taking some of the investments under the bipartisan infrastructure law and inflation Reduction Act and terminating grant programs illegally and pulling back money that was either already spent or already depended on by communities, so we were launching as I was coming in. It had been kind of launched a few months before.

A fund protection clinic that partnered with some wonderful folks at the Environmental Protection Network and focused on how could we get technical assistance and legal assistance to as many of these community groups that were grantees that had kind of had the rug pulled out from under them and didn't understand like what do my terms and conditions say, what does the law actually say on this?

It's awesome because we were able to by being a small nimble kind of pro bono machine. Pull together and help 800, I think around 800 communities so far get back 4.7 something billion dollars out of a team of three attorneys and a couple of program coordinators.

Did you say billion dollars?

Yeah, 4.4.7. billion dollars if you combine the work our clean energy team has done on tax credits for solar, so basically all these federal dollars that were like clawed back or unpromised to communities illegally, the communities were going to have to walk away from because legal expenses are expensive.

So it's awesome and it's one of those things when you look at it you're like, oh yeah, that's with a B. Like, you know, when you're in a group of like 10 attorneys and this one wildlife biologist who still seems to get jobs that he doesn't quite understand how he was selected for, um, And to look across and be like that's a like a staggering number, especially because we don't have all of the information yet so the number's higher than that, but that's what we can actually account for and it's only to date.

And we're back to the capes again.

Yeah, I know right.

So they're doing this work pro bono helping communities with things they probably would have had like you said to just take the cut on if you know. Take whatever it is that they're losing and just, you know, take the punch essentially.

Um, so it's such a noble cause, but do they, how do they, so if someone's listening, let's say, and they're like, oh, I need an attorney to help with XYZ, is there a qualifying process or something like that?

Yeah, absolutely. We have, we have an intake form on our website and any community member or community organization or local government or state government that has had grants terminated. can fill out.

They will get resources from us if they qualify for our pro bono attorneys. We'll connect them to them, but we will also connect them to an ongoing webinar and office hours series we have where they can join with other community groups and help coordinate, and they will get email updates from us and our partners at Environmental Protection Network.

There are periods of time where the law on this stuff. Changes on a daily basis and so we have a team of attorneys that is not only updating the pro bono attorneys that we have trained and are working for and with us, but where we update communities if a lawsuit changes sometimes Monday and Friday have had 4 separate changes between them to what the law says.

It's a lot for communities and communities. Groups, especially some of which were using this money to start, so they had just hired people, they had just built boards, they had just gotten projects off the ground, and then all the money got taken away, and so they felt really hamstrung, and many of them still, even when they were successful, had to make some really hard sacrifices and decisions and let people go.

Because they didn't know, and some of them, many of them are still in limbo and in uncertainty and trying to figure out what courts are going to do.

And what I will say that I'm really proud of with Lawyers for Good Government is we're not just doing the immediate stopgap. We are trying to be the community's lawyer and follow it through.

So we have launched. After the Supreme Court changed the law, we have launched a Court of Federal Claims clinic. So if that is where you have to go now to get monetary damages for this, we will help you. We will give you technical and legal assistance to help you get connected to litigators.

We also have a long standing green and equitable. Communities clinic for communities that need wraparound legal teams and a lot of legal expertise to get their projects built to deal with utilities and rate hikes and other things, and we are watching some work around data centers to again meet the moment for communities so it's such a blessing and joy to work with a mission oriented group and people who are just like let's roll up our sleeves and dive in.

It's messy and it's hard, and our job is to make it easier to understand so that The communities can help themselves because they know what they need. They don't need us to tell us what they need. They don't need us to tell us what's a good project. They just need a team of attorneys and experts to help them navigate the system.

Right, right. And so at your level, what is it that, that you're doing? You're coming up with the new programs or you're overseeing, and, you know, I'm sure you have to qualify even first of all, the people who want the help, but also the attorneys you're working with.

Yeah, I mean, so we do, I mean, my day to day is different. I feel like my boss Gillian Blanchard says this a lot. Every day is a school day, and so, you know, half of it is keeping an ear to the ground of what is actually happening, what is changing in the courts, what does it mean for community groups, and helping our lawyers adjust guidance and review programs.

Another large part of it is keeping an eye. What the federal government is actually doing, so there have been a lot of rulemakings and other things that have sought to change the standard practices of federal grant programs and environmental justice and DEI and equity work in the federal government.

