Van life with water views | water strategist

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Manon Fisher
My parents taught me at a young age that your work is really important, but really you work so that you can live the life that you want to live. And my parents both care a lot about their trades and their crafts and get a lot of joy out of it, but at the end of the day, they wanted to be traveling. They wanted to be on the road. They wanted to be experiencing how incredible the world is and meeting people and really living the life they wanted to live and work was intended to enable that.

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[Introduction]

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Dave Weich
Hi, I’m Dave Weich. And you’re listening to Work-Shaped Life.

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The water industry accounts for about a quarter of the work that my company, Sheepscot Creative, does each year.

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For a guy who majored in Literature, this remains one of the most satisfying and yet seemingly random turns in my own work-shaped life: how much I’ve learned, and continue to learn, about water.

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A while back, I emailed one of my favorite people in the industry to ask, “Who should I interview for this podcast?”

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Holly didn’t hesitate: Manon Fisher.

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Holly and Manon work together at Brown and Caldwell, an environmental and engineering firm that focuses on the water sector. Manon specializes in identifying the barriers and risks standing in the way of environmental resilience, tackling complex challenges like finding common ground among Western states about how to manage water in the Colorado River.

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As Holly put it: “Manon understands the technical details and challenges to a degree that most people can't. You almost forget she’s not an engineer. She is wicked smart and ambitious,” Holly says, “but she’s the only person I know at her stage who also takes a month off—at least—every year.”

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[Interview]

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Dave Weich
So I'm wondering if someone just asks you what you do, what do you say?

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Manon Fisher
Officially the answer is that I'm a consultant who works with water and wastewater utilities. I help communities think about and prepare for their water future. So sometimes that could look like facilitating a strategic planning process, that could look like working with wastewater utilities to recover some of the carbon and nutrients within wastewater—and I can talk a lot about resource recovery. But underneath all of these more technical activities, I'm helping people understand how today's decisions impact tomorrow's lived reality for communities and the outcomes that they experience.

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Dave Weich
You're not an engineer. Would you call yourself a communications person or is that stretching it too far in that direction, too?

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Manon Fisher
Probably too far of a stretch. I work alongside a number of communications professionals.

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My undergrad studies, I got a Bachelors of Science in Environmental Management and City Planning, which was really looking at, What are the different environmental and urban systems that sustain people and community? How are those interconnected? And that work moved me into inherently looking at utility spaces.

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I thought, okay, I studied environmental management and planning, I'm going to go work for the Department of the Environment. I grew up in San Francisco and really wanted to work for the city that helped raise me and felt very strongly about public service. I guess my career trajectory, to your question, it was really asking questions about, how can we understand the systems that connect us, the resources that are being entrusted to municipalities and utilities. The people who work for these utilities have to make really consequential decisions. So I was more often than not just curious about how those decisions got made. And that took me to work for our Public Utilities Commission.

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And I think this is where I get really passionate about public service even though I'm now working on the private side. I've always been drawn to public service, and I think it connects to being the daughter of immigrants and an older daughter and older sister and someone who just feels responsible for the people around me, but I would say that my career is less identified by are you an engineer or are you a comms person? I'm neither, but I do feel very strongly about working with public institutions and helping to make these really complex and consequential decisions feel easier to make, safer to make, less risky to make.

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Operating at the intersection of engineering and communications and public engagement and long-range planning kind of gives you this interesting line of sight where you get to help connect the dots across a number of fields.

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Dave Weich
How close is what you're doing now to what you maybe thought you might want to do, let's say, 10, 15 years ago?

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Manon Fisher
Hmm. I don't think I knew off the bat that I wanted to work in water. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a garbage man. My dad's a plumber. My mom's in construction, a general contractor, incredibly successful GC in a very male-dominated space. But I always loved thinking about what happened with your trash and understanding that waste never felt like waste.

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I grew up in an immigrant family. Both my parents are immigrants to the US. I think we always had a really strong ethic around not wasting and you know being very mindful of the systems that we operated within. And now looking back 15 years over my career, the path makes more sense to me, but while I was on it, it was never like, okay, I'm gonna do step one through five, and this is my five-year plan.

