Megan Diaz, Senior Scientist
Megan Diaz joined Whitman in 2017. Almost immediately upon starting at the firm she began working on an environmental remediation project full-time in Connecticut. Megan was charged with orchestrating the phasing in of multiple teams for each step of the project and overseeing all remediation, containment, clean-up and inspection efforts.
With a degree from NJIT in environmental science, Megan is no stranger to jumping in waste deep with two feet. She interned for AmeriCorps, planning events for all ages focused on environmental issues, including a large event with Waste Management at a Camden Riversharks game. She then worked her way up in just four years to Senior Manager, Sales Training & Development for NRG Home Solar, where she provided oversight for the market managers and assisted with the development and success of their employees.
Once the Connecticut project was completed, Megan was back out in the field overseeing engineering controls and mediating issues for capping a landfill in preparation for it becoming a solar field for the Rhode Island power grid. This project married Megan’s career paths, taking her to RI where she served as liaison between the state, the contractor, and multiple companies, ensuring the project ran smoothly.
For going on three years now, Megan has been working on a sustainability project for a large pharmaceutical company in New Jersey providing full-time onsite environmental, health and safety support, which includes wastewater permitting, Spill Prevention, Containment and Countermeasure (SPCC) plans, wastewater studies, and proper handling and segregation of laboratory-produced waste.
When she wasn’t onsite, or running between NJ and RI, Megan was running. “I’m an avid runner and there was an incredible running trail in Rhode Island that went right along the water,” she recalled.
During her half-year stint in RI, Megan trained for her first half-marathon, which she ran in Brooklyn in May, 2018. She has run a half-dozen more since, and one full marathon (which she has sworn to never do again). One of her favorite events will always be the Brooklyn half, for which the last six miles were run on a highway in a freezing cold rain storm, and as she notes “the support from people coming out of their homes to cheer everyone on in the pouring rain was like nothing I had ever experienced.”
In addition to running, Megan loves to throw parties and plan events. Her garage is her workshop. In fact, she hosted a huge Halloween party in 2019 which raised $3,000, which was shared between American Cancer Society and St. Jude’s. Megan reflects on 2020 as a “learning year” and that the pandemic has taught her “to make sure the people you love, your family and friends, are aware of how you feel about them.”
She’ll soon have more people to love. Megan and her husband are expecting a baby girl in August, their first! We are excited to welcome the new addition to the Whitman family.
Posted on April 14, 2021
