NASA NEPA, Working on the Move, and Celebrity Fails with Michelle Rau

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 Michelle Rau, Environmental Project Manager and NEPA Practice Lead at Jacobs, and NAEP Secretary as well as Education Committee co-chair, about NASA NEPA, working on the move, and celebrity fails! Read her full bio below.

Special thanks to our sponsor for this episode DAWSON.
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:
0:00  Intro

1:00  Shout outs

1:49  Nic and Laura talk about stand up comedy

9:03  Interview with Michelle Rau starts

12:29  Michelle discusses career transitioning and gives career advice

19:56  Michelle talks about NEPA's role in her projects

23:20  Field Notes Segment-Michelle's celebrity fails

28:01  Michelle talks about the importance of down time

33:03  Working on the move

38:11  Outro

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 Michelle Rau at
linkedin.com/in/michelle-rau-pmp-mba-02745120

Guest Full Bio:
Michelle Rau has nearly 25 years of experience as an environmental planner and project manager. At Jacobs she currently serves as the NEPA practice manager and leads a group of nearly 200 environmental practitioners. She works as a project manager, sales lead and technical lead on Federal environmental compliance projects, including large scale and controversial EISs, which involve individual projects with more than a billion dollars of infrastructure. She has managed nearly all aspects of the environmental compliance process, including NEPA, Executive Order (EO) 12114 (international NEPA), Clean Water Act 404 permits, ESA Section 7 consultations, NHPA Section 106 consultations and state, county, and regional permits. She has worked for many federal clients, including DoD (Army, Air Force, USACE, DARPA and NGA), NASA, BLM, FEMA, FHWA and NSF. 

Michelle has been an active member of NAEP for over 10 years, and currently serves on the NEAP Board of Directors, where she is the NAEP Secretary.  She also serves as the education committee co-chair, is the executive sponsor for the Environmental Justice Working Group and actively engages with the conference planning committees.

Michelle

Transcript

Transcript is auto-transcribed

[Intro]

Laura  
Hello and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental nerds, Nick and Laura. On today's episode we'll give our shout outs. Nick and I talked about stand up comedy. Then we interview Michelle Rau. A good friend of ours on the show and a friend to the show about cool NEPA projects and keeping your career going despite having to move every three years in her innate ability to annoy celebrities. And finally, 75% of the food we eat comes from 12 plants and five animals, except for me not five animals estimates that there are over 80,000 edible plants on the planet, which is crazy.

Nic
Yeah, It's just, I love that stat though it's it's been 12,12 plants we eat, I mean it's like I don't know what they want for dinner.

Laura
Apples or potatoes.

Nic
Yeah, exactly. That's it.

Laura
Please be sure to subscribe, rate and review, hit that music.

[Shout outs]

Nic 
All right our shout out for today goes to Dawson's very own Hannah Kopydlowski, we're helping us really crush our social media outreach she's been fantastic at getting content out across all of our platforms, and honestly we cannot thank her enough and I thank you so so much for all that you've done for us on the show and NAEP, thank you. Speaking of an NAEP, please be sure to register for NAEP's coastal resiliency webinar on August 26 At noon Eastern, where we will be discussing coastal and climate resiliency success stories. It's also moderated by me, so all the more reason to join so head on over to naep.org/webinars-nu, for more information. If you would like to sponsor a future episode, head on over to environmentalprofessionalsradio.com And check out our sponsor form for details. Let's get to our segment.

[Nic and Laura's Segment]

Laura 
Why don't you just tell me some jokes and see if you make me laugh.

Nic  
Yeah. No, I did do comedy festival, a couple weeks ago. Yeah, like a couple. Well, I guess, yeah, a week ago, and it was fun to get back out and yeah, and make people laugh, that was great, it actually really was a really good set.

Laura
And, was it in person.

Nic
Yeah, it was in person at the comedy club down here in Raleigh.

