Associate Kristine Edens will present as part of a distinguished panel of presenters at the monthly meeting of the South Sound PRSA on March 11, 2010. The group will be discussing the value of communicating with diverse audiences, including languages other than English, the hearing and visually impaired, and culturally diverse groups. Whether it’s a required part of your engagement or you simply want to reach more people, this presentation is sure to be valuable. Kristine joins Lauri Jordana, Conexión Marketing, Kevin Nathan, Washington State Department of Services for the Blind, and Idalie Muñoz Muñoz, MuñozMedia for what promises to be an intriguing panel. Join us in Tacoma for PRSA.
The Puget Sound Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) awarded EnviroIssues with a Certificate of Excellence for our work on the City of Kenmore’s SR 522 Improvement Project last night at their annual Totem Awards. City of Kenmore staff and construction management firm HDR, attended the event to accept the award with EnviroIssues’ Amy Turner. The award recognized our construction outreach methods and strategic communications support during major highway construction on SR 522, which improved safety for drivers, pedestrians, cyclists and transit. Visit the Kenmore project Web site for more information. Congratulations to the SR 522 Project Team!
EUCI’s 4th annual Public Participation in Transmission Siting Conference brought together energy professionals from around the country. EnviroIssues’ Associate Ray Outlaw joined panelists from Wisconsin and Florida to discuss the use of online tools as an increasingly useful part of the public involvement process. Topics and questions focused on improving design through analytics, maximizing user experience, incorporating social media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube), and mapping. Case studies from across the United States highlighted shared opportunities for effective public involvement on transmission projects, both large and small. Learn more about EnviroIssues’ energy projects.
EnviroIssues co-ed basketball squad continues its path to glory in the Puget Sound Basketball League. The team is comprised of employees, as well as former employees and friends of the company. Already off to a winning start to their season, The Issues will take their ball game around the Seattle area in search of another league title. For information on where to root for The Issues basketball team, contact us or follow us on Twitter.
The City of Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability recently recognized EnviroIssues’ Portland Office for improving its recycling practices and reducing the amount of waste it produces by implementing all of the City of Portland’s five recycling steps. Our Portland office is now Recycle at Work Certified. For more information about the program, visit Portland’s Recycle at Work Web site. Good work, Portland!
New employees Brian Feldman and Blair Scott joined us this December from the University of Washington. Brian graduated with a BS in Environmental Science and Resource Management, and a BA in Environmental Studies, and Blair completed the Community, Environment and Planning program with a BS in Environmental Science and Resource Management, making them both excellent additions to our team. Both bring energy and fun (as shown in their photo!) to the Seattle office and will be assets to our work in the Puget Sound region as well as the east side of the state. Welcome, Blair and Brian!
HOT lanes, tolling and multi-modal transportation projects have long been part of EnviroIssues resume, so it came as no surprise to Principal Amy Grotefendt and Senior Associate Linda Mullen that the rest of the country is having similar discussions about these topics. Both attended the three-day Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting in Washington DC last week to keep up on current transportation trends and learn valuable lessons from other transportation experts. Highlights included topics relevant to the USDOT’s new goals of safety, congestion pricing, traffic trends, safety, livable communities, repair, economic competitiveness, environmental stewardship, environmental justice issues and public involvement.
Diane Adams, principal, chairs the ACEC Small Firms Council and EnviroIssues will be facilitating the 2010 ACEC Discussion Series and hosting sessions along with ACEC Washington. The series presents an opportunity for ACEC firms to share information and insights on a number of topics in an informal and open environment. The topics reflect the prioritized interests of the Small Firms Council and range from social media to cost structuring and contract negotiation. Non-ACEC members are welcome to participate in the discussions. Visit the ACEC Web site for more information.
EnviroIssues would like to thank you for making 2009 another successful year! Next year we will be celebrating our 20th Anniversary and hope you’ll be a part of the festivities. Check back here for regular updates or join us on Twitter. Happy Holidays!
For the fifth year in a row, EnviroIssues’ staff participated in the Childhaven Adopt-a-Family program, brightening the holiday season of two families in need of support. Childhaven is a therapeutic day care program committed to stopping the cycle of abuse and neglect of children in King County and EnviroIssues has a long tradition of supporting their holiday giving program. Our staff purchased new winter jackets, new shoes, dress up clothes, board games, gift cards, and many other gifts for the Childhaven children and their families. We look forward to continuing our involvement with Childhaven for years to come!
