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Hello. And welcome to all my fellow fresh pot piles of compost. I'm your host Meredith Meeker. And this is another episode of how do I do this and environmental career podcast. This week, I sit down with our guests, Hailey good child, haley started as an environmental historian. And now she is working as a program coordinator at Greenup, which is an environmental charity in Peterborough. And she's also the operator of carbon wise landscape design. So let's get into it. Haley start things off. Would you mind just saying your full name and your pronouns?
Hayley Goodchild:Sure. My name is Haley Goodchild and my pronouns. Are
Meredith Meeker:she her? Awesome. And you know, let's start things off with learning about, you know, what's your favorite thing to do either outside or, you know, something that helps connect you to nature.
Hayley Goodchild:Well, I do a lot of gardening. I am privileged enough to have my own property in the city. It's a better quarter acre here in Peterborough. And so I spend a lot of time growing food, and I'm also doing a lot of work to transition the gardens that were here to more native species based urban ecosystems, which is a lot of fun. So that is kind of the primary way that I really enjoy connecting with a non-human nature. And I've always been interested in those. I dunno if we could call them like mundane spaces where people who are, of course, like we are nature interact with non-human nature as well. So I don't know, that's, that's kind of my day to day way to connect with nature, at least in the growing season, which hopefully will, we'll be arriving
Meredith Meeker:again soon. I know I've seen so many like memes being like don't plant your seeds yet, but I want to,
Hayley Goodchild:yes. Yeah, no for sure. We actually my partner and I here, we have a very small greenhouse like, like tiny, like six by eight feet which is great because this time of year, just now as the sun is getting higher again in the sky, it's dramatic the difference. And I'll just go out there and sit like on a sunny day. Cause it's 25 degrees. I'll just sit in the greenhouse and do nothing else. Sure. But
Meredith Meeker:we've got a little tropical paradise in your, in your Peterborough backyard. That's awesome, Hailey. And I feel like this is going to tie really well into, you know, you telling us a little bit more about what you do and why it is what you do is so.
Hayley Goodchild:For sure. So these days I wear two different hats, I suppose you could say professionally speaking. One of them, I am a program coordinator with a nonprofit environmental charity called Peterborough Greenup. And I've been there for about four years now. Full-time until quite recently I went down to part-time in order to pursue sort of my second hat, which is I started a small climate focused Lance landscape design company called carbon lies, landscape design. So those are two different roles at Greenup. I coordinate a number of different. Programs, many of them focused on urban ecosystems, urban water issues. So a lot of work to mitigate and improve urban storm water management with, through green infrastructure. So through you know, living based solutions. And then at in, in, at carbon wise, my, my small landscape design company, I'm really focused on working with people to take climate action through their outdoor spaces. So I think. Both of these things are really important because while as we, you know, many of us have heard now coming on the heels of the latest IPC report, just very grim that was released this past week. I think it's important because we're running out of time, right? We're running out of time to take really meaningful action toward mitigating climate change and adapting to the the impacts that are already locked in, frankly. So I think it's pretty pivotable, pivotal to be, to be doing both these kinds of work at the community scale more with, with green-up and more at the individual residential scale through landscape design.
Meredith Meeker:I see. Now also why you clearly made the distinction between. I guess non-human nature rather, like, cause we really do need to include ourselves in the definition of nature. If we want to explore the opportunities of really changing our individual actions and seeing ourselves as, you know, I guess, vehicles for change and changing our own spaces and how we interact with non-human nature.
Hayley Goodchild:Totally, totally, totally. And I, and I will say, and we'll, we'll probably come around to this a little bit later in our, in our chat as well, that also comes from my training as an environmental historian. So that's where I, I started not in the sciences, but more in the humanities and an environmental history. That really is, the focus is very intentionally trying to rethink. Historical events and changes from that perspective of, we are not separate from nature, even though in many societies, we have acted and behaved and felt as if we were right. So, yeah, that's always at the forefront of my mind.
Meredith Meeker:Yeah. Well, well, let's get into that a little bit more if you wouldn't mind telling us about your journey, you know, I guess you can go back even before then, like what led you into environmental history and like, gosh, I wish we could just have an episode of like just environmental history. Cause I just feel like that would be so cool. But anyway, I can't wait to hear kind of how your journey's played out to where you are.