Laura
Good night is what's that called

Nic
Good night it's called good night's Comedy Club, and that's the, it's the main one, the big one around here I mean there's a Raleigh improv and a few others but like the comics like good nights, that's where we go. And so that's the big one, you want to get onstage, that's the one where you want to practice your material and do everything

Laura
So wait, were you like an intro guy or was it like open mic.

Nic
No, no, it was a show, it was an actual show, actually, technically a competition. But the weird thing about it this year is like you know it's like you're supposed to bring people and I'm like I'm not bringing anyone to this, like, we're just gonna, we're just gonna do this, and so like a bringer show you basically go through if you bring enough people. And so that's the only thing you have to remember with those kind of shows so a lot of our starting comics will do things like, I'm funny enough where I don't have to bring anybody to get through. Now you do, you have to bring some people because the other comics are bringing people and they're voting for their person no matter what.

Laura 
Right. So it's really a contest like most voting things are.

Nic 
Yeah, but it's you know it's so good. Not only does that for round one, but the reason they do that is because they want to see oh yeah do you have a draw. Do you have people that will come see. And that's when

Laura
No one likes a comic with no friends.

Nic
Right. Which is ironic because that's most comics. But yeah it was it was a lot of fun to do, you know, you did a good set when, like, the audience, and the comics will tell you, you did a good job, like that's how you know and you're like alright yeah I still got this That's funny. That's right. They both said it, both groups. Two groups said it. But yeah, it was great. It was really fun. And like what,

Laura
Okay, I don't know the life of a comic so other than that movie that Sally Fields did, which is  a little dated maybe. How do you like prepare for this you have written jokes, and you've practiced them,

Nic 
Yeah, yeah to like  the cats. Yeah, yeah,

Laura
Is your wife tired of hearing them.

Nic
no I'm smart enough to know that I shouldn't tell her I gotta, because you know it's the funniest thing she does not like stand up comedy, at all. Like it's just not her thing.

So like if I tell her a joke she's like dead silence I'm like okay right you know what it's not. It's just cause you don't like comedy, not cuz it's not funny. She's like ok if you say so, but yeah so it's always to the cat. I mean every comic has a different process right mine is basically, I have to write I have to write up the joke. And then I have to go over it 1000 times and as I'm doing like the repeating of the joke, I realized, oh, this will be a much funnier line, and this will be like, I had a joke about having too many cats, and that actually took me a long time to kind of put it together, whereas instead of being like, you know, basically the end of the how the joke comes out now is like you know my wife and I are expecting, you know, and I was like, Oh, that's great. Like our fourth cat, and then boom, you know like, oh god, that's, that's not what I was expecting. And then I was like, no I'm kidding we already have four cats, and it's like, and then you make a face like like I'm terrified of having that many cats, and so that's where like, that's where the joke ends right but you have to get to that point, like how do I make that fun, it's more fun when people are surprised by things right so when you say expecting you're like, oh this is going to be about, you know, kids, and then it turns out, it's about cats instead.

Laura
And how, you know, and so that's kind of like that goes back to Nick not having any friends again.

Nic
Right. Yes, exactly. Yeah, man. Yeah, that was the, that's kind of the process for me and how other people do different things and it's a writing intensive thing, you know a lot of people have to write it and it's about. It's a kind of like think kind of put together a puzzle, but you don't know where all the pieces are yet, you may not find the last piece for months on a joke, and the joke's never done until it's recorded. So, once you have it on CD or whatever, CD Geez What am I doing. Oh my God why I say, once it's recorded, and put on the internet, which is a new technology we have, where it can be streamed anywhere.

Yeah, that's when  a joke is done, and then man until then. So, like one of my, one of my comic friends just recorded an album a good night's maybe a month ago. And, you know he's working through it now trying to clean it up and get it out to Sirius and, and a few other places, they were just gonna go on, you know, and you'll be able to download a super cool, really neat process but you know that's he's

Laura
One day we'll be listening to Nic on a road trip.