And so One thing I'm really proud of too is that we have instead of trying to join the very successful hordes of large sign-on letters done some tactical trainings for community members and lawyers and scientific experts on how to write their own substantive and unique comments and how to make sure that things like the Administrative Procedures Act.

And rulemaking rules that OIRA and other agencies hold are followed by agencies and that when a substantive comment comes in from a community they have to consider it and they have to consider all of them and it doesn't matter if they are in English, it doesn't matter if they are well written, it doesn't matter if it is coming from one person or from a group if it's a unique comment we need to make sure the federal government takes that seriously when they are undertaking. A new rule making.

So it has been awesome to also in my role look at like the whole landscape of these threats to frontline communities and figure out where can pro bono free legal help really fill gaps at a national level and at a state level and like what are the things that communities are telling us and so it's like a constant.

Contact with community leaders and EJ leaders and the folks who are like have their sleeves rolled up in the front lines working in Cancer Alley and other communities saying this is what we need, this is how we need it, and then to go and figure out how do we build the system and the program that responds to that need in a way that's easy for them to access.

Yeah, how long is this going on? Like this is just new in the last year.

Well, the fund protection clinic started in, I think, about February of 2025, so that is in the past year a little bit plus is when we have gotten the $4.7 billion back from the federal government, so pretty decent return on investment for any of our funders and donors. We certainly didn't get $4 billion worth of funding to do this program.

And we've really focused on making sure that we don't get money back from this work. We try to get funding, but this is all money that has gone back to communities through technical assistance and legal assistance, and really it's just giving them the expertise and information they need to appeal and to go through the processes and to litigate and do the things that help them.

So yes, the fund protection is about a year and a half years old, so again we're pretty proud of.

Yeah, you should be, you should be really proud of what we have, yeah, please.

No, sorry to interrupt. I just wanna say like DC in 2025, you know, February 2025 was kind of an intense time, you know, for a lot of people and a lot of times when stuff like that happens, right, we have the, have this initial shock of all of the The chaos, people being fired to the point I even had someone come visit like 6 months later and they're like, I thought DC's traffic was bad and I was like, well they did fire everyone, so it is less bad than it was. That's what happened then, you know, and now we're a little bit removed from that and sometimes people go, oh man, that was really terrible. All right, so anyways, what's the next thing, you know, and we kind of forget where we are now.

And so my question to you really is. Are there still more, more risk that you see on the horizon, more areas where your focus is going to be, I guess where your attention is going to be coming up? How does this go from where you started, which is such a great start that, you know, how do you outdo yourself to like where do you expect to be in the future?

Yeah, it is humbling to see the impact we've been able to have and it also, you know, that it's $4 billion of $130 and $160 billion of federal grants and financial assistance, and I think To even magnify that landscape of threats, if you look at some of the regulatory, there's a rulemaking that OMB is taking now which is really historic, which is going after not only the uniform grant guidance but the entirety of federal financial assistance.

Thankfully it's unpopular enough that in a coalition of other organizations we have been able to use some of the language of the continuing resolution that's out there right now to actually stop this rulemaking from being implemented at the start of the fiscal year and at least pause it until December.

But if you look, that is going to be over $1 trillion of federal financial assistance that is implicated from those, removing equity, making it so congressional oversight is a lot harder, doing a lot of things that basically remove the principles of American governance from how federal financial assistance is given out.

So I think we feel great about what we have done. I see a huge mountain in front of us left to climb, and you know, so long as there is a shot to get all of that money back to the communities that need to build resilience that need to Address pollution and existing harms and who have projects that are deserving of being built that not only help them but help all of us.

There are so many things I think at play. You look at the public health implications and the cost of public health to us as a country and if we are leaving communities. In places where they are going to have higher rates of asthma and cancer and all these other things that come from environmental injustices, not only is it unacceptable on a moral level to have parts of our country living in those conditions, and I think that should be the first and foremost point made, it's also an Economically unviable option for our future.

It's going to cost, like we're not going to ever leave people in those conditions. We're going to have to hospitals don't turn away customers and clients and people coming in the front door, patients, I guess is a better word I should say. So we're going to pay for it eventually.

What I would like to do is do so in a way that prevents the diseases and the harms from having any effect on the people first, not on the back end. Once they are sick, so to me we've got $156 billion 155 billion dollars of work in front of us on that front.

We have over $1 trillion of work left on a regulatory fight and battle, and then we have another opportunity. To rewrite what clean energy, I think, looks like for our country.