Hayley Goodchild:Sure. Sure. So, I often, I often describe my journey as meandering because it has sort of gone in a lot of different directions, but I feel like sometimes that's not even accurate because in those meandering, I think implies this sort of very relaxed, like, you know, movement from one thing to the next and just enjoying all the different steps along the way. And, you know, in reality at the time it's often felt like frenzied and confused and you know, not really clear at all where I was going, because I have so many interests and they often have pulled me in very different directions. So, my journey has really been. Like I, I grew up in Toronto and did, you know, grew up with parents who are interested in growing their own food and gardening. And I spent, you know, a fair bit of time working on of course farm growing up as well on the weekends. And so I've always been interested in the wider environment and engaging with it. But academically speaking, I went in a very different direction. I was always I did well in school in sort of academic settings and particularly in sort of the arts and humanities field. And so when I decided to go to university, I studied the interdisciplinary, social sciences and arts. I did a BA in international development at Trent university and then eventually went on to do a master's and PhD in environmental history at McMaster. And part of that transition toward studying an interest in studying environmental history. All came out of, I took a course in my fourth year. It was just an elective with Kevin Sienna, professor of early modern Europe. And he, he sort of got me on to some of the you know, early literature and environmental history writers like Carolyn merchant and others. And I just loved it. And so decided to pursue that a little bit more. And but the thing with, with sort of my journey and how I got to where I am now is that I love history. I enjoyed it, but I think I. In part pursued that because people told me I was good at it. Right. And I think this is something that can be really hard to push back against because I was also very interested in working with my hands. I always had been I studied fine art in high school. I liked to, you know, to garden and do things like that. But there was always a lot of sort of pressure to, to pursue a more academic and brain-based career and profession. And so I think I always had this nagging, feeling that an academic career wasn't actually where I should or wanted to go. And so in the summers, I would work for environmental nonprofits. I, you know, did a season of landscaping during my master's degree and so on, but then kept sort of feeling torn between. Pursuing sort of a traditional academic career and then doing some of those other things, but I was often doing to pay the bills right as well. And so when I finished my PhD, which was in 2017 by the time I finished, I knew I knew I wasn't going to, to, you know, apply for jobs as a professor. But it wasn't even clear to me then where I was actually trying to go career wise. And I had a handful of different experiences. A lot of short-term contracts working for a variety of different environmental nonprofits including Ontario Eco-schools, which has now I think it's now renamed Eco-schools can. And new, I really enjoyed that work and knew and remembered that I really enjoyed the landscaping work. And of course I had continued to garden and grow things at home this whole time as well. So I decided somewhat intentionally at that point to keep looking for that kind of work. And then in 2018, the job posting that I applied for and got at Peterborough Greenup came up and that was as a coordinator of a program called sustainable urban neighbor. Which was a pilot program. It was funded by Trillium OTF and it was working at the neighborhood scale with a couple of different communities in Peterborough to develop some neighborhood scale climate action plans. So working with the municipality with conservation authorities, with local residents, to imagine how their neighborhoods, both public private land could do more in particular to adapt to climate change. So a lot of focus on green infrastructure, where could rain gardens and bioswells and trees and all that sort of stuff go in. And for me, that was really exciting because I brought a lot of my skill set from. You know, being an academia being in history. So a lot of my report writing ability to communicate things and writing stuff like that, but also had the opportunity to learn a lot more about issues that I knew a little about academically, but hadn't really spent a lot of practical time focused on so urban stormwater being, you know, one of the main ones. So since then I've been doing a lot of that kind of work and we can talk maybe a bit more about what sort of the day-to-day looks like for me now, but I was also starting to feel like. There was there was more than I wanted to be doing to work with people outside of the you know, limits of specific grants or specific finite projects, which is really what, you know, the nonprofit world and most nonprofit organizations are able to do. And so that led me to wanting to start a landscape design company as well, where I could support people who to, to take action on their own properties in a sort of more focused way. So these days I split my time between, between the two and they're both related, but also a little bit different. And I think, I guess the only other thing I'd, I'd add to this, As a historian, I'm always like very, very. Aware of finally sort of tuned into this idea of historical narratives and the stories we tell. And often when w you know, we are asked this question, tell us about how you got from a to Z. What we're doing is constructing a very particular historical narrative. Right. And we're often reading back on those experiences, a logic to them, right. That, oh, well, yes. It made sense that I did this and then this, and then this. And like I said, early on it often didn't feel that, that way. And when I tell stories about sort of the trajectory of my professional career, I leave things out. Right. And those silences. Are as important as the things that I actually say. And so I think it's really important that we name them. And so some of the things that I don't often, you know, mention in this story of my career and how it developed was that I often had to take jobs that really have very little connection to what I wanted to do because I had to pay the bills. Right. Like I worked at the LCPO, I took transcription contracts, you know, to transcribe, you know, interviews for other people. You know, at one point when I really didn't know what I was doing and was between multiple short-term contracts, I moved back to my parents' house and, you know, slept on the floor for a couple of months, you know? I think it's important. We need those things because especially for people who are. Just entering sort of the, their professional careers. I think there's this pressure that their career trajectory has to fit a certain narrative, a certain development. And it's not true. It's not true for many of us. So I'll stop there in rambling a little.