Nic
Yeah, I got a lot more work to do, I you know I got I got like, I feel like I have like five good minutes and, yeah,

Laura
How many good minutes do you need to make a CD.

NIc
An hour. See yeah well CDs 45 minutes 45 to an hour and depending on you know, geez Nick Yeah, you need about an hour, hour and a half, depending. So, for like an actual special, and some people can do it prolifically you know they're really prolific writers, they can do that every year. And, you know, that's just, it's, it's a much bigger challenge I will say, there's a lot of ego in comedy. So most most comics. I know it's done and most of them will tell you that they're there basically. Oh yeah, I've got 30 good minutes they don't, they have, they have three.

They have three, and so this is where I know for sure, like if you do this properly enough you realize, oh yeah, this is a great job but the other jobs I have are just good, they're not, they're not great. And so that's just the way it is you got to like okay I have to work on these more. Yeah, and you should be getting, like, no I put you off you go. No, I was like five laughs a minute is what you're trying to go for it. That's what you want.

Laura 
Yeah, that's the goal. Yeah. So you the best route is always to tell jokes about what you know right, is that oh for sure. Yes, yes. So do you tell environmental and NEPA jokes.

Nic  
Well I have to It's funny, I do. But I have to like, be very careful about the jokes that I tell right I can't tell jokes about clients, I can't tell jokes about agencies, or the federal government, you know, like it's just not something that I'm interested in doing, even if there are, there is material there.

But when I retire, I'm telling you all bets are off. You guys shouldn't be watching that whenever I get

Laura
You're going to go from five minutes to 2 hours.

Nic
85 Yeah, no problem.

Laura
Of course by then we that we won't be recording on CDs, yet.

Nic 
Yeah, exactly broadcasting to Mars will be on Mars, living there. EPR from Mars.Yeah.

Laura 
Anyway, yeah. So, speaking of let's get talking to Michelle and her NASA job.

Nic
All right, cool.

[Interview with Michelle Rau starts]

Nic
Hello and welcome back to EPR today we're really excited to have Michelle Rau on the show. She is a senior project manager with Jacobs, and is also on the NAEP board, She serves as the NAEP secretary and co chair of our education committee. Welcome to the show.

Michelle Rau
Hi guys, thanks for having me.

Nic
Yeah. So tell us a little bit about what you do at Jacobs.

Michelle Rau
Okay, at Jacobs, I am the NEPA practice lead, you know we're such a global organization that we have environmental impact assessment as a global practice, I really focus on the US, which of course means NEPA. So that's my primary kind of role within Jacobs but then I'm also a senior project manager, and I do a lot of projects within the space industry, which is kind of a neat little niche field I found for myself but my projects usually involve like NASA National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, you know, generally I tend to work on the bigger and more controversial projects environmental impact statements, But you know I mean, every now and them I do upper level projects.

Laura 
That's awesome. I know a lot of people including us are dying to ask you some questions around that but let's get started in your career and then we'll end with where you are now. How did you get started in environment.

Michelle Rau 
You know like, getting me into the environmental field, you know is really my grandmother, she was an environmentalist before environmentalism was cool, vegetarian so you know, the 1940s, vegetarian, you know just she always kind of led me down that path of being really interested in the environment. Remember she would donate to Sierra Club and Greenpeace and all the big ones. And so, you know, based off of that it was kind of had an interest in environmental work, I went to college I went to the University of Pittsburgh, and I studied biology at University of Pittsburgh, which was a top five medical school, he just automatically did pre med. And I quickly realized that wasn't the route for me, so I moved on and I started to realize ecology was a really fascinating field I used to love NOVA PBS shows back in the day, actually watching a Nova show on evolution, sounds like this is really cool and Pitt had a degree in ecology and evolution and also I'm going to do that. After that he just found a job that would actually pay me to do environmental fieldwork and BLM, in the Southern California desert. And then I got a job with the army, and then from there I started getting into consulting work and kind of get into what I do now.

Nic
Awesome. And so you've been at Jacobs for 12 years, there abouts and how have your roles changed.

