Our New Associate Director and Grant Manager!
Experienced project manager, educator, and researcher joins the Alliance
As the Alliance has grown rapidly in membership and in funding over the last 14 months we've identified a need to bring on more expertise and experience. We are proud and happy to announce that Dr. Z Grabowski will be joining our team to accelerate our seeking of grant funding, grow our capacity, and provide organizational support to manage our increasing projects.
Supported by both the Community Foundation of Eastern Connecticut and the Long Island Sound Community Impact Fund through Restore America's Estuaries, Dr. Z brings his internationally recognized experience in collaborative and Intertribal watershed restoration, green infrastructure, and transformational research to advance the regeneration of people, ecosystems, the economy, and the built environment of the Mystic River Watershed.
When not working as a sustainability catalyst, Z is an avid outdoorsperson, paddling, bodysurfing, surfing, mountain biking, trail running, camping, backpacking, and simply being in nature with his daughter Oona, partner and artist/guide extraordinare Gretchen Klens, and their fluffy companion Zosia-Kaya.
Q+A: Who is Z?
I'm a Polish 'arrivant' - a person recently arrived in the country through no choice of their own - and I grew up in Eastern Connecticut, in the headwaters of the Pequot [Thames] River, spending time in both romantic Willimantic, and the People's Republic of Mansfield, and have paddled many of the navigable sections of the Willimantic, Natchaug, Fenton, Shetucket, Quinnebaug, and Pequot Rivers, including a source to sea excursion from Storrs to New London. I wrote up similar regional paddling excursions on the Blackstone River from Worcester to Providence on my blog. Prior to completing my PhD at Portland State University - which focused on the social-ecological-technological dimensions of dam removals and urban infrastructure evolutions, I worked as a Demolition Specialist with Northeastern Engineering and Co., at a sales associate at the Willimantic Food Co-op, a research assistant with the David Post Lab at Yale University supporting a number of river herring research projects, a research assistant with Denise Burchsted on her PhD research investigating the roles of beavers as ecosystem engineers in the Northeast, as a research assistant on a REDD+ feasibility study with the Indigenous Community of Dos Bocas in the Comorca Ngobe-Bugle, Panama, the King's [formerly the Prince's] Foundation for the Built Environment in London, England, and as a summer Fellow at The Breakthrough Institute in Oakland, California.
Post-PhD I worked as a Postdoc on several different urban green infrastructure and flood resilience research projects, including a nationwide study on the Equity of Green Infrastructure, with Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, The Urban Systems Lab @ The New School, and The Technical University of Munich, and most recently as a state-wide Associate Extension Educator and Researcher in Water Quality at UConn's Center for Land Use Education and Research.
Q+A What's Next For the Alliance With Z in the Mix?
I'm super excited to be working with an Alliance of Tribal Nations, municipalities, businesses, non-profits, and everyday folks, working to regenerate the people, land, ecosystems, and economies of the Mystic River Watershed. I know already our approach is making waves as we collaboratively weave new frameworks for linking Tribal knowledge and governance, scientific investigations, and regenerative design practices. I think the time is right to heal intergenerational rifts between people, and between people and the land. For me this has several key elements that align with the Alliance's guiding principles and horizon points, and other ideas emerging from our exciting Design Circle Process.
We are engaged in collaboratively creating implementable plans (Watershed Resilience Action Plan) and regional scale networks of conserved and restored agro-ecosystems, which support life in ways that are consistent with Tribal ways of relating to forests and other diverse ecosystems that rebuild soil, restore wildlife populations, and also increase nature's bounty for human enjoyment.
The second involves working together to identify key interventions in built infrastructure. These include aquatic habitat-oriented projects like fish passage: making sure dams and road crossings don't impede aquatic organisms while also making them more climate resilient. This also requires rethinking and transforming how we plan infrastructure systems to create multi-functional green infrastructure systems in our more urbanized and built-up areas, including working towards a regional active transit network that also involves making streetscapes safer for pedestrians, bicyclists, and automobile users while also being better for local businesses, cooling our towns and cities, cleaning our stormwater, and increasing our flood resilience.
Other infrastructure interventions we know we need include education and implementation on alternative septic systems, increasing energy system resilience, and improving the safety of our water supply, especially for our most vulnerable populations. There have been promising advances in home and municipal scale biogas and waste recapture systems, and alongside the elimination of excess fertilizer use in homes, farms, and commercial properties, these seem to be the only long-term solutions to eliminate polluting nutrients and harmful bacteria in the Mystic River Watershed and Fisher's Island Sound. Research shows that states around the country, and many other cities and towns around the world, have been successful in using advanced green stormwater infrastructure that filters and metabolizes most pollutants found in stormwater, although CT has lagged in implementation, often due to municipal funding limitations. To that end we've already secured funding for our participation in the national Green Stormwater Infrastructure Accelerator, and have our eye on other sources of transformative funding.
It's our Future! We Can Design and Build It So It Supports Future Generations, too!
I'm excited to join the Alliance and continue our journey together of doing exemplary regenerative and community-based work and having fun while we do it!
I look forward to meeting our many members in the months ahead, and hearing from folks on what issues matter most to them as we engage in the collective weaving of our future!
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