Meredith Meeker:No, thank you. I that's, I feel like there's a lot of really good stuff to like, I don't want to say like unpack in your story, but I think the first one I really want to talk on, it's like this pressure to try to go a more academic route or because I, I know, you know, I feel like I, I grew up in a certain neighborhood where I would say 90% of our graduating class went on to university. And yet I don't think 90% of us are using our university degree in what we're doing. So. I really think that we need to, to challenge that a bit more, especially since so many jobs that you start in the environmental field, you know, it might be like planting jobs or, you know, a little bit more labor intensive. And I feel like maybe you don't feel like you're doing the good work when you're doing those roles, but you really are. And I think some people enjoy those roles and want to stay in those roles. And there's nothing wrong with that. Like, we need those people to be doing those w that work and working with your hands, I think is probably evolutionary or like biologically supposed to be very satisfying, like we're tactile creatures. So I think it's a little interesting that we pushed back on that side of ourselves.
Hayley Goodchild:But anyway, absolutely, absolutely. No, I agree. And I think it's. Like, I genuinely don't think I realized for many, many years growing up that I had an option other than, you know, going to university and studying something academic and, you know, some of that probably comes from the fact that I come from a family that was trades based. And so, you know, my father very much was like, well, you don't want to be doing what I do works in the film business. And so there was always this push. I mean, if I, if I had pursued something different or gone you know, gone to college rather than university or gone straight into landscaping, like I know I would have been supported to do that, but it didn't cross my mind. And like you say, it's, it's very much it's a strong pressure. It's a societal pressure. I do think it's changing. I do think it's starting to change and we're starting to recognize the value of. Different and complimentary skillsets. And like you say, like all of these jobs matter there isn't, you know, undignified work, there's just work that we often don't adequately pay for, right. That we treat as, as, as unskilled or indignified when it's not. And it exists in all industries, like in the landscaping world. You know, that I work in as well, that that's, there's a pressure to always move up and become like the designer, the, you know, the, you know, play those sorts of roles when really it's, you know, horticultural staff, like the people who day in day out are doing the work of pruning and, you know, applying compost and stuff. It's such important work. And it's actually very highly skilled work.
Meredith Meeker:Yeah. Yeah. Just because it's labor doesn't mean it's not highly skilled. And I feel like that's probably a really big cultural shift that hopefully we will see. And then the other thing that you mentioned was like, you're writing that even though you kind of went in a different direction that it served you well, and I think, I don't want to say it's an under appreciated skill, but I think it's just a really important one. One that I didn't spend enough time crafting when I was in university. And so I've had to work really hard to gain that skill. So I think people should really look at their feedback and work on their communication because I think that's so. It
Hayley Goodchild:is, it is, and it's become a cliche, you know, for those of us who, who, who come from the arts and humanities background, I think we sometimes have this like chip on our shoulder. Like we matter to, to, to the and we do, we absolutely do for all kinds of reasons critical thinking sort of big, big, broad analytical thinking. But the, the communication piece. Yeah. A really important part of that. And I do think that my experience writing and eventually that translated from academic and historical writing to more writing for sort of public audiences and non-profits and reporting policy work that got my foot in the door. It certainly got my foot in the door at Greenup where the job I initially applied for had a lot to it. It included community engagement. It included supporting, you know, other staff on demonstration planting and garden installation. But a big part of it was I was hired to lead the writing of these big reports for these two neighborhoods. And from there, I was able to, to, to eventually transition to work, that was a little more where I actually wanted to go, which was leading and designing and coordinating some of those on the ground projects.