EnviroIssues’ Seattle office recently pledged to donate a record amount of money in their fifth annual United Way Workplace Giving Campaign. Since 2005, EnviroIssues’ employees have continually increased their voluntary giving, and, despite a difficult economy, this year was no exception. To raise additional funds, Alissa VandenBerghe organized the first ever EnviroIssues Book Drive, bringing in extra money for the campaign and providing staff with extra holiday reading! Several employees will also be donating their time this year by volunteering with the United Way’s free tax preparation campaign for low income families.
EnviroIssues’ Portland/Vancouver team helped package more than 44,000 meals at the Oregon Food Bank in November. Sporting fashionable sanitary outfits, EnviroIssues’ team enjoyed working together and meeting new people while repackaging bulk sacks of oats into smaller two-pound packages which were distributed to families across the state to provide a hot and hearty breakfast. The Oregon Food Bank serves the Portland metropolitan area and an entire network of 935 hunger relief agencies throughout the state of Oregon.
The Issues soccer team is lean, mean, and green…wears green jerseys, that is. In its fifth consecutive season, the Issues is playing well and working to improve on their current 4-2 record. Once a week, you can spot the Issues’ by their bright green jerseys as they take on the competition in Seattle’s Co-Rec Soccer Association. While some players resurrect skills from grade school and others bring college-level experience, all do a fine job representing EnviroIssues on the pitch.
Twenty EnviroIssues staff and significant others ran the Winter Pineapple Classic on Nov. 14, 2009 in support of finding a cure for Leukemia and Lymphoma. The 5k obstacle course is a challenge for teams of four who must complete the course together while carrying a pineapple! Staff members have been participating in the event in support of a friend living with Leukemia for two years. All 20 participants showed their competitiveness and boasted strong finishes and are pictured here at the finish line. The event raised more than $350,000 for the Lymphoma and Leukemia Society.
Several EnviroIssues staff joined the Friends of Cedar River Watershed last Saturday to remove invasive knotweed from the riverbank and replace it with native trees and shrubs. The Friends of Cedar River Watershed’s multi-year project to remove knotweed is sponsored in partnership with the Cascade Land Conservancy, Seattle Public Utilities, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and King County Conservation District. Thank you to those who joined us in improving habitat for fish and wildlife and reducing the chance of stream bank erosion while giving back to our community!
EnviroIssues recently welcomed three new staff to the Seattle office to support growing project needs. Project Coordinators Ethan Bancroft, Chelsey Funis, and Natalie Graves bring diverse educational backgrounds and new energy to EnviroIssues and will be supporting our work on various projects in the Puget Sound region and throughout the Northwest. Welcome Ethan, Chelsey, and Natalie!
Once a quarter, EnviroIssues staff volunteer to serve dinner at a local low-income homeless women’s shelter. EnviroIssues employees and family members purchase the food, prepare, serve, clean up after the dinner, and support the shelter with a food drive (this time donating more than 15 bags of food!). While the dinners and food drives are always fun, we enjoy being able to connect with, and support, disadvantaged members of our local community. Supporting our community is one of EnviroIssues’ core values and we are grateful for the opportunity to help make a difference in these women’s lives.
IAP2 Trainer Penny Mabie led an interactive discussion about online tools and public participation yesterday at EnviroIssues’ Seattle office. Several participants joined us in person but most joined via the online webinar. The IAP2-based dialogue covered using online tools and social media, the challenges in using them, and how these tools help us meet our public participation goals and objectives. Thanks for joining us!
Interested in joining the Puget Sound IAP2 Chapter list for future events? E-mail Penny.
EnviroIssues is pleased to, once again, support the ECOSS annual benefit on Oct. 29, 2009 at Herban Feast in Seattle. EnviroIssues has supported ECOSS (Environmental Coalition of South Seattle) for more than 10 years and Project Manager KaDeena Lenz currently represents EnviroIssues as board secretary. “I have enjoyed working with ECOSS throughout the past year and cannot imagine the Seattle community without their leadership in environmental education and urban redevelopment,” said KaDeena, “The auction is a fun evening to raise money to support all the great work we do.” Join us!
EnviroIssues’ Linda Mullen presented on the panel, “Can Public Interest PR fill the Gap Created by Declining Investment in Journalism?” at the Northwest Journalism Conference on Saturday, Oct. 10, 2009. She was joined by Janelle Guthrie, Communications Director for the Washington State Attorney General, and Doug Honig of the American Civil Liberties Union. The session was moderated by Kenan Block of Block Communications.
Linda shared strategies from her experience advising clients in achieving their strategic goals and working with media. Her presentation highlighted a case study about distributing video to readers entirely through social media services. All the panelists contributed engaging insights about the relevance of traditional media and the variety of new tools to help organizations get their message out. Regardless of the medium, some issues remain the same: credibility of the source, the importance of the watchdog role of the press and the difficulties reaching people that are traditionally missed.