Michelle Rau
It's about 13 years now. I was pregnant with my son, when I started, it was CH2M Hill at the time. And Jacob bought CH2M. Right, right. Yeah, we were over the hill, by the time we got bought.

Nic  
Oh my god, yeah.

Michelle Rau   
My clients used to tell me I was like, yeah, yeah, never heard of.  So, and then when Jacobs bought CH2M, I was with the acquisition and moved over to there so. Gotcha. So I've been working in that paradigm.

Nic
Right. How have your roles changed over time then how was that transition like.

Michelle Rau
So, when I first started with CH2M. I was brought in as an environmental planner. Prior to that I kind of mentioned that I was working for the Army, the Army has a program called the ICAAM integrated aiming area management, and then within that, there's another sub program called LRAM Land Rehabilitation and maintenance. I had started working there in Southern California. I was working in Fort Irwin. The reason why I got that job was to say, as I alluded to, I was working in the El Centro desert. For the Bureau of Land Management, which is right on the Mexico border. I mean, Pennsylvania, where the Pennsylvania weather to the deep Mojave desert 120 degrees the Dan. Oh my gosh, so I was working for the BLM in El Centro. And I had a job interview at Fort Irwin. And it was, you know, a much bigger job than when I had they want a master's degree they want 10 years of experience I have a bachelor's degree in two years of experience. And the way I got the job was, they said, Well, what makes you interested in this job I go well it's a step up, compared to me and they'll still show and you know Barstow would be you know a good opportunity and they're like, oh my gosh she wants to move to Barstow, and it worked out really well. I was there for about three years and it was the if you don't know formerly is the US Army Special training center, so every military unit, across the country essentially has to go there and train at some point, and so they do these giant mock bottles so brigade versus brigade, it's the only place in the United States where two brigades can kind of see each other so goes out there and getting to see all that, you know, it's just really amazing. And then the company I worked for it was a really small company called Harris Corporation, and they woncontract in Fort Carson, Colorado. And when I found out they won the contract and walked into my boss's office I said, Hey, can I work at Fort Carson, and he said sure. So I got the same job title but I moved from Florida to Colorado Springs. Beautiful place. I lived there for a while. then, not surprisingly I married a soldier. And then from that point on, and once you know what was really nice about consulting, it gave me the flexibility to live that military spouse lifestyle. So, you know, we move every two years, three years you know at that time he was just a Senior Captain. And so we just need to be prepared still wherever, and lots of companies buying each other out when I worked for Ft. Carson  General Dynamics information technology did the IT and I is working for them, although I never actually left the job, companies just kept changing.

You can kind of see this kind of theme guy just stay in the same place, the company grows around me.

I'm working for GDIT and they, you know, the only thing they're not going to do is fire me because I married a soldier.

They let consultants and I did that for a while and then you know the one thing in careers, you can realize especially when you start young in a field like I said I was pretty much out of college when I started working with these individuals. By the time I was kind of getting to that point. Sometimes people don't see past that, 20 year old brand new, maybe newbie, right, kind of at that 10 year part point in my career and realized, hey, maybe it's time for a change, just so that I could be kind of seen as something else. And so I tried for a job with a CH2M and they hired me. They were doing some environmental impact statements for the army and they figured I kind of knew something about the Army so I got kind of got brought into those, and then while I was working and doing those, we weren't quite doing as much army and military work. Oh my gosh. And so that's when, like some of this NASA and space stuff starts to kind of open up for me and I started working on those projects.

Laura
Awesome. Sounds like a great career history.  You've already done so much. I know we touched on a lot of different things in hear some things that I can tell that you were you were doing that moved yourself around in the career but if you're speaking to somebody who's looking to get into a company like Jacobs or something, one of the larger firms like what kind of advice would you give them.