Meredith Meeker:Awesome. Yeah. So yeah, I guess, work on your writing skills and that might lead you to like where you actually want to go because people who can write well I feel like it relied on to like keep writing well and they get given more responsibility. So, yes. And then I guess the last thing you touched on in your journey that I wanted to bring up again, or like highlight is the stuff we don't say. Because it is, it is a really important thing to, I guess, own or to maybe not, maybe not own, but to acknowledge because when you're starting out and you see these people who are in roles that like you really aspire to and they tell you, oh, this is how I got there, but maybe, you know, they lived at home for awhile or they worked a second job. Like it can be really, really tough and. It sounds really nice when they're saying it and it's like a, a nice, like, here is my path, but it can not be the most nice to experience
Hayley Goodchild:for sure. For sure. And so, yeah, I think it's just so important that we normalize, including those pieces. And I mean, there is a time and place, like if you're applying for a job and like me, you've had, I don't know, maybe 21 different jobs over the last 20 years. Yeah. I'm not going to put them all on my resume. Right. Like you do there, there's a time when you need to craft a more coherent and narrative. But I think in some of these settings, like, like this, where there's a podcast or, you know, in conversations, particularly with people who may be more junior in their careers, I think it's important for those of us who are not just starting out anymore to name those things. And yeah. Help people realize that they're not, they're not a failure because they, you know, took a retail job for six months.
Meredith Meeker:Yes. Between university. And going back to college, I worked so many random jobs that do not get an arm to not get on my resume. One of them being, I used to clean dead people's apartments. So there you go. That's something that I'm never going to put on a resume, but it's an interesting story
Hayley Goodchild:for sure. And I think even there, like, even if you don't put it in the resume, you're still taking skills from it. They may take ages for you to recognize how it's relevant. Right. But I'm sure there's a certain amount of grace and, and Sensitivity that you had to bring to that job that probably serves you very well in other settings, right?
Meredith Meeker:Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I guess we talked a lot about like your journey and I feel like there were some really great nuggets of advice in there, but is there anything that you wish you could go back and tell yourself when you were starting your career or something that you wish you could tell someone who's just starting now?
Hayley Goodchild:Yeah, I mean, I think certainly I would tell myself that I don't have to do something just because someone has told me I'm very good at it, or because I have these external indications that I'm good at it, like high grades or something. And likewise that you're allowed to pursue careers or hobbies. This doesn't just have to pertain to, you know, professional development. Even if it's a skill or something that's hard for you. Like if it's meaningful and important to you, then you should explore it. So I would definitely tell myself that on the other hand, I would also tell myself that it's okay to take some time to decide, you know, what the next step is. Even though I did take time off, for instance, between I took time off between everything. I took a year off after high school, a year off after my BA year off after my Emmy. I wish I had taken more that you don't necessarily have to jump right back into to. Credentialing or going back to school or, or, you know, something like that and take time to make those choices because, well, I would not, I don't, I don't regret that I did my PhD. I took a lot away from it. A lot of the way I think about nature in the world comes out of that experience. But I think had I taken a bit more time before doing that, I might've made slightly different decisions. I might've used my dissertation as an opportunity to build different kinds of skills that I didn't. So yeah, I think those would be sort of two, two sort of meta pieces of advice that, that I might give, I suppose there were also nuts and bolts,
Meredith Meeker:but yeah. My parents encouraged me to take a year off between high school and university and I did. Because I wanted to like go with all my friends and I really regret it because I was not ready to keep learning, like at the fire wasn't there. And then now that I've taken a significant amount of time off between my undergrad and I'm in my master's now I appreciate the opportunity. And I feel like I'm a lot more intentional about what I'm doing and it's something that only time could have given me.
Hayley Goodchild:Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Meredith Meeker:So, I guess going back to, to you and I guess both your hats that you wear do you have a favorite part of your job or jobs?