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When I was a kid, it was being excited about what happened to your garbage when it left, and then that translated into wanting to work in this environmental field and space. Early on, I started working in water and wastewater and learned that it's one of the few things that touches every aspect of society. Every community depends on drinking water and sanitation and healthy ecosystems and reliable infrastructure. And so it really sits at the intersections of a lot of things that I found interesting: public health, economic development, food systems, energy systems, community wellbeing.

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And so I've stayed in this work for this 15 years not because water is some niche topic that I wanted to be the subject matter expert on, but almost the opposite—because it was the thread that touched everything and connected everything. And I think it's a very interesting way to understand how communities function.

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Just like my curiosity of where did the garbage go once they put it on the truck, I now get to work in water and understand where does it go once it goes down the drain.

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Dave Weich
Where's your life in all this? Where does it sit in your life? Are you a person who is very protective of your personal time?

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Manon Fisher
I really like the work that I do. And I think that that is a unique opportunity. I feel very strongly that work is not my whole identity. I love to garden. I love to cook. My hobby is having hobbies.

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When I worked for a utility, I think there was a much stronger sense of that, like work-life balance. You leave work at work. This was also kind of pre-work from home, and we had a separate work phone and personal phone. I mean, working in the public sector does give you a different, true break between your work and your life. Whereas in consulting, you tend to carry more of your work with you and remain available to your clients for longer hours of the day.

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But I also, as a result of working in a consulting capacity, I have an incredibly flexible life. And the lifestyle that I'm able to have is really important to me. I travel a ton. I travel a ton for work and get to work with clients across the country, but I also travel a lot for fun and I'm able to create a life where work plays a really meaningful part because it allows me to contribute in conversations and subject matters and with communities that feel really identity-aligned.

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But when you ask me who I am, it's not that I am a consultant. That isn't the identity factor. I think I am a connector of peoples and communities. I'm a translator between different audiences. I help people feel less afraid in the face of complexity and uncertainty. And that feels really exciting to me in how I get to show up every day.

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Dave Weich
What is the most recent meaningful travel that you undertook and what, why is that what you're going to choose?

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Manon Fisher
The most recent trip I took was a two-week trip to Italy with my partner and my sister, which was very fun. But I think, again, I'm very fortunate and prioritize travel in my life. We probably take one or two international trips a year.

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The year prior we were in India for a month celebrating one of my dear friends' weddings, who's from India, and then got to travel around and explore more of the country and get to meet folks and connect with people.

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I mentioned my parents aren't from the US. I grew up splitting my time between San Francisco, Guatemala and Tonga. Tonga is a beautiful and smaller island nation in the South Pacific; Guatemala in Central America. My parents lived in both of these places when they separated when I was younger. So travel and connecting with people and learning from different cultures and experiencing different communities and ways of life has always been a really core tenet of mine. And I do think that that really shows up in how I work. You see how different people are bringing different perspectives of a problem. People are bringing different perspectives of a solution.

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Dave Weich
Can you travel and separate yourself? Is that how you see the world when you move around it?

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Manon Fisher
Absolutely. Yeah, I see the world through a lens of water. I'm a scuba diver. I love to be in the ocean. I love to be on any water body. There's no bad boat days. I always say, people are like, the water's rough. I don't care. I want to be out. It's hard to think of a time that I'm happier than when I'm in water, on water, near water.

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I don't know, without sounding woo woo woo, it feels spiritual. Like it is really me in my element. And also when I'm traveling and when I am in countries that don't have water infrastructure, I inevitably get into conversation around it.

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Growing up, we were right on a river in Guatemala that over the 35 years of my life in visiting Guatemala regularly and being there, just seeing the shifts in water, seeing the risk of privatization of water, seeing the equities and inequities of water. You can't ignore it. You can't not see it when you travel.You hear it in conversation that people have. You see it in politics, but you also see it in families. You see it in how people… I think, daily decisions that people make.

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We aren't so far removed from days where women and young girls couldn't go get higher or any education because they had to carry water. People to this day still, spend, even in the US, on tribal lands that don't have access to water infrastructure, people are still spending hours of their days going to get water. So I think it's easy for people to think like, that's a conversation or that's what's happening in a developing country.