I'm a big proponent. I think renewable energy is great. I think it is even better when it is community owned and put on schools and homes and churches and police stations and fire stations. So that we're not seeing huge utilities running to the bank with rate increases because they've put up a solar farm, but we're seeing communities able to in a storm go to their place of worship or their firehouse or their school and still have power to do homework and heat up meals and do things like that.

So to me now challenges and opportunities, which I think was like my underpinning theme for all the work I do, I think the opportunity is that all of these orphan projects that are out there that were orphaned by the one big beautiful bill, the big ugly. Poorly written bill.

Um, there's an opportunity for us to get philanthropy and state governments and any other green finance in other places to see that this is an investment opportunity. That will have a huge return on investment not only in putting electrons on the grid.

For every 1 gigawatt solar array that someone wants to put up in a giant section of the world, I can give you 1000 homes that can produce a megawatt, and all of those homes will add resilience and help families more so than a huge field.

I'm not saying we shouldn't do both, but I'm saying we shouldn't forget about the communities and the people and the households that are willing. To be a part of that work, I think we have an opportunity to lean in and help communities build the projects they were already planning and designing to build and figure out how do we come together as a network of nonprofits, as a country, as philanthropy, as all these things that, you know, I have lesser experience in, but I'm like, you know, but what if we could, right? Like, you know, what is the optimist approach here? What if we could actually successfully do this? It could help a lot of people.

Yeah, it's a shame that my main takeaway is that 4.7 is not enough and you have more to do. So, I mean, I hate to put the pressure on you, but all right, we'll, we'll have to check in again and see how you're doing next year.

You know, I will keep you all updated. I am optimistic that 4.7 isn't gonna be the final figure, and I think the human number is gonna be even more impressive.

I think you, the way you described all of that. You have talked about environmental justice being like steering aircraft carriers before and all of what you just said feels very much like that, but what exactly does that analogy mean to you?

I think when I was at the White House, we were the aircraft carrier, and what I see now is in the nonprofit sector and the academic sector that there's a whole fleet of boats out there.

And so like I view my role now as being, you know, the little, the boat in front, probably like a very, you know, strung together fishing boat held together by bubble gum and duct tape and good wishes, but holding the flag, kind of waving like go in this direction, like we need to go in this direction.

But the nice thing is that it's similar to my clean energy comment, there's a chance in a fleet of 1000 boats versus an aircraft carrier that if the federal government aircraft carrier is going to go in one direction, we can get the same amount of capacity in 1000 ships if we can all go in the same direction.

And be coordinated and I think you know the struggle of the environmental movement, it is always like how do we check our egos, how do we make sure that we are actually doing this for communities and for the front line of the environmental justice effort and not have it be an ivory tower think tank.

Pushed effort, but how do we actually intentionally go forward together and let the communities lead the way and be like, we're here to give you the support. Like we don't need to tell you what you need. We can self-organize ourselves and make it easier for you to get the support you need.

Yeah, absolutely. You have a very uh mentoring attitude. That's my word for Friday. Mentor, you have a mentoring attitude. I like it.

Um, and I know that you're inspired by people like Bob Ross and Steve Irwin and Mr. Rogers, which I, I can feel like flowing through you. I love role models. I, I don't, I think there's a lot to inheriting one's mentality and behaviors and things like that, even just as much as inheriting genetics.

So how do you perceive your mentors and how do you pass them on yourself?

Oh. That is a good question.

Well, I very much love the holy trinity of decency that I grew up with. I view the Bob Ross treat yourself with kindness, Steve Irwin treat the animals in the world with kindness, and Mr. Rogers treat others with kindness.

So to me, I aspire to be the person that watching them on television, they tried to convince me to be as a kid.

I've had some wonderful mentors and bosses and role models who weren't necessarily mentors or bosses or even colleagues throughout my career, even some of the young interns that came and worked with me in my time in the federal government, you know, if you get to step back and watch them, you're just like, wow, you know, this person's pretty incredible and pretty driven.

And my dad, I will say, you know, I always think of his advice around being too serious, which is that like you're only young once, but you can be immature your whole life.

Oh my gosh, that's true.

Um, I don't want Nic to have that one.

But I think like the sentient point is like the work can be serious, but you don't have to take yourself too seriously.

Um, I think in mission-driven work, I think about the folks working for me and the young people entering this movement and, you know, for the first time finding themselves like facing what I remember facing as a young millennial, like you.