Hayley Goodchild:Yeah. I mean, I do, if there's so many different sort of little things day to day that I really enjoy at Greenup. So like I was saying earlier, I coordinated a range of different programs. These days. A lot of the programs I work on have some kind of hands-on components. So for instance, I coordinate a program called D pave paradise, which is a national program which is run by green communities. Canada Greenup is the local delivery agent for that program here in Peterborough. And that's such a fun program because what we do is we find underused spaces that are paved in urban places and literally tear up the concrete and replace it with you know, multipurpose green space. Is, you know, sort of co-designed by community members and whoever owns the property and that pro that program, I think really encapsulates for me my favorite sort of moment in, in that job, which is having people come together and see something be transformed in such a dramatic intangible way. It really, you can just see how much it energizes people like, oh, like we, with our hands and hand tool. I mean, sometimes we get machines support as well, but there's always a hand based labor based component to it where we've actually pried up. This really carbon intensive material that was creating all of this runoff that is polluting the local watershed. We just did that. We just rip that up and now this, whatever it is, hundred square meters can actually. Be healed and regenerated with plants. And so those moments are, I think probably my favorite and of course, much of my work. Like I don't spend every day doing that. Most of my work is about the organizing and coordinating that goes into making those moments possible. So I would say that is sort of my favorite piece of, of of the Greenup job. At least
Meredith Meeker:that must be so rewarding to see like the transformation of the landscape, but probably also you're seeing a transformation in the people and the community because it's such a community and, and person effort. So that would be really, really very cool. Is it like mostly parking lots or like, I'm just trying to think what kind of paved space where else can,
Hayley Goodchild:it's a great, it's a great question. So yeah, sometimes it is. Parts of parking, lots that are somewhat underused. Now that can be hard. Cause a lot of parking space in cities is sort of premium space. And it can be hard to find access per se, but yeah, you can sometimes find corners of parking lots that aren't necessary, but we've also done things like boulevards. And the most recent project, one that I coordinated this past July in Lakefield, which is a smaller urban center, just outside of Peterborough. There was a big paved area at the entrance to a privately owned Harbor that belongs to a number of the local residents who, who live right there. But the frontage for it is, is publicly open. It's open to the community and it was all just paved and very steep right behind it. So it would literally just take water. Yeah, send it down to this these like headwaters of the autonomy river here in, in our community. And so that was a bit of an unusual one because we were able to make a full pocket park. So it's not huge. It's about a hundred square meters, but it was space that only pedestrians were using to walk across when it was paved and just didn't need to be that way. So we've now been able to make it, you know, have a pathway to the pedestrian gate from the sidewalk, put in trees, put in a pollinator garden. So that was a bit of a a different one that was, that was kind of fun. But yeah, it, it can vary. It can vary all kinds of cases.
Meredith Meeker:I was to say might be a small space, but that sounds like a huge.
Hayley Goodchild:Yeah, I'm very excited to see how it develops over the next few, few years. And like you said before with, with people and it transforms people, I mean, with so many of these projects like my capacity sort of ends once the project is in the ground. Typically, you know, as a nonprofit, we're not the ones who can do the ongoing maintenance that is actually up to whoever owns the property and or community volunteers. And so, often the people who help us unleash the ground right, are the ones who they take ownership over it. Right. And they, there there's buy-in there because they put that work into establishing it, that they'll also help maintain it, which is good to see.
Meredith Meeker:That's awesome. So I know working with communities and people, you're probably going to get a lot of wins. But there's got to also be some challenging parts to this job, or maybe unexpected doesn't always have to be a challenge, but
Hayley Goodchild:yeah, absolutely. Well, on the flip side of, of that maintenance piece is that this is bigger than Greenup. This is a sector wide issue, but around funding, so much of our funding is inconsistent and finite. And so one of the most challenging parts of the job is when we have a program or a model or a project that we can tell is really working, but our funding to do it is limited. It can be really, really hard to lose that funding and then eat like, find a way to somehow. Keep that initiative going either through like, a new funding model or, or to say goodbye to a program. And we know that works because, because we can't find funding to keep it going. And that's in large part because there's a real focus with a lot on the part of a lot of funders to fund innovative things, right. New things. There aren't a lot of people willing to, or organizations rather willing to fund ongoing work. And that's, that's unfortunate. I think so, so that is a challenging or unexpected part, both in the sense of like disappointment around that. But also it means that we spend not just me, but a lot of people I work with spend a lot of our time writing. Right. Which especially if you're in a smaller organization, you may not have someone whose role is exclusively dedicated to that. So it takes a lot of time out of you know, the work that we really want to be doing, which is the, on the groundwork to find more money to do the work.
Meredith Meeker:That seems so, like, I understand why people want to find innovative work, but innovation can also be a little risky. So shouldn't it. I feel like there should be a pot for really successful projects to keep them going, because otherwise you did all that work to innovate something great. And you can lose momentum if you don't have the funding.
Hayley Goodchild:Absolutely. Absolutely. It's it's, it's, it's hard. Yeah. It's very hard.
