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Laura: Where did you grow up and where do you live now?
Amanda: I'm actually in the house where I grew up now. I came in early for Thanksgiving, so I'm working remotely for a few days. I grew up in Long Island, New York in Commack. I'm an hour outside of New York City, so I grew up right around the beaches, and it was always nice going into New York City as a kid. When I started college I moved out to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and I did my master's at the University of Michigan. Now, I'm in Milwaukee, so I've always joked that I'm moving further out into the Midwest.
Laura: Could you tell me a little bit about the kind of work that you do?
Amanda: I work as a public health strategist focused on the built environment for the Milwaukee Health Department. My main role is to build partnerships and work collaboratively on different projects to improve the health of the community. I work a lot on housing, transportation, and climate change issues. One of my main projects that I lead is our department's Community Health Improvement Plan. We get together community organizations and other departments that are all working on improving the built environment in Milwaukee, and we bring people together to work on policies and system level changes.
Laura: What would you do on your perfect weekend in Wisconsin?
Amanda: I'm more of a summer person than a winter person, so my perfect weekend is being outdoors the entire time. I love movies too, so I'd start my Friday night catching a movie at the Oriental Theatre in downtown Milwaukee. On Saturday mornings, I love to go for walks around Lake Park and then go grab a coffee at Stone Creek. Then I like to read outside in the park or check out different festivals or events that happen to meet different people and try different kinds of food.
Laura: What brought you to Healthy Climate Wisconsin?
Amanda: I have always been very passionate about creating healthier environments. Back in 2020, I started listening to the podcast "How to Save a Planet," and it peaked my interest in climate change. Through working on Milwaukee Elevate's built environment action team, I met Cassie Steiner from the Sierra Club. She said that I needed to meet Victoria Gillet and sent an email introducing us. I had a meeting with Victoria and Abby, and they explained what they were doing at Healthy Climate Wisconsin...I thought this was a really exciting way to put away the books and reading and actually get involved with advocacy. I really liked and respected all of the members and was excited to get involved.
Laura: What is one of your favorite projects that you’ve worked on with Healthy Climate Wisconsin?
Amanda: My favorite thing has been working with the Forward We Energies Team. I went to the strategy retreat in May and was placed with a couple of other folks working on Forward We Energies. I hadn't done any organizing around utilities, and I'm a customer of We Energies. Through that process, I learned so much about energy burden and how it impacts health. We worked together to put on a Lunch & Learn at Outreach Community Health Centers, and I had great conversations with providers about how energy burden was affecting them and their patients. Then it was my first time testifying at a utility hearing, and it was a pretty intimidating experience but it was exciting to be able to connect such an important topic to the health of the community that I represent.
I'm really excited to continue working with that team and recruiting more members to join us, so we can continue to fight against the onslaught of horrible proposals that We Energies is proposing for southeastern Wisconsin that will really set us back in reaching our climate goals and add so much unnecessary and harmful pollution to our communities.
Laura: If you could broadcast something to every Wisconsinite about health and climate what would you say?
Amanda: I would say climate change is real. It's bad for our health and the planet. It's caused by human activities, but there's hope. We created this problem, so we can be the ones to fix it. There are so many ways we can address climate change and many of the solutions will actually make us healthier.
Laura: What is a topic that you really geek out about?
Amanda: I'm a huge nerd about reality television, especially social strategy competition shows like The Bachelor and Survivor and Big Brother. I think you can learn so much about people by throwing them in an environment where they have to work with other people that they would never encounter in another life and then compete for power and see how people handle it and don't handle it. It's both a distraction and a really good lesson on life. It's my version of sports!
Laura: What brings you hope?
Amanda: I think people are really what brings me hope. I think all of the people that I've met working in public health and through Healthy Climate Wisconsin are just so passionate, empathetic, and caring. There are a lot of people there to sit with you through the hard days but then also make you laugh and feel creative and feel like new things are possible. When all of the people are getting us down that are resistant to change and want to keep doing things the way that they have been, it just brings me so much hope that there are many other people that think something better is possible and together we can achieve it.