Jill Van Hulle and Jennifer Lawson recently joined Aspect, in our (new!) Olympia and Seattle office, respectively. Here are five questions we asked to get to know them better…
Jill Van Hulle, Associate Water Rights Specialist
Where are you from? If you’re not from the Pacific Northwest, what brought you here?
I’m an Alaskan Girl to my core—grew up on Kodiak Island and finished high school in Juneau. I came to Washington for college and never actually meant to leave Alaska, but a summer internship with the Washington State Department of Ecology morphed into a permanent job and I never escaped!
What inspired you to pursue Water Resources? What made you curious about it?
I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t even realize the field existed—I thought I was interviewing for a job in the water quality program. For my first job task, I was handed a GPS unit the size of a car battery (it WAS a long time ago), dropped off with my hip boots in the middle of the Salmon Creek watershed in Clark County, and told to look for illegal water diversions. I was hooked!
What do you like best about your area of expertise? What excites you and keeps you motivated?
I love the nexus between water management, water law, policy, and science. Water Resources is exciting—I enjoy the variety of projects and people I get to work with.
What do you like to do when you aren’t working?
I like to build big campfires on my Cle Elum property and settle in with some whiskey (on ice) and maybe a good book. I also love to hike, especially if there is a chance to find mushrooms and dig for razor clams out on the Washington coast.
Where would you like to travel next?
I have a weakness for Hawaii and love to snorkel, hike, and eat buckets of poke from the local grocery stores. Longer range, I have good friends that do water supply work in Cambodia, and they have been begging me to go with them.
Jennifer Lawson, Environmental Planner
Icicle Ridge, overlooking Leavenworth, Washington
Where are you from? If you’re not from the Pacific Northwest, what brought you here?
I’m a rare Seattle native. I grew up in northwest Seattle. I moved away a few times and found I missed the green, the trees, the water, the mountain views, and my family.
What inspired you to pursue Environmental Planning? What made you curious about it?
My academic background is in forestry, botany, and landscape ecology. I spent a handful of years chasing seasonal field assistant and data collection positions, then two things happened: (1) I started to crave some creature comforts (living out of a backpack, alone or with one or two other smelly humans and being perpetually cold and hungry often left me fantasizing about hot water on demand, grocery stores, and an expanded social circle), and (2) I had a lot of time to stare at the stars and wonder why I (and others) do what they do: why do scientists study what they study? What is the application? How do we weigh and measure natural resource demands and desires with protection, conservation, and restoration of the natural gifts and ecosystems that sustain us and all life?
I looked toward some of my mentors and discovered yes, they were scientists by training and loved wandering in the woods, but moreover, they were writing papers, testifying before congress and working in multi-disciplinary groups to tackle big concerns and craft comprehensive resource management plans. I am inherently a detail-oriented person and saw environmental impact analysis and environmental planning as ways to expand my big-picture thinking skills and maybe do something that had a practical application and served people as well as plants and fish.
What do you like best about your area of expertise? What excites you and keeps you motivated?
Environmental planning is by nature collaborative, changing, a little bit messy, and ideally grounded in reason and science. It requires people to look up and talk to each other, to engage, consult and consider people, populations, and elements they may not otherwise. It requires compromise and adaptive management. There has been a growing buzz about social and environmental justice this past decade.
I see humans—individuals, societies and cultures—as an integral and inseparable part of the physical, biological and chemical processes that sustain them. Environmental planning is a powerful tool that offers the opportunity for inclusiveness and stewardship. I value and appreciate bringing stakeholders and ideas to the table, giving them a voice, and translating all the voices into practical, feasible and necessary strategies for managing and interacting with the natural and built environment.
What do you like to do when you aren’t working?
I need a lot of time walking outdoors to maintain my sense of grounding and being human, so I take any chance I get to walk, hike, or somehow plot one foot in front of the other and look at the sky. I’m also a nutrition science nerd and a podcast junkie. I can tell you all the ins and outs of “keto” and the autoimmune paleo protocol; walk you through a tailored elimination diet and reintroduction; and write a love letter describing the HPA (hypothalamic-pituitary-axis) and all the things we do in modern life to drive stress overload and knock that axis off-kilter. I love learning about that stuff. I also scratch cook most everything—out of necessity and interest—and am a total foodie at heart thanks to my years of restaurant and catering work to pay for school. Hanging out with my two wildly energetic and crazy daughters deserves an honorable mention.
Where in the world would you like to travel next?
Travel hasn’t been on my radar for many years due to a collection of circumstances. I’d love to go to northern England and Scotland and work with modern-day sheepherders for a stint, preferably in the spring and summer months.