Meredith Meeker:Yeah. I could see that being pretty frustrating. So I guess is there is we'll we'll switch gears a little bit. Well, we'll let that frustration go, but is there a particular skill set that you feel like helped you break into the industry or that would help others do that right now?
Hayley Goodchild:Well, we already talked about some of those, I don't know that I even want to call them soft skills, but you know, the communication pieces, the writing pieces yes. I think that whole of those are helpful and will help you you know, break into sort of environmental work.
Meredith Meeker:I,
Hayley Goodchild:I also think there's something to be said if you're interested in or looking to work for a nonprofit organization like I do, especially smaller one is to be very well-rounded. That doesn't mean needing to be an expert at a lot of things. It means knowing how to do quite a few different things reasonably well, because that is an asset to an organization that doesn't have the capacity to have, you know, dedicated specialized staff for every little thing. So the grant writing was one example, right? The fact that I can communicate and tell stories and sort of pitch ideas in writing is useful for, for grant writing and, and that kind of work. But also for example, during my PhD, which was in history, I spent some time teaching myself basic GIS to do really what was just meant to be the small little mapping component of, of my project and has ended up being really valuable. And I am by no means a GIS expert, like not even close, but I know my way around. Particularly open source software. So reasonably well. And that has come up more times than I expected, where someone needs a quick little map to communicate something to, you know, in a report or, you know, just wants to analyze some, some open data that exists for them, municipality and spatial data and wants to you know, learn a bit more about something related to a neighborhood I can step in and be that person. And I know my limits, like there are things that I'm not capable of for that as well. And you know, I will say that when that's the case, but being able to. Get something simple done without, you know, the organization needing to then go out and contract someone, you know, with some specialized skill can be really, really valuable. So, yeah, I think it's good to include those things that maybe you don't, you aren't an expert at, but you're reasonably proficient at, because you never know, even if like in a job posting you never know what additional things that organization may actually need. They haven't actually said it, but they'll see it on your resume and be like, oh, okay. Actually you would be very useful for that as well.
Meredith Meeker:Or what opportunities it could spark. Right? Like I know my brother is pursuing. Drome drone film, ocracy, or photography. And it's like, well, maybe they didn't know that maybe they don't need a drone, but they're like, Hey, we could get some cool footage or something like that. So there's definitely like different, if you can bring multiple angles, I feel like that's only going to help
Hayley Goodchild:you. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And the drone, the drone example is really interesting one because I suspect yeah. For all kinds of reasons, that's going to be a really useful sort of skillset for people to have. Like, they're like, I can't, I don't have the license. I know you need some kind of license to operate a drone. But yeah, like you said, for communications purposes, take very cool visuals, but I'm realizing now, as I do more landscape design, how valuable it would be for me to be able to collect site down. You know, from a drone rather than needing to rely on just what's out there in terms of you know, existing aerial imagery or things like that when I'm doing site analysis. So, I mean, is that something I'm going to perceive personally? I don't know. Probably not. There's a limit to how many different sort of skills I can collect, but I think that's probably going to be really useful and going forward.
Meredith Meeker:Yeah. And, and there's only going to be more technology, so like keeping on top or like at least knowing what's out there, I feel like is just important to understand what's going no matter where you are in your career. Right. And to understand kind of what components are, are going to be coming in. And so obviously there's the skill set. Portion, but you also need to be able to communicate that which I feel like we keep coming back to, but do you have any advice for someone who's, you know, applying to NGOs or, or just trying to get a job to make their application stand out? Because it's a pretty competitive market. So it's, it's a
Hayley Goodchild:challenge. Yeah. Yeah. Well I'm a historian, which means I like stories. I think stories are really valuable. Big. Pull people in, they can help people relate to you. They are a good, a good story is, is a memory aid for someone. If you package in some important piece of information about your skillset, your capabilities, and you package it in a story, people are going to remember the story and it's going to trigger for them. What they, that, that thing they know about you, that you can do that said they need to be concise and they need to have a very clear takeaway and there's the right place for them. So I think the right place for a story is a cover letter. It's an interview. Not so much in a resume. I think resume really do need to focus on very clear. Factual, you know, statements about, you know, what value you bring in and those sorts of things, but cover letters and interviews are a place where you can stand out with those things and to give an example. So I remember when I was applying for the job at Greenup in 2018 and this was coming, I should say, this was coming on the heels of one of those periods in my professional career, where I was like, what am I doing? Like I'm jumping from contract to contract. I had been applying for many jobs, had not been getting them and not getting interviews necessarily and wrote this application rather quickly, but led with a story. And in the, in the cover letter, I led with a story because the position was about neighborhood scale, climate change, like I was saying earlier, and I happen to live just on the edge of one of these neighborhoods. And they were talking about, you know, flooding and storm and different things in the job ad. And I remembered that, you know, six weeks before this I was writing this application, our backyard flooded because we're in the flood plain of this Creek that winds through this neighborhood. And so I started my cover letter with that. I said, you know, in February, my backyard was under water and, you know, here's this experience I had sort of walking through, you know, it coming over the tops of money, my rain boots. And you know, this is why I'm invested in this project and why it's compelling to me and then moved on to say, and here's why I'm actually qualified for the job. I think that helped me. I think that, you know, got them to. Yeah, stop pause, read a little bit more, maybe focus more you know, on the resume. So that is the piece of advice I would give, but you definitely do need to work on crafting a story that has a clear takeaway or connection. That isn't just rambling. Like I'm doing right now. I'm doing a lot of rambling today is shorter than mine.
