Hi everyone! My name is Emma Hart and I am a rising senior at Ohio State studying Environmental Policy & Decision-Making and I’m so excited to be sharing my internship experience at Green Columbus this summer. This week was technically my second week, so I’ll share about last week and this week.

Last week I had the opportunity to visit the Linden Tree Nursery and plant tree samplings. I also learned more about Green Columbus’ mission to increase tree equity in Columbus. My boss showed me several maps of Columbus and a website called TESA that displayed tree canopy data and ranked different Columbus neighborhoods on the amount of trees in each area. I also updated the Green Columbus website and the StoryMap website with data from tree plantings. My boss also informed me of the current projects the organization is working on and the current status of nonprofits in Columbus and Ohio. It was interesting to hear these updates firsthand from someone in the nonprofit world. Much of the websites, data, and other information I was exposed to aligned very closely with my major coursework so it felt like all of the different subjects like GIS, law and policy, and environmental justice that I had learned about were converging.

This week I attended the Midwest Sustainability Summit in Cincinnati with my boss and learned so much about Indigenous Knowledge Systems in sustainability. Several of the speakers at the summit were Indigenous leaders from across the country who spoke about their experiences with advocating for environmental justice and being Native American in the U.S. It was awesome to hear their inspiring stories and perspectives. I also attended a breakout sessions about green workforce development that was also very interesting. I overall felt that I learned so much from attending this conference and it was certainly the highlight of my work week.