Watching 9/11 and Al Gore and tipping, just being like, oh my gosh, this world is terrible.

I think to me the thing I want to tell them is that for every sad and scary story you see on the news, there are thousands of pages of examples of good people working together to do good things. There's a lot of power in that.

Yeah.

I feel like we are convinced by the news and the media that it is an uphill battle and that it is one that we are losing. I just don't know that that's true. I mean, I know it feels that way, and I know sometimes really greedy, awful people dominate what we get to see.

But I think there's just like Mr. Rogers always used to say, if you see a tragedy, like look for the helpers. I think there's more of us than there are of them.

And it doesn't mean that like I view myself as a perfect model of a good, but I think there are more people who want to be decent, who want to do good things and want, and I think we're like one of the efforts is to convince us that we're fighting against each other versus fighting against a select handful of greedy, selfish, awful people.

That's what I try. That's what I try to tell, like, if I can be successful in mentoring or sharing wisdom with any of the younger folks, it's just don't believe that and don't believe that you don't have power to make a difference in the world because you really do.

I just don't buy for a second. That we are out of this fight and or even losing this fight, I think we are seeing the dying throes of some awful people who have a lot of power realize that information is available, that people can talk easier to each other, and that they have a very small window by which they can try to hold on to a lifestyle that many revolutions in our human history have successfully punted out the door, and I think they feel themselves holding onto the doorframe.

Right now, and I think we can give him a swift kick in the butt.

So I mean it's very well said and and you know obviously I think that's a very fair thing and I I I love it and I always like to say that you know there's a difference between kind and nice we've talked about that on the show quite a bit and I think being kind is hey you've got something in your teeth being nice is not saying anything.

I think there's a lot of like like you said there's this negativity, there's this animus that we see all the time and you're talking a little bit about like how you would mentor staff and you have people coming up into this environmental industry.

And you know, I think some of them do think there's a fight to be had and we need to fight and that's the challenge.

Yeah.

Do you have uh specific advice for people starting their careers in policy or environmental industry based on what we've just talked about? Is there something you can point to like this is the path forward, you know, go forth.

Yeah, I was really fortunate enough to give the commencement speech at my old high school this year and The one thing I wanted to make sure to say to all of those kids was like, You're gonna be told to wait your turn.

We came of age at similar time, like, I think we all remember that conversation. Um, and like growing up and, and, you know, as a young adult having access to the internet and being like, I don't need to wait to make my decision on this, right? Like, you know, like I, I'm, I'm pretty confident in my take, and I think like there is always going to be this professional profe like pressure downwards of wait your turn, do your job, and I think you should, you know, do your job, do your job well. It's always good advice, but I just want The young folks to know that they do not have to be patient and demanding decency from their workplace, from this world.

Like you don't have to wait your turn to be treated civilly or fairly. Like we've all existed in times where we have seen people, what people we know sometimes are Like for young people, you've seen your parents or your friends' parents like cut from a job that they did well for no reason, right?

So I think like the like being loyal in order to get respect is not a process I would encourage them to go through. I think you can, you can say like you can pay me for my work and I will be loyal when I am treated with respect over time and you can earn my trust, not I'm going to just willfully give my trust. To any employer, but then at the same time I think there's a lot of power that we have yet to capture in the young people of America and the world, and they're not waiting for us, you know, they're talking to each other on an international scale, and it's a matter of time before, like I imagine the patience I had. A teenager, like it's a, it's a matter of time before their patience is out.

So much like many people are trying to like overtly appease the AI overlords they see coming, I think we should be trying to appease young people and making a better world now because eventually they're going to be fed up and you know, we're going to be shot off in a rocket to go. Live a desolate life on Mars while they rebuild the world.

So I just, my advice to young professionals is do not be patient and demanding decency from this world in any regards and work together to hold us all accountable to the things we wanted to do as children too.

Yeah, I love that. That's absolutely excellent and it dovetails nicely into we talked a little bit earlier about. Not taking ourselves too seriously, right?

And I think sometimes that also means taking some accountability on maybe things you cared about that don't matter as much as you think they do, right? Or when you have a new perspective, allowing yourself to be open for that.

But it also means that we get to tell and share funny stories, which is what we love to do on this show with the segment we call # Field Notes, which is the part of our show where we share. We ask our guests to share their memorable moments at work.

You can send your funny, scary, and awkward field stories to us at info@environmentalprofessionalsradio.com for us to read on a future episode.