Meredith Meeker:No, it's great. And I love that example too, because I feel like we talk a lot about having passion in the environmental field. And so people will open including myself, cover letters with like, I am passionate about the environment or I am enthusiastic, whereas showing a story, you're actually providing that connection and being like, well, this is like exactly why I'm committed to this project, which sometimes specificity. Which a story would lend itself to would be would be really helpful too. So thank you so much for like all of your career advice. I kind of want to switch gears a little bit, get to my favorite question of the interview. Do you have a favorite nature
Hayley Goodchild:moment? We call it
Meredith Meeker:nature because nature is so neat. So it can be either while you're at work or out exploring on your own. Yes,
Hayley Goodchild:I have many so try and think about which, which one or maybe two I would, I would share. I think when I, you know, when we opened things up earlier, I was saying, you know, I've always been fascinated about this sort of interface, the sort of mundane interface between human and non-human nature. And. One of those experiences for me, that I'm just endlessly fascinated by. It does not get old. I really love composting. And I remember the very first time when I started working on hot composting. So. Unlike cold composting, which is a little more sort of slow, you slowly build up a pile of material. And it does its thing. It breaks down over time, hot composting. It's a little more intentional. You build up a large volume of, of brown, like carbon rich and nitrogen rich materials at once. And you turn it a lot for aeration to make sure you know, there's oxygen in the pile. And when you do this, you can really cultivate and support a whole range of. Microbial life to break things down really fast, right. And it produces heat has hot composting. Anyway. The first time I successfully hot composted, like I stuck in a Pitchfork into the pile and started turning it. And there's just all this steam released. And, you know, I put my hand in and I burnt it. And it was amazing. Right. I was like, huh. Like these are the really fascinating moments where people in non-human nature do remarkable things. Right. And to just see that process at work, I loved and I still love it. So every time, you know, every hot compost I build is a little bit different and it's so neat to see how, you know, some small change in the variables like, oh, I added more coffee grounds to this pile or spent beer grains or whatever changes those, those dynamics. So that is. One that I really enjoy really, I'm a big compost nerd is probably the the, the takeaway here. If you'll indulge me one more, I know we we've gone on a while. This sort of counterpoint to that. I think of that really like being fascinated with things that are very small is being fascinated with big things. And I remember a number of years ago, probably almost 15 years ago. Now I went to Peru one summer for a few weeks, which is great for all kinds of reasons. But I was flying from Lima to Cusco up in the mountains and it was like a 7:00 AM flight. And I was lucky enough to get a window seat and. I had never really spent much time in, in like mountainous, like significant mountain ranges and just so happened. You know, it was flying over the Andes at sunrise and small little planes. So you're really not that high above them. And it was really the first time I understood the force of geological force. Like, yes, I learned about that and in, you know, geography and science and stuff growing up, but I didn't really get it. You know, the idea that all of these forces could produce, you know, typography like this. It was just, it was incredible. It felt, I dunno, it felt close to religious from a plane window. So, those would be two that I think. Neither of them are. Work-based go figure. I mean, I do compost a little bit in the context of work, but yeah,
Meredith Meeker:I love, I love the two scales, like literally so small, you can't see the microbes and then just giant mountains. And I do think sometimes we forget like how mountains are formed because we really, we don't see it. Right. And when you kind of check yourself, you're like, oh, that was like from the force of the grass. Like these came up anyway. I love that. It's a great reminder to appreciate how cool the earth is, which really is what the nature moment is all about. Like earth is so cool. Let's do something about it. And I think I kind of want to change this next question a little bit about like what keeps you inspired a little bit, because you know, that report came out last week. I think sometimes we get really disheartened about it and we feel like we don't have a lot of control. And yet you really, you know, one of your, one of your hats is like, what can we control? And if somebody was listening to this and it's like, I want to take an action in my own space. Like, is there, is there a top three that you would recommend? Like,