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And my name actually is an interesting story. The name Manon is a French name, but Manon of the Spring or Manon des Sources is an opera. This character, Manon, was the daughter of a farmer, and she lived on this farm with her father and there was a river that ran through their farm. And one day the local council or you know I don't recall if it was a monarchy, maybe it was the king or the bigwigs of the town, redirected the spring that fed their farm.

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And she effectively was this rebellious water activist who brought the spring back to community in order to bring water back to the farms. And I don't think my mom knew that I was going to work in water—I'm sure she's going to listen to this podcast—but whether the name shaped me or, you know, it was written in the stars before at all…

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Dave Weich
Were you named after that character?

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Manon Fisher
I was named after that character.

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Dave Weich
That's kind of amazing.

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Manon Fisher
So I find it interesting that I think I was always meant to work in water.

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Dave Weich
Is it true that you lived in a van for a while?

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Manon Fisher
I did.

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Dave Weich
Tell me about that.

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Manon Fisher
During the pandemic, my mom and I built out a van. I mentioned my mom's a general contractor. We have families of plumbers, electricians, every trade, you name it. And so it was very much a family affair. And we built out the van at a perfect time, right when everything was shutting down. And I was transitioning from working for the PUC to my current consulting role and this kind of goes back to that lifestyle piece—for the first time I was able to work remotely. It didn't matter where I was as long as I had internet connectivity.

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And there was so much of the US that I hadn't seen. I had grown up abroad and spent a lot of time traveling internationally, but this just opened up a different kind of appreciation for how vast the US is and where all you can go. And I grew up in a van with my dad actually well before we built out our van in 2020. But…

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Dave Weich
Pause for a second before we get... What does that mean? I grew up in a van with my dad.

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Manon Fisher
Yeah, I grew up in a van. My parents were not normies. That’s the only thing I can think of…

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Dave Weich
Okay, okay.

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Manon Fisher
We grew up in a pretty non-conventional structure setting. My parents taught me at a young age that your work is really important, but really you work so that you can live the life that you want to live. And my parents both care a lot about their trades and their crafts and get a lot of joy out of it, but at the end of the day, they wanted to be traveling. They wanted to be on the road. They wanted to be experiencing how incredible the world is and meeting people and really living the life they wanted to live and work was intended to enable that.

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And so… Yeah, my parents spent a lot of time in a van. God, I wish I knew the make and model, but an old, beat up van that they threw a mattress in the back of on top of some milk crates and some cans of tuna fish and, you know, some pots and pans. And before I was born spent a lot of time in Mexico, in Guatemala, in Central America, and they would come back to the States to work and make enough money and then leave again and go back on their trips. And then I was born, and we did a lot of it still. I mean, photos of me bathing in a five-gallon bucket somewhere in Mexico or us doing our laundry in a river somewhere in Guatemala.

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Yeah, it was very much just kind of part of this hippie, nomadic lifestyle. But always with this anchoring of coming back to California and then going back on these adventures. And then when my parents split, my dad went into business with his business partner and established a business down in Guatemala. And so I would go out there for three months at a time and live with him and then come back to the States and be with my mom.

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I think there was a long time where I kind of pendulum-swung back and thought, okay, I need certainty and I need structure and I need all these things. And so my 20s were actually much more structured than most people's 20s. I had a government job. I was very… Yeah, I kind of grew up pretty quickly. And coming into consulting and having that flexibility in my life really allowed me to embrace these parts of my upbringing that I didn't really think would be possible to have both, to have this really fulfilling, interesting career and kind of go back to being that hippie in a van.

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So during the pandemic, you know, drove across the country for a month. That was incredible. Spent some time up in Montana and Idaho in the van.

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I remember once having a client workshop in Boise but having the van—I was up in like outside of Spokane at some point—I woke up at a campsite, got dressed in my professional business attire, drove the van to the airport, flew to Boise, did my full day workshop. Love that client team, such a fun city. Flew back to the van and then went back to the campsite.

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Dave Weich
In one day or was it overnight?

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Manon Fisher
In one day.

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Dave Weich
That's awesome.

