As a recent hire at Hollaway Environmental + Communications Services, Blythe Payne works as a Communications Specialist.
Blythe graduated from Texas A&M University, where she majored in Environmental Geosciences with a focus on Human Impact on the Environment and minored in both Meteorology and Public Health.
During her time at the university, she interned as an Outreach Specialist at the Texas A&M Office of Sustainability. Blythe’s role as an Outreach Specialist included preparing materials and collateral about topics in sustainability and presenting to her fellow students, both one-on-one and in large groups. This was her first exposure to community outreach and engagement in topics related to the environment and sustainability, which she found meaningful and rewarding.
Upon graduation, she worked in environmental air compliance consulting for four years in the DFW area, primarily in New Source Performance Standards and National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollution reporting.
“Consulting is challenging and pushes you to solve problems in creative ways,” says Blythe.
Although she learned a lot during this time, Blythe found the most meaning in her interactions with fellow humans and wanted her career to pivot to a more human-centered experience.
So far at Hollaway, Blythe has had the opportunity to take an active role on multiple projects. She has worked with the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), the City of Galveston, the City of Hedwig Village, the Harris County Toll Road Authority, Montgomery County, and the City of Houston in multiple public involvement and public engagement efforts. Public engagement and public involvement are extremely important to how Hollaway crafts solutions for current and future structural and environmental problems. In order to make good decisions about the future, the public should we involved in the decision-making process. There is always a new challenge, a new way of looking at things, and room for creative solutions to complex problems.
“It is fascinating and educational to learn more about humanity through this process. What makes people tick? What motivates them? What do humans need and want from their environment, infrastructure, and governments?” Blythe says.
Blythe plans to obtain her Envision Sustainability Professional credential later this year and her Project Management Professional certification at some point in the future. She plans on continuing her work in public involvement projects with TxDOT, as well as honing her project management skills and thinking about creative solutions for the future. Blythe explains, “We are now experiencing a record-breaking summer; climate change is here. Public involvement is essential to address the infrastructure changes that will need to happen to continue our way of life, and to strive towards a more fair and equitable future. Hollaway is a part of the solution, and I am proud to be a part of it.”
We are happy to have Blythe on the team. Public involvement and public engagement are important to the work we do as communications experts here at Hollaway.