Michelle Rau
You know, for me, as I kind of just pointed out, it was starting on that client side. So, we are working for the US Army, and they, as I said, they weren't going to let go of me, so they put me kind of into the best consultants usually have a pretty good understanding of the clients that they're working with. So, and you know for me and I work primarily in federal agency where, you know, really understanding a certain client sector really helps a lot, and that's usually the best way to, to kind of get in, but also looking for where there's a need, so they needed somebody in El Centro, California and I said, go there, and then they needed somebody in Barstow California like hey I'm excited, I'll do it. And then it's happened that certain amount of enthusiasm and that excitement, kind of, the doors start opening up for you. You know I got, you know, just to talk a little bit of like how I got into like this space niche. It started out with, we were, we got this opportunity, primarily with the Department of Defense, we were working with Air Force Research Laboratory, and they needed to get some NEPA work done, and it was just a small little environmental assessment if you work in the NEPA field you know for consultant that's usually kind of a lower less dollar figure, kind of project and so I just raised my hand and said yeah absolutely I'll work on that and then you know the next project kind of came along, and I kind of jumped at it and then there was a DARPA project the defensive Research Project Agency project. And you know I said absolutely, you know, I'll support people, you know, I started out in supporting roles, and then I kind of moved into more and more project management and what, when is it happening, is do you volunteer yourself enough times that sooner or later you end up being that person in the slot and then the next stage is, you find that you're the person that gets to kind of choose whether or not you want to do the work so I don't know if I just really got lucky with my career but that's definitely how I saw it happen is, as I said raising your hand, showing that enthusiasm, you know showing someone you want to do this. And then, you know, being willing to play that support role I used to joke I cando laundry or carry bags if necessary.

Nic 
It's honestly it's a really good point, like, you know you're saying, you know two things really quick one is, you were open to a location right change, you weren't afraid to do that and you say, Yes, you know you're saying yes to opportunities as they come up. And that's, it's pretty straightforward, but it's really worked out for you, and, you know, you can say I'm super excited to talk NASA with you I'm glad that you brought it up, and you know so you talked about how the process started, but what are you working on now and maybe more importantly how do you get me to Mars, that's really what I want to know. you can you do that for me.

Michelle Rau   
We're working on that technology right now, I'm actually talking to a few individuals outside of NASA, about a big new project that essentially they're working on nuclear thermal propulsion, in order to get people to Mars, even quicker so we're about 18 months I think to get to Mars. Now, with this kind of propulsion, it can take as little as three months, it's kind of very early stage stuff, NASA has been doing, you know, it's not scary.  You have to be careful, like, I want to emphasize the amount of Safety Analysis, and the mitigations and the work that goes into place. I mean, you have some of the most educated and imppressive PhDs trying to figure out how risky, this is, and their presidential directive that says you have to make sure you're safe to do these things so NASA has been using nuclear technologies since the 1960s so the Apollo missions, so they have a long history of doing it, and it was always for power, or for heat, and now they're looking at doing that for, you know, trying to get people stuff out of the way so it's interesting, kind of aspect of, you know what we're going to see next. And being able to do things like there. The next five to 10 years I think technology is really going to change. And so as part of that means like how does NEPA How does environmental planning fall into all of it.

Laura  
I just wrote a question for Nic I was like, I don't understand how environmental fits in here.

Nic
I love it. I love it. I'm looking right at it.

Michelle Rau   
So, there's a National Environmental Policy Act right and under that, whenever there's a major federal action, the government, either has to create an environmental assessment or an environmental impact statement, as I kind of alluded to and EA is a kind of smaller document and EIS a much bigger document. And so, the issues off with this are really associated with what would happen if there's a launch mishap. We've all seen these terrible things you know launch mishaps are generally in the range of, you know any given launch. But, you know, so that's where the process comes in, so per this presidential directive and per NEPA, NASA, Department of Defense whoever sponsoring it actually FAA, there's a lot of different ways that this can kind of come about, they have to do a environmental impact statement or environmental assessment, and that's where I come in I help them do that work, we have the public meetings, it's, it's pretty crazy.

