Staff Spotlight: Laura Fleming of Environmental Sustainability

 

Share a brief bio with us. My family’s connection to Poly goes back to 1931 when my father-in-law entered first grade. My husband is an alum and so are my kids. I worked in advertising for a couple of national publications for 10 years or so. After I had kids, I became interested in parent education and became a coordinator for a parenting program out of London. In 2011, I was asked to be an event coordinator for Poly, planning events for the head of school, board of trustees, admissions, and academic divisions.

 

Environmental sustainability has long been an interest and a passion. With my job in events, I was concerned about being responsible for generating waste, so I focused on ways to reduce waste at the events I planned. As I learned more about the sustainability problems around food waste and especially how it impacts climate change, I knew I wanted to educate Poly students about this issue. My hope was to implement an organics diversion program for the school. I was able to do a pilot program with PolySummer in 2019, where students helped separate 5000 pounds of food scraps from the waste stream. So instead of that food waste ending up in a landfill and generating methane gas, we were able to send it to a commercial composting facility where it became an organic fertilizer.

 

I received approval to work with the Middle School and copy what we did in the summer. The Middle School faculty was enthusiastic and found ways to integrate waste reduction into a flex unit and also created a student research project on Poly’s organics management process. Student interest from the class of 2024 led to Poly piloting an on-site composting system with the goal of “closing the loop” on the food and landscaping waste that is generated on campus. It’s exciting for students to see that waste products like food and dried leaves can become compost that can fertilize Poly’s plants and trees. It was this rewarding work with Middle School students that inspired me to pursue a master’s degree in sustainability leadership from Arizona State University. The program is focused on helping institutions plan and implement sustainable organizational change. I believe that Poly has an opportunity to be an independent school leader in climate action, and I look forward to helping the school achieve its environmental sustainability goals.

 

What do you do at Poly? I am still in the events role until October, but because events are lighter I have time to work on environmental sustainability. More projects are coming to fruition, for example, we are close to implementing food waste sorting campus-wide. Upper School students recently conducted a waste audit, and students in the Middle School Sustainability Club are educating younger grades about how to sort their lunch trash and why it helps our planet. Environmental sustainability can provide a lot of cross-divisional learning and leadership opportunities for our students. I see this role as not only what I can do with Dave Yamaoka, but how we can involve students in these efforts, i.e., doing research, presenting and also collaborating with other schools and sharing best practices. Climate change will affect youth the most, so it’s important for them to be able to affect change. 

 

What do you enjoy about your work? The event work was great because I’m a people person and the opportunity to socialize with people and get to know them was wonderful. I work with amazing people at Poly, and there are so many cross-divisional opportunities to get to know everyone and work with different departments. I think the same will be true with sustainability and will include more work with students.

 

How can others at Poly support you? With any kind of change will come resistance, but I’ve found that the Poly community is very supportive of these efforts. If we all continue to focus on ways that we can do things and not why we can’t do them, it will be really helpful moving forward. 

 

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time? Spending time with my family and friends, cooking, exercising and traveling. This Fall we look forward to visiting our son who is studying in Florence. 

 

What’s something you’ve watched or listened to lately that you’ve enjoyed? I’m pretty addicted to The New York Times’ The Daily podcast. Sustainability Defined is another podcast I enjoy, and the one I’m listening to now is a deep dive into sustainable landscaping.  

 

Who would you like to compliment for their work at Poly? I worked with Cheryl Flores for 10 years and she is probably the most efficient person I’ve ever met. It’s rare to find a piece of paper on her desk! Tech has helped me so many times, especially Jill Del Mar. Recently she helped me with a presentation, and she noticed that I had all this old obsolete junk on my laptop and spent 20 minutes cleaning it up for me because a) She’s just kind and b) I think it stressed her out to see it! Operations also makes my job so much easier. They are such hard workers and so friendly, so willing to help. I can’t say enough about every person on that team