Have you met Shannon, Program Team Lead for Energy Management and Sustainable Operations? Spend a few minutes getting to know her a little better.
What’s one thing you can’t live without?
Food and cooking — and the ability to unwind while cooking. I eat vegetarian, and I like to explore lots of different types of food.
Tablet or paper?
Generally speaking, tablet — mostly because everything is connected to Google drive, and it’s extremely handy.
Where is your favourite place on campus?
My favourite thing is that we’re so close to the river valley. I like walking along Saskatchewan drive, and being able to access the river valley on my bike is great.
If you could travel anywhere in the world (under normal circumstances), where would you go?
A vineyard in Italy. I’m a big fan of vineyards — they’re usually in beautiful, picturesque landscapes, and tend to be very well cared for. I’ve been to some in the South of France, but never to an Italian vineyard.
You can invite anyone — alive or dead, real or fictional — to dinner. Who would it be?
My grandma on my mom’s side. She passed away when I was three. She was a nurse, and she was a fierce, strong woman. I would have liked to have gotten to know her better.
If you could switch jobs with someone else at the U of A, what would you do?
I think working in some of the museum collections would be really cool — maybe geology, the fossils… I once saw an incredible collection of butterflies. I think it would be a really neat opportunity to explore some of those artifacts.
What does ‘uplifting the whole people’ mean to you?
To me, universities make society better. I think they obviously play a role in educating a population, but also in putting out useful knowledge and research into the world that makes society a better place to be.
If you could solve any problem in the world, what would it be?
Climate change — my day job is working on reducing our footprint as a university. If we could solve that, I think we’d be in a much better place as a world. It’s one of the reasons I do this job.
What three words best describe your U of A experience?
Diverse — even just in terms of the different things I’ve done here. I did my undergrad in genetics, and then my master’s in microbiology, and now I’m working here in sustainability.
Fulfilling — it’s given me the opportunity to do some of the things that I’m passionate about. It’s been a lot of values-based work.
People — I’ve met a lot of people who are now friends or really great colleagues. There are always really amazing people doing really great stuff.
Shannon is the Program Team Lead for Energy Management and Sustainable Operations at the University of Alberta. She works across and beyond the Facilities and Operations portfolio to improve the sustainability of the university’s operations on a wide range of topics such as waste diversion, GHG emissions, the campus food system, active transportation and sustainable purchasing. She devotes much of her spare time to food, trying out new recipes and exploring local restaurants.