Now Ryan, you have a story about getting locked in the White House, and I have got to know. What on earth that means?

Yeah, you know, it would, I will say, and it was with my boss, and I hope she thinks fondly of this memory as I do, but if you could write like a worse thing to happen when you're giving your boss a tour, I, I don't know that I, I could, um, so.

For those of you who haven't watched West Wing, or I think more accurately Veep, there is a privilege you get if you are in the executive Office of the president where you can schedule and give tours of the West Wing.

And so you get to go in, you can go and look at the Executive Office Building, and then you get to go in. The West Wing and walk around and see some of the places that you get to see the Oval Office and there's bathrooms there, so anyone who wants to be able to be like, I went to the bathroom at the White House can do that.

I will say that 100% of all visitors I took were all like, Oh, that's cool.

And so in the middle of this tour with my boss who was working, you know, flying back and forth between Detroit on like a biweekly basis to do this environmental justice work, which was just a Dr. Julon White Newsom just deserves a medal for the amount of effort. Put into that job in general, but I'm giving her a tour and someone rammed the gate of the White House and like a box struck and so right before we were going to like retrieve our cell phones and try to go get some pictures in the press room, Secret Service comes and like, hey, the facility is locked down.

By the way, so we're, we're stuck, you know, at the exit of the rose garden, having just gone out, they're like, you can't go out, just stay here, you can go get your phones if you want to just kind of walk around. It's cool. Um, just don't go outside.

And so it was nice because you usually don't get to have your phones, but they let us kind of like walk around and get some pictures that you wouldn't normally get.

And then we kind of got to go through a back door, so we got to walk like the president's route to the press room and go in and so there were some really cool moments and then, you know, and the tour started, it was a late one, I think it started at like 10:30, 10:45, so by the time we got out my boss and her nephew. went and got on a train and left, and I realized that they were still shutting down the greater campus of the White House, which meant that my car in the garage was locked, so I ended up staying in the Executive Office's building, the EEOB, until like 3 a.m. and then they're like, Hey, you can take your car out.

I was like, I You know, I think I'm just going to go find a couch because an hour and a half home and an hour and a half back, and that doesn't really equate to much of an experience, and I have a meeting at 8 a.m. tomorrow.

So I got to sleep over and like the highlight of that whole thing was that I was asleep on a couch and I look up and John Podesta's walking past eating what I think I remember to be a bagel or oatmeal. I can't remember, and he just looks at me and goes, Rough night, huh?

And it was like, it's like 7:30, by the way, and I was like, Thank you, sir. And you know, got up, put my coat jacket on, and went back.

But I did make some good friends with folks in Secret Service in the grounds crew because there's not a whole lot to do at 3 a.m. at the White House unless you're in the Situation Room maybe, which I've never been able to be a part of, so.

That is hilarious. Well, double shout out to Jalan. She was on the show. That was not her story that she shared though.

No, it's so funny. Yeah, I think they got to go out and have dinner afterwards, and, you know, I just was optimistically waiting to get into my car and realizing as the night got later and later that maybe I was just gonna go to sleep.

I love it.

Uh, well, speaking of running out of time and getting stuck places, we are running out of time. Is there anything else you'd like to share with us before we let you go?

I should just share that you guys have just such a wonderful podcast and double congratulations to Nic as a new father, um, and say that there's any community organizations out there listening to this that find themselves. Wanting to find legal support to come to lawyers for good government and like look, if we don't have capacity or it's not something we are trained to do or able to do, we will try to find someone who is because in the end that's the center part of our mission is to help, help make government run the way it should for all people.

That is awesome and we love you for doing this. And where can those good people get in touch with you?

Well, they can email me. It's an easy email, Ryan@L4GG.org, or they can go on to lawyers for Good Government or L4GG.org and look at our clinics which all have intake forms, and they can read through and look at our navigators and our information.

And get connected to the lawyers without having to go through me. So either way, and we'll be happy to help anyone who comes.

Fabulous. Well, thank you so much for coming back on here and sharing your updates and all the good work you're doing, and we will be excited to hear about how much money you have recovered next time.

Sounds great, and we will exchange it in hours of sleep for Nic, who is a new father.

I am on fumes at this moment, but thank you so much, Ryan, for being here.

Congratulations, Nic, and thank you both for having me.

That's our show. Thank you, Ryan, for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review.

Bye.

See you, everybody.