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Manon Fisher
And I work for a company that knows all of this like this isn't a secret. This is very much an outcomes-based, performance-driven organization that says, if you show up, you do your work, your clients are happy, you're happy, they want you to show up as that whole individual. Because I think people recognize now that if you bring your full self to work, that probably means you're gonna be happier and you're gonna like your job a bit more, and you might stick around longer, and you might not find a reason to go work somewhere else, and you probably show up as an interesting and creative thinker as well and so yeah I think becoming more comfortable with that takes time and takes experience and knowledge of self, but I'll tell my clients this and my company this, but I really try to bring a more casual approach to what we do, not out of any disrespect, because there is a huge amount of respect that needs to be brought into these conversations and with these leaders and individuals, but also the reminding that we're all people and we all have our version of, you know a van somewhere in Montana that they want to go be on and getting to talk to my clients about fishing or about the recent hikes that I went on or the trips that I'm taking. I mean, they always want to hear the last place I went, and it's fun to share and it allows us to connect on such a personal level. And so, it's been really refreshing to be able to show up that way at work.

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Dave Weich
May I ask how old you are?

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Manon Fisher
35.

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Dave Weich
You've had a very successful, let's say, first chapter of your career, however you want to break it up.

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Manon Fisher
Yeah, 15 years, it's kind of crazy.

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Dave Weich
Whether you feel like you have any sense of what the future will bring or not, what do you think of when you think of… You have a whole career. Where might that go? What kinds of things do you fear or perhaps aspire to?

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Manon Fisher
I've been reflecting on this a lot because 35 feels like an interesting age and it happens to coincide with this kind of mid-career point if you assume a 30-year career. And I think there's been a noticeable shift. I can't so much speak to the future. Ironically, I work on like 30 to 100 year planning horizons and yet I don't have a five-year plan. That's just not kind of who I am. I can help other people with it. It's like a doctor who maybe has terrible eating habits. I don't know.

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Dave Weich
Right.

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Manon Fisher
But early in my career, I focused a lot on technical solutions. I was thinking, you know, if the solution already exists, why aren't we doing it? The answers would seem obvious. You build the project, implement the new technology, move forward. And then I really realized I was missing something. I was like, well, what do people see that I'm not seeing? And business school and system business school and this specific class on strategy and systems thinking really helped me understand something that now feels so simple but was really transformative, which is that every system is perfectly designed to get the outcomes it's getting. So if you don't like the outcomes, you really need to look at the system and ask why that's the case. So I started focusing more on the conditions that caused the outcomes.

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And so I stopped thinking just about technical solutions and started thinking about what are the incentives in place that are motivating people to make these decisions? What's the culture? What's the leadership? What governance structures exist? Is there trust? What's at the core of these relationships that's enabling innovation, or whatever the thing is that you're trying to enable, or preventing it from moving forward? And so I still think in this way today. I think a lot about the conditions that need to exist for this change to occur.

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I think climate change makes a lot of this more apparent, more urgent. And the lesson is that we're not trying to solve for uncertainty, but we're recognizing that we have to operate within it. So moving from a place where I thought the problems were technical in nature and that the solutions were therefore obviously technical to an appreciation that the challenges are far more anchored in systems, anchored in trust, and in relationship. How can we talk about what we're really facing? What are local government leaders really facing when they think about these water challenges? And then how do we, with that candor, begin to build systems that can really meet the challenge of today and into the future?

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So yeah, it's been an interesting arc. People want to do the right thing. They're just balancing competing priorities and limited resources and public expectations.

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You know, the future of my work, or just the continuation of my work in the face of climate change and all of this uncertainty that we're facing, whether it's political, economic growth, water supply—there's so many layers to this—I really think that resilience and our ability to do anything is gonna come from relationship and come from doing it together.

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I think we're seeing this in utilities. We're seeing this in community. One utility might be really reluctant to take a risk. But ten utilities together, learning from each other and with each other, can share that risk because the fear that they each carry and bring to the table is distributed. Suddenly, people find the courage to move forward together rather than fear going it alone because they don't want to mess up.

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We have more courage in teams. We have more courage within our families to do something, rather than by ourselves. So no one person has enough courage to solve climate change, or no organization is gonna figure out this water crisis that's existing in the West around drought. But together I think we really tell a different story.

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And I think the strongest communities and ecosystems and cities and institutions are the ones that understand that they're connected. I think that once you see those connections, it's a lot harder to think of “How are we all limited?” But you start thinking about the possibility that that connection brings. So I don't have an answer for you, but I am excited about the next 15 years.