NEBC’s 2009 Brownfields Conference, “Building Sustainable Communities”, was held in Tacoma on Oct. 14. As a sponsor and participant, EnviroIssues’ principal and owner, Pat Serie, facilitated a dynamic panel of experts on policy issues related to brownfields redevelopment. The panel, including Bill Chapman, K&L Gates; Jim Darling, Maul Foster Alongi; and Martha Hankins and Jim Pendowski, Washington State Dept. of Ecology, brought in perspectives from public and private sectors. The lively discussion about the regulatory framework for brownfields cleanups in Washington included statewide policy issues, the regulatory update process, and industry and legal perspectives on making the cleanup process for brownfields work under MTCA.
EnviroIssues Sustainability Committee recently implemented a composting program in the Seattle office. In partnership with CleanScapes and City of Seattle’s Clear Alleys Program, and through the staff’s commitment to composting lunch scraps, coffee grounds, and other compostables, EnviroIssues will help to reduce our carbon footprint for 2009. This effort is in addition to our current sustainability efforts including encouraging the use of alternative transportation by subsidizing employee ORCA passes, programming computers to automatically shut down overnight to save energy and eliminating bottled water from our office by installing an in-sink water filtration system.
EnviroIssues was featured in the Sept. 14 DJC article, "Environmental firms look at how recession has changed their field." See what Amy Grotefendt, a principal at EnviroIssues, said about the economy’s effect on how EnviroIssues does business and how we are using new tools to maximize our value to clients.
Engaging the broadest range of people in complex project decisions is getting easier, thanks to new interactive online tools. EnviroIssues shared tricks of the trade for implementing online media tools for public engagement with a national audience of fellow community involvement specialists at the U.S. EPA’s eleventh Community Involvement Training Conference in Seattle this August. Erin Taylor and Chris Morse led a 90-minute session called “Overcoming Boundaries: Using Online Media Tools to Effectively Engage the Public”, an interactive and educational session designed to help public involvement practitioners overcome real world boundaries by integrating online media tools with traditional public involvement activities. The session highlighted proven online media tools using examples from projects across Puget Sound and beyond. Take a look at the presentation here.
EnviroIssues’ senior principal and founder, Pat Serie, was recently named to the board of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce. The appointment recognizes Pat’s more than 20 years of involvement in the Seattle community. Having built EnviroIssues from a one-woman shop to a company of 75 people, her passion and enthusiasm for working together with other organizations is evident in her commitment to community engagement and volunteerism. “The second thing I did in 1990, after getting a business license, was to join the Seattle Chamber. It has been a terrific resource for our company as we’ve grown,” Pat recalls. Pat has had a great influence in the field of public involvement in the Northwest and it is truly an honor to have EnviroIssues represented among the leadership of the Seattle Chamber.
On July 30, the City of Kenmore held a ribbon-cutting event to celebrate completion of Phase II improvements on SR 522, part of a three-phase rebuilding of SR 522 in Kenmore. EnviroIssues helped organize the event and more than 75 attendees joined City of Kenmore Mayor David Baker in celebration. Guests and keynote speakers included Representative Ruth Kagi, Representative Maralyn Chase, Washington State Transportation Improvement Board Executive Director Steve Gorcester, and Sound Transit Boardmember and City of Issaquah Deputy Council President Fred Butler.
For the past two years our team has provided construction outreach support for this important project, which improved safety for drivers, pedestrians, cyclists and transit, and beautified Kenmore’s gateway. EnviroIssues loves celebrating milestones with clients and planning the ribbon cutting provided our team with a perfect reason to put on our party hats, grab our ribbon cutting scissors and invite the neighborhood to help mark this important project success.
On July 21, EnviroIssues’ associate, Sarah Brandt, co-lectured with HDR’s Rob Berman, at the University of Washington Tacoma about the challenges and opportunities of public and agency involvement. After introducing the requirements and real-world application of public and agency engagement specified in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Sarah helped lead the class through a State Route 520 Program case study. The class was asked to identify creative ways to engage stakeholders in project decisions related to Foster Island at the Washington Park Arboretum, where environmental, recreational, tribal, and neighborhood interests intersect. The class was up to the task, with suggestions ranging from information booths at the University of Washington’s Red Square to hiring local rock stars as project advocates.
