As an undergraduate at Yale in the 1960s, I developed a reverence for nature that helped launch me on a career in education as a teacher, administrator and school principal.  When we celebrated the first Earth Day in April 1970 just before graduation, our nation faced multiple challenges:  the environmental crisis, racial injustice and the Civil Rights movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, a political and generational divide, and a new day for women’s rights.  In my career as an educator, I incorporated environmental history and outdoor education in my teaching. And then as a school principal, I helped lead the effort to make Head-Royce School, a K-12 private-independent school in Oakland CA, a “model green school.”  In 2008 we rebuilt the school including one of the nation’s first LEED Gold high schools, received Green Business certification for our healthy operations, and created a curriculum for ecoliteracy.  About this time Yale had declared its commitment to reducing its footprint nearly 50% by 2020, and the University’s vision inspired my work.  In 2010 I retired as a principal so that I could devote my energies to helping promote greener, more sustainable K-12 schools.

In 2018 I joined Yale Blue Green (https://yalebluegreen.org/about-ybg/) to help advance the University’s sustainability mission. YBG itself is “a shared interest group of the Yale Alumni Association (YAA) and is led and supported by Yale alumni and serves as a hub for thought leadership, collaborative action, lifelong learning, and social impact on a range of topics relating to the environment and sustainability.”  In 2021 I joined the YBG Leadership Team to encourage alumni philanthropic support for the University’s green mission.  Giving Green to Yale outlines ways alumni can contribute to the Office of Sustainability, the School of the Environment, and the new Planetary Solutions Project.  I also reported on Yale’s recent Gold certification by the American Association for Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), the premier benchmarking organization for colleges and universities. Yale Blue Green is a powerful network of alumni, and we hope to encourage the University to lead the global effort to address climate change and environmental sustainability.