It’s Friday night in Washington, DC’s Anacostia neighborhood. Laura Miller is outside washing her car as a neighbor stops by the yard to borrow a few hand tools. Folks stop by to chat and extend cookout invitations. Everything you need is “just around the corner,” from your library to your grandma’s house. But the neighborhood has changed since Miller was young. Solar panels have appeared on rooftops. The river has gotten cleaner. Residents East of the River have full-service restaurants to enjoy. These are the changes that can happen when the government and the people work together. Working directly for her neighbors is what Miller does today as a program analyst with the DC Department of Energy & Environment.
Miller was born and raised in DC, and the Posse Program brought her to the Midwest and to UW–Madison. Her journey began in nuclear engineering, but it didn’t feel like the right fit. She continued on, changing her major to engineering physics. “This physics thing isn’t it,” she thought after trying it out. Inspired by Madison’s culture of sustainability, she turned her focus to environmental work. She found herself in Becky Ryan’s Science Hall office, relaying what she’d done so far. “What are you doing wasting your time with things you don’t like? Get a grip!” Miller remembers Ryan, the Nelson Institute’s distinguished advising manager, saying. Ryan continued to advise Miller and she found a home in Science Hall, double majoring in environmental studies and geography. “Becky changed my life.”
After graduation, Miller continued her studies at Unity Environmental University, where she earned a master’s in urban ecology and sustainable planning. She wanted a school that walked the walk when it came to sustainability. “UW really instilled that in me,” she says. By completing her degree online, she could return home to the District and work in the city. “I love DC. That’s why I came back, it’s why I stay, and it’s why I work for the city.”
“You see the difference in your neighborhood because you’re a part of it.”
— Laura Miller
Today, Miller works for the DC Department of Energy & Environment, the leading authority on matters related to energy and the environment in the District that strives to improve the quality of life for all residents and natural inhabitants in the city. “I feel like I’ve always been a government girlie,” she jokes. Both her parents worked in government, her mom with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and her dad in the DC Department of Transportation. For her mom, a government career meant stability for her family and being able to spend more time with her kids. Her dad saw it as a way to give back. In the wintertime, he’d pick up shifts to plow snow off the city streets, like those in their neighborhood.
That type of life became Miller’s dream. “Stable pay, simple living,” she reflects. “You give back to your community; you see the difference in your neighborhood because you’re a part of both it and the forces that impact it.” She couldn’t imagine doing anything else, and now she hopes to sell that dream to the next generation. She sees a future in which workers enjoy their jobs and contribute to the green economy. “I love my job. I dream others can too. You can have both. You can have it all,” she says.
In her role, she manages two of the department’s workforce programs: the Green Fellow’s Leadership and Development program, which trains local graduate students as program analysts; and the Green Trades DC Technical Training Program, a one-of-a-kind partnership with the local chapter of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). “Typically, unions are self-sufficient, so they do not take outside funds,” she explains. “Through this partnership, though, we’re able to offer support and services for District residents to pursue green careers in the trades that they might not have been aware of before via IBEW’s pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship programs.”
Educating and inspiring the next workforce generation, Miller believes, is key in reaching a fully green economy. In her role, she’s able to work across sectors — “unions, private sector, public sector, academia, you name it” — to inspire both the up-and-coming and existing workforces to see almost any job as a green job. But she also has bigger questions about the green transition; questions that she can’t answer in her day-to-day work.
Washington, DC set a goal to become the “healthiest, greenest, most livable city for all [District] residents” by 2032. “What workforce is needed to actually make these things happen? How do we support the financing for this? We want this green economic transition so bad, but what is it going to take?” Miller wonders.
This fall, Miller was accepted into the urban leadership and entrepreneurship PhD program at the University of the District of Columbia, where she plans to investigate these questions and more. “It’s expanding on questions that we and other folks have internally, but that nobody can focus on right now.” But since these questions directly affect the wellbeing of her city and her community, Miller won’t let them rest unanswered. If she can’t make change as Laura the Public Servant, surely, she can as Laura the Scholar — or, perhaps, just Laura the Washingtonian.