EnviroIssues was honored to have two of our staff, Penny Mabie and Erin Taylor, represent us by presenting at the International Association of Public Participation (IAP2) Cascade Chapter Conference in Bend, Oregon this June. Erin, with co-presenter Janet Matkin of WSDOT, presented a session called “Let’s Talk Tolls,” a case study of outreach, policy implementation and lessons learned through the 520 Tolling Implementation Committee public involvement effort in 2008. Penny and co-presenter Martha Tuttle of King County Wastewater Treatment Division presented “What are you bringing to the party?”, an interactive learning session on communications styles and how our personal styles affect our work as public participation practitioners.
Congratulations to Kristina Walker for being recognized by The Business Examiner’s 2009 40 under forty program. All candidates for this selective program are under 40 years of age and have made significant contributions to businesses, industries and communities in the South Sound. More than 100 individuals are nominated each year and the qualifications of each candidate is carefully reviewed by a panel of alumni prior to the Business Examiner’s selection of the top 40 individuals. Kristina’s recognition as one of the 2009 40 under Forty honorees is extremely well-deserved and we applaud the work she has done for EnviroIssues and the greater Tacoma community. Congratulations, Kristina!
EnviroIssues has a long tradition of supporting the Hammond House, a shelter located next to our downtown Seattle Office. Recently EnviroIssues’ volunteers spent a great evening together preparing and serving a delicious enchilada dinner for 40 women. EnviroIssues’ staff are already looking forward to the next Hammond House dinner this fall.
Congratulations to Amy Grotefendt for being appointed to the board of Transportation Choices Coalition! TCC is a coalition of citizen groups, businesses, public agencies and concerned individuals committed to bringing Washingtonians increased and improved transportation choices. Having worked on a number of important transportation projects in our region, Amy provides strategic communications and will bring a business perspective to the TCC board. Amy looks forward to working with TCC to help the region move critical transportation and development projects forward in Washington state.
EnviroIssues had a team of 10 during the 2009 Group Health Bike to Work Month Challenge in May 2009. Rain or shine, our team was out enjoying the ride, getting our exercise and reducing our carbon footprint. We had several new commuters hit the road this year with two of the newest leading our team to a strong finish. Our team logged over 645 miles during the month long challenge. Our legs are tired, but we can't wait for next year!
Ara Swanson, along with staff from the Washington State Department of Transportation’s SR 520 Bridge Replacement and HOV Program, co-presented at the Women’s Transportation Seminar (WTS) International Annual Conference on May 21. The presentation, titled Cross-Agency Coordination: Advance Planning for a Catastrophic Failure, was one of just 12 topics selected out of 150 abstracts submitted. Ara’s presentation focused on the communications plan portion of the overall SR 520 Catastrophic Failure Plan, which also included transportation management strategies as they related to multi-agency, jurisdiction and organization coordination. Check out the team’s presentation here.
At EnviroIssues we deliver creative, reliable, and meaningful community involvement and communications for challenging projects every day, across the Northwest. What's new? We are continuing to invest in our skills, which translates to greater value for you on your projects -- efficient, targeted, and focused activities that give you the information and answers you need before you make decisions. Meet our staff recently certified by the International Association of Public Participation (IAP2). IAP2 is an association that seeks to promote and improve the practice of public participation in relation to individuals, governments, institutions, and other entities that affect the public interest throughout the world.
To date, 18 of our project staff have received IAP2 certification for effective planning, communications and techniques in public participation. Our IAP2 certified staff provide our clients with access to proven methodology in public participation planning that applies rigor, is objectives-based, values-driven and decision-oriented.
These staff are:
Michelle Allison, Paige Cureton, Kristine Edens, Katie Fredlund, Susan Hayman, Hillary Johnson, Penny Mabie, Emily Neff, Ray Outlaw, Peter Ovington, Erin Tam, Andrew Richardson, Libby Smith, Lauren Stensland, Holly Stewart, Erin Taylor, Kristy Van Ness, and Kristina Walker
EnviroIssues is pleased to announce that Penny Mabie, Senior Associate, has recently been recognized by the IAP2 Board as a licensed trainer for the IAP2 certificate program. Penny holds a public participation certificate from IAP2, and attended the IAP2 trainers’ academy in Edinburgh, Scotland and delivered a training practicum here in Seattle to earn her training license. We are pleased to offer Penny and the IAP2 public participation certification program as a new service to our clients and teaming partners.
The Issues, EnviroIssues basketball team, has had an impressive performance on the court this past year. The team has an overall record of 15-6 in the Puget Sound Basketball League and finished the spring season with 8 wins and 2 losses. And most exciting is their championship victory in the “Best of the Best” tournament this spring. Led by EnviroIssues employees, John Chaney and Sarah Brandt, The Issues has and will remain a force to be reckoned with on the court.