City Schools, Spring 2010

Q. What’s your background and how did you become Director of Sustainability at the DOE?
A. I’m originally from Istanbul, Turkey. I came here as a foreign exchange student to Woodland Park High School in Colorado and went on to receive my mechanical engineering degree from the University of Denver.

I grew up watching my mom, a chemical engineering professor, taking water and soil samples to study effects of pollution on human health so it is not so surprising that I am passionate about the environment.

After graduating from college, I worked for a number of companies and was mainly focused on energy and transportation sectors as a design engineer and project manager. I became LEED certified [a certification with the U.S. Green Building Council] and found that I most enjoyed sustainable design and energy engineering, and decided to take my career path in that direction. I encouraged my clients and the companies that I worked for to do more green work.

Before joining the DOE, I was a consultant to the Mayor’s Energy Conservation Steering Committee, working on energy master planning and conservation projects.  

Nearly 100 middle-school students from three schools participated in a Green Expo at the Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women (UA Institute) in downtown Brooklyn on Earth Day to learn about a subject that didn’t even exist a mere 20 years ago.

The students were there to learn about sustainable engineering, a burgeoning field at the intersection of environmental science and structural engineering. Students and professors from the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly)—who organized the event along with sponsor National Grid—and a host of other leaders from the field spent the day with the students with the hopes of inspiring a new generation of green engineers.