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Dave Weich
Yeah. If I were to ask the same question and ask you to move your focus from work to life…

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Manon Fisher
I want to continue being the person, either as an individual or professionally, that can listen to the challenges of my peers and my friends and my community, and bring curiosity and compassion to what they're dealing with. And not try to solve their problems for them or tell them what to do, but understand the trade-offs that they're facing and the fears that they're bringing into those decisions that they have to make.

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And I'm so fortunate that my job right now is to do exactly that. It's to listen to people's fears and help them understand and think out loud about the trade-offs that they have to make and help them move forward more confidently in how they choose to show up in their communities.

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Dave Weich
If you have a career that satisfies you, I think some of the question that naturally follows is, If this satisfies me and what am I learning or seeing or understanding that I can apply to my actions the rest of my life? Because you're spending how many hours a week in this particular vein focused on specific questions and problem solving.

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Manon Fisher
Yeah. And it's funny because I… At work, I'm definitely a problem solver, but I do a lot of listening and I do a lot of… I hold a lot of space for people and my clients to think through these complex challenges, and I bring them the data they need. But ultimately I feel this really strong ethic of:  I'm a consultant, I'm not here to make a decision for you. You are the leader in your utility, in your community. You're the technical expert. I'm here to give you what you need to feel more confident making that decision.

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When I show up in my communities, I like to think that I bring that same logic. But when I have worked a 45-, 50-hour week and I am a little stressed, what comes out is the fixer. It's the like, all right, here's what you should do. I can already map it out. can give you a work plan. I can give you the scope and schedule and budget for how to do it all. Because that's the tactical, you know, and it's really easy to revert to the tactical when you don't create space within yourself to show up with patience and thoughtfulness. And I would be doing a disservice to anyone listening if I said that, yeah, I show up every day, everywhere I go with this great patience and this ability to see beyond some of the, are we allowed to swear?

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Dave Weich
You can swear.

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Manon Fisher
See beyond some of the bullshit. That takes a lot of patience. And I think I probably show up better at work with it. And what I like to remind myself is, when I'm operating at my best and I really just think I crush it at work, it's not because I was the technical expert. It's not because I knew the right answer. It's more often than not because I left space for someone else to talk and I asked a really thoughtful question and I was able to synthesize some disparate takeaways in a room from people who might not agree with one another, but I was able to hear where they did agree. And so my lesson to myself is often like, okay, if you did that at work because you were trying extra hard to do a good job at work, what does that look like if you bring those skills into your community and you show up there with as much patience and grace as you can?

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And yeah, sometimes because you get paid to do it, you do a better job. And then in your personal life, you sometimes forget to bring all that. And the older I get and the more invested in my community and my relationships I get, the more exciting it is to think that these are pretty unique offerings that I can bring to day-to-day things.

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Dave Weich
Yeah, it's funny because what it reminded me of was this time when—this is quite a few years ago, but—someone was giving me a hard time literally, explicitly because they said that I was treating them like someone on a project at work. And I was like, well, I work in communication, and we're dealing with a communication breakdown. I don't really see what difference there is because…we're just people. This is how I deal with people.

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And, you know, it was interesting because I was willing to accept on the one hand that they felt, I don't know, commodified or something. You know, you're treating me like just anybody. And I was like, well, no, I'm treating you with what I've come to understand as effective sort of communication approaches to resolve a problem. And again, it's funny doing this podcast and just in general, more and more thinking about where that line between the things you learn at work and the things that you apply in your life, just it doesn't really even always exist because it's just me. And I wish I could say like I bring some other superpower to work and that makes me so successful. But it's really the same guy.

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Manon Fisher
Yeah. This is a very recent lesson for me around kind of bringing your whole self to situations. Maybe getting a little personal now, but that's kind of the point, I guess.

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It always felt safer to compartmentalize, you know. This is who I am with my family. This is why I'm with my friends. This is who I am at work. And I think you do that long enough and all those parts of you just burn out. They feel disconnected again and they feel siloed. You lose the, you know, the connective tissue that makes you a whole human.

