Episode 5: A New Vision for Environmental Management at the Department of Energy

And so to kind of kick things off, you're now about six months into the job leading EM, especially given your unique vantage point, having a background that's been very different from many of your predecessors.

What has been the biggest takeaways you've had so far?

Yeah, thanks, Mike.

Actually, it's been eight months now, a little over eight months, although I joke with my wife that it feels like it's been about a year and a half.

I'm used to working hard, but this is probably one of the more demanding jobs that I've had in my career, including starting a company from scratch, which grew into a very large, vertically integrated real estate development company.

construction and property management company.

So there were a lot of sleepless nights doing that.

And as our field managers actually said last week in an intergovernmental meeting, this is not a nine to five job.

This is a 24 seven.

I'm always thinking about the next thing, the next meeting.

It's incredibly diverse, but I'm loving it so far.

You know, we always joked eight months in daily time represents about a decade in real time, I think.

Yeah, that's true.

I just wish the bureaucracy would move a little faster to keep up with the pace of things and the pace of change that we're implementing.

So you mentioned your background in construction and real estate.

How does that background, plus your military service background, shape your approach to leading EMs?

Yeah, that's a great question.

I'm sure there were a few head scratches when President Trump nominated me for this position.

But you know what? Everything just boils down to leadership.

And I think I have a great background with a civil mechanical engineering degree from West Point and from Stanford.

Engineers learn how to solve problems, learn how to identify issues.

I've always been very entrepreneurial as well and always look at opportunities to improve the way things are done and not just keep doing things the same old way.

So, you know, I think my career in the military... leading men in combat, being able to work in stressful environments, leading large fast track projects.

We used to joke that we called them build design because we were building as fast as they were being designed.

But those were very collaborative projects, which I really enjoyed and actually led me later on To use that same concept, starting Confluence, the company that my wife and I started 20 years ago now, to be a vertically integrated, to really look at cutting sort of the waste in the real estate development and construction process.