Nic 
Yeah, it's so cool.Oh wow, we need to talk more. That's incredible.

Laura
It's really exciting

Michelle Rau 
It's good to hear that too because, you know, one of the things too when you work on these projects and you're doing them day in and day out, I mean a really cool moment where you're like I'm doing something really neat. It's just, it's an honor just to be invited into the room and to hear people speak to learn how it works but in against the day to day, it's kind of fun like when I haven't talked to somebody and you talk to somebody. It's like I'm feeling like I have a really cool job.

Laura 
So tell us about some of your field experiences you listen to the show so you know that we like to ask people what we call field notes, and here's some of our funny stories from the field or impactful moments or whatever, but there's one I know that you mentioned, just a little bit about it, it involves some, You got two incidences that involve some celebrities, so you have just like, except you're NASA, you're super

Michelle Rau 
Secretly,  very secret. That's not true, but we're just gonna go with it.

Laura
Yeah, so one time you managed to piss off Spock, was that all about.

Michelle Rau 
So, national so the National Science Foundation provides grants, but they also invest in major infrastructure projects. So some of the very large telescopes may have heard about the Arecibo Observatory is one of them the Green Bank Observatory, you know this massive arrays, the telescopes in Hawaii, national certification test to be a major funder of a lot of those, one of the projects that are set, the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia is, you know it's a massive facility, and it's one of those ones that you don't really know about, unless you either live in that area, or you're really into radio astronomy, but it's actually the world's largest stereo steerable structure. So it's the size of a football field, and it's a massive telescope, and they can turn it around, based off of what area of the cosmos, they want to study and the Green Bank Telescope, very confident was one of the telescopes used if you heard about the black hole that was just a picture of a black hole, whose the existence of this is like the time telescope that they use, but it's really cool in terms of science but also in terms of architecture, what they were able to accomplish the project I was working on was an environmental impact statement kind of considering NSF activities and their funding of the telescope, you know kind of what the future of the telescope might be. And we had a bunch of public meetings, and after the public meetings, I was with the director of astronomical sciences for NSF so if you ever watch the movie Contact Angelina Jolie's father like, I forget what role he was but it so he was one of the key players in Contact not this guy but. So that was the role, and so we were talking, afterwards, in that my counterparts at NSF he invited us to go for a tour of the telescope. And here's the lesson to like in the beginning, do you see like when somebody grant client offers to take you on a tour. Sometimes you think well, do I have to catch a flight, do I have to do something, one rule I've learned in my career is like if a client offers you a site tour, the answer is yes. If you have to reschedule your flight, your wedding, the answer is always yes.

So, he offers us a tour the next day and we get to go and I mean it's just amazing, because now I have the director of astronomical sciences for NSF and I have the director of the observatory, giving us this tour, and you know the actual observatory I think goes up to seven stories, and so we get to go to the very top. And so, we walk through it we really get to understand it comes down to the bottom, and there's a film crew down more like what's going on so it turns out, Zachary Quinto, I think is his name but he played Spock it would be hard to piss off the old Spock.

Nic 
Right right right right.

Michelle Rau   
It would be hard to make the old Spock upset. So he's standing down there, and you can see he's just like annoyed so he had to sit there and wait to get our tour before he was allowed to do his documentary on the Green Bank Observatory, and of course you're there with a bunch of scientists and we're you know we don't interact with celebrities very often, and we're all like Oh my gosh it's there and you can just see like how annoyed he was then he had
all these people just like gawking over. Yeah, oh yeah, for sure. I would have this really weird moments. Any celebrity where you just had to wait for me I appreciate.

Nic
So, actually, yeah, so seriously I'm probably can't get him on the show.

Michelle Rau 
You might be able to he really likes space. He probably likes the environment.  Just don't have me make that phone call.