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And I think an aha moment I had at work recently was… It used to feel like you should work really hard, and I can do the hard thing and I can take on the task that's going to be a challenge for me. And people are always like, “Take on a stretch job to push yourself and grow.” And, I firmly believe in pushing yourself and getting out of your comfort zone. But I remember feeling like work was always kind of hard when I did that. I was like, man, I'm trying really hard and putting in a ton of work, but I'm going to do it. I'm going to put the spreadsheet together. I'm going to do the technical analysis and I'm gonna show that I can do it. And what I've recently been playing into is like, but those aren't my strengths. Really getting into appreciative inquiry, which is awesome for anybody who's not yet familiar—go research appreciative inquiry.

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What's working? What are you uniquely good at? Lean into that as much as possible.

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And I've spent maybe just the last year thinking about that and really thinking about where am I uniquely special at something? And everybody is uniquely special at something. It could be something you don't even think of as being special at, but it is something you have, you have the ability to do it, and it feels effortless to you. And for other people it would feel so impossibly complex to even begin.

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And I've recently kind of found that niche for myself. And I've said, I don't want to do the things that don't come naturally to me. Not because I don't have a growth mindset, but because I actually think I'm much better at it. And other people are telling me, wow, I don't know how you even approached that. For instance, I can make it feel a little more tangible: I work with a lot of engineers and brilliant PhDs, scientists… I'm constantly in awe of the people I get to work with. And when we talk about how we present really complex information with a lot of uncertainty to a client, it can be really challenging for people. Because they're like, I have all this information I want to share with them, but I have two hours. I'm like, all right, well, how do we communicate this in a way that meets the audience where they are, gives them the information they need, but really asks the important questions that are going to make a difference in how the decision gets made?

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And I can do that pretty quickly. I can kind of pick apart the pieces that feel most important. I can see the connective threads between the seemingly disconnected ideas or concepts. And I can tee up a conversation to be really productive. And my engineering counterparts are so thankful. They don't need me to do the engineering. They don't need me to do anything technical or know what the right answer is, but to be able to support in that way that helps them significantly feels really fun for me and energizing. And again, I think really working to where one plus one is three. You're working to be more than the sum of your parts as a team. And so I've just really enjoyed that like letting it feel easy and being okay with and being excited when it feels easy. Because it means that maybe you've kind of caught your stride a little bit.

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Dave Weich
Was there someone in your life that helped you understand what that particular talent of yours was? Was it just positive reinforcement because you seem to be having success in a realm? Did you identify yourself? Because I think that's a challenge that a lot of people face in aspiring to do that is that they might not feel confident enough in their own perception of what they're good at and they're not necessarily getting the reinforcement. And then it can be, you know, a little bit scary saying, “I'm going to go in this direction.”

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Manon Fisher
I've benefited deeply from mentors in my life. One mentor in particular, Karri Ving. She and I work together still to this day. We started working together at my first job with the SFPUC. So that was in 2013. I think I met her first in 2012 though when I was with the Department of the Environment.

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And I truly, my life would not be  the same without Karri's mentorship on a personal level, on a professional level, and when you ask that question, “Did someone help you see what it was that you're uniquely good at?” Yes, without a doubt.

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Because I think, maybe it's just me, maybe it's others, it is so hard to look into yourself and take credit for something you think you might be good at. Or even know if you're good at it, especially if it's not something that has a direct right answer output. You know, you can know if you’re good at math if you keep getting the right answers in math. The things that I'm good at are not quite so obvious. They weren't and haven't been so obvious to me.

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But Karri has been really instrumental in providing that feedback and saying, “Hey, did you see how that went? What do you think changed the outcome of that conversation or that meeting?” And asking thought provoking questions to help me see it myself. And it's really valuable, and it speaks to the importance of—again, I guess this is just me being a broken record—but community and differing perspectives and helping to really bring a different vantage point to something. You probably can't see what it is, you know, what your superpower is, but other people can. And having people who you feel comfortable enough going to to ask, or hopefully having those relationships.

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And I think we need to take it on ourselves, and I now try to pay it forward to others and say, “You know, I saw how amazing you were in that thing. It looks like that comes really naturally to you.” Or, “It looks like you put in a ton of work and preparation, and you crushed it” whether or not it comes naturally to you. And recognizing people, not just recognition for accolades but recognition so that they truly believe and understand where it is they can best shine and best show up.

