June: Sarah Palmisano

THE CITY OF PITTSBURGH
Sustainable City Fellow

Sarah’s work as an SCA Sustainability Fellow in the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability and Energy Efficiency generally falls into four categories: education and outreach, continuing personal education, internal work, and volunteering.

Education and outreach work includes things like hosting or tabling at appropriate events, symposiums, or conferences as a representative of the Mayor’s Office or the SCA. Education and outreach for June: completed and sent out the first e-mail update from the Office of Sustainability and Energy Efficiency to over 400 subscribers.

Continuing personal education includes attending various conferences, symposiums, workshops, or classes to increase awareness and understanding of a wide variety of sustainability and environmentally-related topics.
Personal education for June: wind investment conference; attended water matters conference to learn from leading innovators about new technologies and the importance of water; attended Liquid Knowledge – a discussion of the Water Matters conference hosted by the New Pittsburgh Collaborative; participated in the River Quest Environmental Boat Tour to learn about the history of Pittsburgh’s rivers, current initiatives to improve water quality, and environmental challenges area waterways face; attended the Green Innovators tour of the Connelly Center; attended a day-long grant writing class through the Carnegie Library.

Internal work describes work being done within the Mayor’s Office to incorporate sustainability into City operations and services.
Internal work for June: met with various Pittsburgh authorities to discuss including them in the second version of the Pittsburgh Climate Action Plan; attended Pittsburgh Climate Initiative meeting to discuss increasing city-county collaboration.

Volunteering is anything that she finds fun and worthwhile to help a good cause or a good friend after hours!
Volunteering for June: helped plant and weed sunflowers on 2 GTECH lots; helped construct a rain garden with East Liberty Development Inc.