Laura 
So, Michelle, if I was working your job, I don't think I would ever want to stop working. I think I would just be signing up for everything and anything and probably not keeping any hours myself. Hopefully you're taking some breaks so just wondering what kind of things you're doing when you're not working on the most awesome projects ever

michelle rau 
You know, there's something there too, like, it's very easy to get wrapped up in projects and I have worked for projects where it was a large scale, EIS, and it was very intense, it was very controversial, we had public meetings with hundreds of people 1000s of comments. And it's very, I was probably working, I was working seven days a week, I was constantly on call, I just spent all of my energy, and there's a mindset of, well versus work a little bit harder, if I just get a couple more hours, if I just, then it's going to be okay, like, up to that point in my career and I would say I was probably transitioning from that mid to more senior point in my career, and you know I just kept thinking, if I just work harder, like every time I worked a little harder, it would be okay. And it didn't. And the project went on for two years, and it was, you know, very intense, and you know it did like it just it started wearing on me it started wearing out my family. You know it was a really good lesson and you know I can't say if I saw somebody going through it, I would kind of tell my story and explain it but unless you feel it, you don't really understand that.

It is also a blessing and a curse right so I went through that situation and the project did end up being successful, not because I worked extra hours on the weekends it was, you know, we should listen it worked out. So after that experience, I do make it a priority that you know I set boundaries, you know, generally speaking, unless the project really needs me if it's a proposal or something that's really time sensitive, you know, I'll give. I'll still work a little bit on the weekends but, you know, for the most part, you know, at 5:30, I turned that off, like you might have noticed that at NAEP calls sometimes time zones on the East Coast time so I tend not to stay a lot for the happy hours and stuff like that, because I want to be with my family and spend all the time I can with them and, and with that you know I also make sure I find ways to kind of relieve the stress associated that can happen with some of these projects because you know while they're fun. Meanwhile really neat moments. There's still moments of stress where, you know maybe isn't exactly happy with the turn of events, maybe there's something completely, unbeknownst to us that kind of comes out of the blue. And so, yeah, I definitely have my mechanisms and most of that, I've already said a few times is hanging out with my family and spending time with them, we'd like to do golfing, that's a new one up, we used to live in Colorado. So it was skiing, but since we've moved here the closest is for Florida now close to skiing in Florida is near Green Bank West Virginia. But yeah, so, you know, trying to do the outdoor activities you know now so just like reading and relaxing, you know, Whenever I can get a good laugh.

Laura
So, so you like to read sci fi books, what are your favorites.

Michelle Rau
Oh and you know that kind of goes to like why I was so eager to get into the space stuff, when that started happening. I've always been I think I was a Star Wars girl back when Star Wars was brand new. I've always loved kind of Star Wars, Star Trek that kind of stuff, my dad. And so that was kind of a family thing with us but yeah, so I've just been some of it is just for research for work right like when I got that we had to read Contact and sometimes it's educational but I'm actually I picked up the book Stranger in a Strange Land, which is kind of a sci fi it's about Martian. I read that one like a long time ago in college and decided to pick it up again so it's, it's fine, you know, again, it kind of reminds you like, okay, it's really cool to work in this industry.

Nic 
Yeah. Laura Michelle is already knew I liked her, but now it's confirmed, and that's really, really incredible and I like to

Laura
That's why we ask these questions, you know, yeah, like, you can say like, Oh, I've been interested in doing this but I'm also a space nerd and I feel like I can connect with Michelle's So, and for space there is content.

Nic
Yeah, right, like the the after show of this is just gonna be me, asking Michelle 18 Space questions so. But you also mentioned something I think is really, you know, it applies to a lot of our listeners too you have you have military your military spouse, and you've moved around a ton, since you were young, since you were a teenager, pretty much, I think, and so I know that's a challenge for careers, maybe less so now than before but you've done a really great job with that so I don't know if there's maybe some advice that you have for others in similar situations that you could share.

Michelle Rau 
No, I, you know, it's interesting you say that how it was tough, like, to be honest with you, it kind of felt natural to me, you know, every job kind of like led itself to the next one so you know again it was taking those opportunities as they arose so moving from California to Colorado, you know, when you're younger, without families, it tends to be much easier to do those kind of moves.