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So I've been incredibly fortunate. I worked with Karri at the SFPUC. I worked with her now at Brown and Caldwell. And she's, yeah, truly changed my life and reminded me of how important it is to continue doing that for other people. Because if I could have half the impact in someone's life that Karri's had in mind, it would be incredible.

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Dave Weich
Is there anything else that you want to talk about or that you thought we were going to talk about that we haven't?

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Manon Fisher
I mean, I thought we were gonna talk more about work, but I think that's also just the mindset that I'm constantly in. I don’t know, I think… Well, here's maybe something that is worth sharing. People early in my career really encouraged me to pick a lane and stick to it. And I think...

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From the outside looking in, people might look at my resume or my LinkedIn and say, okay, she's worked in water for 15 years, like pretty straightforward. But if you work in the water sector, you can see that my work has gone from resource recovery program development to asset management to capital planning to community engagement to strategic planning, climate resilience and adaptation. Biosolids reuse. It really runs the gamut. An oftentimes people now are like, “Wait, you work on that, too?” Or, “Wait, should I bring you in on this?” So people struggle to understand how and why. So early days, it was, Be careful with scopecreep. And you should pick a lane and you should become an expert in it…and it just never felt right. It never felt right for me to just head-down, do one thing. I was always asking questions about the other project. I was always trying to understand, “What about what's happening over there?” D on't worry about that. That's separate. And I had this gut feeling of like, it's not separate though. It really is connected.

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I try not to give advice that's not solicited, but like if there was any advice I would give someone, it's don't silo, like, look for the connections between seemingly disparate things because they're likely connected in some way or another.

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And I'm really thankful that I've been given the opportunity to be in the room. You know, early on I was like a note taker for a lot of meetings and I got to be in rooms that I probably shouldn't have been in because of how junior I was. But I was adding value by taking notes. And this is before AI where the robots take notes for you. But, man, getting access and an understanding of how people make decisions and think, and seeing early on that it's connected, and then always kind of saying yes to different opportunities and projects that gave you different ways of looking at a problem. It's given me this really rich spread of knowledge that I think helps me now.

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I joke that I'm the glue to the glitter. So all of our engineers and subject matter experts are the glitter. They bring this really inspiring technical knowledge that's like, wow, shiny, cool. And I'm the glue that helps it stick to something and become adoptable and become trusted and embedded within organizations and communities. And so I'm just really glad I didn’t pick a lane, I guess. Yeah.

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Dave Weich
Yeah. I mean, that makes perfect sense. And it also completely aligns with everything you've been talking about. I mean, I feel the same way about most things, because I just have a similar, I think, perspective in the sense of like, I always want to know how things work. And you can almost never figure out  how things work by staring at them too straight.

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Manon Fisher
Right. You gotta look upside-down. You gotta like pull out the screws on the back of the remote to see what's happening underneath.

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The way my brain works is that I need to understand the full picture. If I'm asked to solve for X, but I don't understand the formula that that sits within, it's going to be impossible. And so I think, you know, I really hope that workplaces continue to allow for different people to participate in meetings. Bring the comms person in with the engineering people, bring the finance people in with the engineering people. Because without seeing the big picture, the individual parts can't do their job effectively. And I think we now live in a day where there are no single-subject problems. There are only complex, multi-layered challenges that we face that are going to require all hands on deck.

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Dave Weich
Thank you very much for taking the time.

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Manon Fisher
Yeah, of course. It's been great to chat.

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[Outro]

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Bailey Cain
On the next episode of Work-Shaped Life:

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Kayla Dantz
I like to call myself a photo textile artist. So a large part of my process is photography, and then a large part of it is I'm weaving fabric. So I have a physical studio where I create the art. And I'm also a store owner, I guess you could say. So I sell the art, whether that's to clients, I do commission work. I also make original work, and I sell that on my own website. Sometimes I sell that to galleries. I also do have a print subscription, which is really fun.

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Bailey Cain
Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to hear the episode when it drops. In the meantime, check out the Work-Shaped Life Substack for essays, photos and deeper dives into our episodes.

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Work-Shaped Life is produced by Sheepscot Creative. It’s hosted by Dave Weich, edited by Michael Nipper and me, Bailey Cain, with production support from Benna Gottfried, Rosie Struve, Amelia Lukas and Kate Sokoloff.

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We’ll be back in two weeks with Kayla Dantz. Thanks for listening.