Hayley Goodchild:yeah. I mean, in the space, of
Meredith Meeker:course it I'm putting you on the spot. So I apologize for that, but I'm selfishly asking this
Hayley Goodchild:that's okay. That's okay. So yeah, what are, what are the, the main things that we can do? I like to think about how, even if it's a very small scale, what can anyone do toward climate change mitigation? So actually reducing the amount of greenhouse gases produced annually. Getting them back in the ground. And so one example for that is like moving your outdoor spaces toward landscaping and land use types that don't require so much energy to maintain. So if you have a big suburban lot and you have a big gas powered mower you know, a lawn that needs to be maintained by a gas powered mower even just transitioning more of that one space into a meadow that maybe only needs to be mowed down once a season, as opposed to regular, like, you know, all those sorts of those small changes can reduce the amount of energy you're actually expanding or planting a tree, which of course has about a billion different benefits to it terms of carbon sequestration, as well as, as you know, stormwater benefits. Something like that, something around mitigation in reducing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, something around adaptation. So that's going to look a little bit different for everyone, depending on where they are. I live in a floodplain big part of, you know, things for people like me and my neighbors is we need to be doing more to reduce the amount of urban stormwater produced and finding ways to respond to flooding. Cause it does happen. Peterborough is, is particularly flood prone and the very big flood of 2004 is still on people's minds. It was very, very serious. So, there are things you can do for that, but often the benefits for, for the benefits of things like rain gardens and green infrastructure to deal with flooding, they don't accrue. At the peak at the scale of people's individual properties. And what I mean by that is you really need a number of different people doing it in a locality for it to really have an impact. Right. So that is something that I would say as well. And then three things grow food. I just say that cause I love growing food, but also because I think we're heading into a world where the global food system is not going to be as reliable as it has been. And so decentralizing where we get our food from and how we get it from all kinds of sources, backyard gardens, local farmers, so on and so forth. I think it's going to be a really critical piece when yeah, more of the destabilization that's coming with climate change really starts to emerge. It's already here, but it's gonna speed up.
Meredith Meeker:I do think on that last point too, the pandemic really showed perhaps some challenge in the supply chain. And maybe, maybe that's the motivator. It's also just really fun and super satisfying to eat something you've grown yourself and like, you know, what's gone into it. Like there's no pesticides, you picked it that morning. It's I've just started recently gardening and I'm a little obsessed, so I, yeah, it is. It's very exciting. So I, I really appreciate those suggestions and and thank you. Thank you for that. And, okay. Last question. If somebody wanted to get involved either with Greenup or maybe carbon wise, where should they go? What should they check? For
Hayley Goodchild:sure. So Greenup we do, I mean, with the pandemic, the pandemic, it's been a lot harder, but we do work with volunteers. So if you ever want to, if you're in the Peterborough area and want to rip up pavement with me, for instance, among other things you can find out more about some of the programs we, we run@wwwdotgreenhopedotowen.ca. You can also just search for Greenup. We're on all the major social media platforms for carbon wise. So carbon wise landscape design is the company I started quite recently. I should add. I didn't mention that, but this is formalized three months ago, so early days, but I have a website you can visit at www dot carbon wise, landscape design.ca. And I'm also on Instagram. I'm going to forget now what the handle is. It's at carbon wise landscape design. You can find me on there as well.
Meredith Meeker:Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Haley for chatting with me, I really enjoyed this conversation
Hayley Goodchild:and I'm glad. Thank you for, for having me. I think this is a wonderful podcast. I've enjoyed listening to a number of the episodes before this. Thank you.
Meredith Meeker:a huge thank you to Haley for sharing her time and her story with us. It was truly a pleasure. And of course, if you want to hear more stories like Hayley's, don't forget to like, and subscribe to our podcast. So you don't miss an episode and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to find out more about job opportunities and cool events okay. That's all for me. Talk to you again next week. Happy trails