And then with the military, again I was in a fortunate position that I was afforded an opportunity where it allowed for me to work remotely so I was working remotely, I guess that would have been about 17 years ago. And so that was a kind of a new concept.

Now, if those of you who might be familiar with a military wife, especially an officer's wife. The women don't tend to work too much or the wives don't tend to work I say that, then I have friends who are lawyers and who had like, Yeah, but you know there's kind of this like kind of the mix. Yeah, yeah, it's a mix, but it tends to probably be disproportionate to that most of society. Right now, you know I got involved in doing like officer spouses club and stuff like that so you know while I was working remotely, and I could do everything on the computer and I just spent my time in the office I was off so getting engaged. You know the spouses clubs and stuff like that which, You know, gave me that kind of interaction that I needed, and then after that it just kind of became more and more normal when I worked for started working for CH2M, there was an office, and that was fun, but you know at some point, the work that I do my team saw remotes, so we've been working remotely for quite a long time, so when it was kind of, I don't even know if I noticed that my son was in school and I had to figure that out, kind of worked out fine. So, you know, it was fortunate to be in an industry where it was so easy to just kind of go to that complete remote when Jacobs bought CH2M, the culture was a little bit different where Jacobs was much more office driven and the expectation was that you work in an office where CH2M was kind of on the leading edge of that might work kind of allowance, and so there was a little bit of justification that I had to do roughly a year before quarantine and then it's really not that hard. Again, you know, count your blessings. I was, we're in an industry that kind of allows itself and lends itself to that one,

Laura
Well Michelle, we're still we're getting close to the end of our time, it goes by so fast. Is there anything else that you want to share projects you have coming up or just anything we didn't ask you that you'd like to talk about.

MIchelle Rau
So you know within the NAEP organization, you know we have a couple of initiatives that we're working on are kind of exciting. One of the things we're doing is kind of building up our working groups. So, you know, those of you who are engaged with NAEP know we have Chuck Nicholson, who does NEPA, but we're kind of have some other groups too . I know Nic you've run one and, and we're trying to start up an environmental justice group, So I'm working with my coworker Emily Gulick, and we're getting some good traction on that we think that's probably one of the big issues in the industry right now, I'm going to call it a gross understatement, but kind of in that as environmental planners, we're really gonna have to watch for. So we're trying to set up a paradigm where we have individuals who are experts and individuals who want to learn more, an opportunity to kind of engage the working group so that's the one I'm kind of trying to spearhead a bit but more Nic was the one you did the coastal resilience,

Nic
Coastal resiliency Water Resources yeah and we love to have more people involved in that, in Yeah it was great. There's, there's a lot of new stuff coming up with that too.

Michelle Rau
We're trying to really keeping our finger on that change and having people can talk and be like whoa what's happening. Yeah, that's exactly what we're trying to do so. We'll see how those grow.

Laura 
Yeah, and thank you for plugging NAEP.

Nic
Yeah, thank you for all you do for NAEP too it's great, it's incredible.

Laura
Yeah, absolutely. And hopefully we'll see each other in person when these days soon.

Michelle Rau
Now, sounds like January, does it.

Laura
Any excuse to leave, Syracuse in the winter. Yeah. Last question. Where can people get in touch with you.

Michelle Rau   
I have an active LinkedIn account. So, anybody really interested I can use that venue, Michelle Rau Jacobs I think it should come right up. You happy to connect that way.

Laura
Awesome. Thank you so much, Michelle, it's been great talking to you today.

Nic 
Yeah. Loved it. Thank you.

Michelle Rau
Thank you.

[Outro]

Nic
And that's our show. Thank you so much to Michelle for joining us today. It was really cool to hear about her projects with NASA, and I'm really excited for that free trip to Mars that you promised me so I will follow up with her on that. And as always, please be sure to check us out each and every Friday, don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. And that's our show.

Laura
Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai