C
atharine Parker is an ecologist with over a decade of environmental, technical, and research-based experience in the public and private sectors.
What do you like best about the work you do?
The diversity of our work intrigues me the most. It lends itself to different service lines working together towards the same goal in order to provide the best possible solutions. In doing so, relationships are built not only within one’s own Service Line but throughout the company, as well. I also appreciate how action-oriented and enthusiastic everyone is about producing solutions for our clients and seeing the work through to the end of the project.
What are you currently working on?
As part of EHS Support’s strategic growth project initiative, I am exploring how to grow our expertise and offerings related to biodiversity assessments. In turn, this work will also benefit the expansion of EHS Support’s Ecological Services offerings. Additionally, I am working on a project aiming to evaluate conditions in various media to refine ecological exposure estimates for terrestrial, aquatic, and semi-aquatic receptors.
How can our clients benefit from this service/particular innovation?
Understanding impacts on biodiversity, which falls under the environmental leg of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), has been a growing topic, gaining in popularity as more attention continues to be put on ESG factors globally. We have clients interested in understanding their potential impacts on biodiversity, particularly their impact on protected habitats and special status species, so we are leveraging our team’s ecological expertise and geographic information system (GIS) capabilities to develop novel approaches to assess biodiversity.
Little known fact about you?
A long-term hobby of mine is to visit a few new U.S. National Parks a year. I have visited 14 so far, so I have a way to go until I have seen them all, but I will be visiting three later this year and am very much looking forward to the trip! My favorite hobby that I regularly participate in, however, is meeting up with my local off-trail run club that lays and runs trails through woods, little-known parks, and other areas you would never expect! The club is international, so I enjoy looking up the local club any time I travel because it’s a great way to see interesting parts of the city and surrounding nature that I otherwise would not have. In fact, last year a field event took me to the northwest, and I decided to stay a few extra days to run with the local club and visit Olympic National Park with some of the club’s members!
