Staff Spotlight: Micah Stanovsky

For Micah Stanovsky, it really started with all the hiking, camping, berry picking, rock finding and bug watching: 

“I was just raised to be really interested and engaged with the landscape,” he says. “And so that’s just kind of in family DNA and something we really liked doing.”  

An avowed “Puget Sound mutt,” Micah grew up in the Washington outdoors, giving him an environmental orientation he’s kept ever since. 

His career has meandered. In 2010, he earned a degree in religious studies, which he says was hard to apply in the tough economy of the Recession. He took a position with AmeriCorps and spent a year in Olympic National Park doing trail and restoration work, clearing logs after windstorms, cutting overgrown brush, and installing rock dams and boardwalks — some of which are still standing. 

He then went on to co-found Sawhorse Revolution, a nonprofit in Seattle focused on youth trades education. Once it was on stable footing, Micah left Sawhorse — still a thriving organization — to pursue a dual master’s degree in environmental policy and forestry, focusing on economics and wood products and looking at how humans shape, and are shaped by, our environment. 

The program marked a shift in his career, turning Micah towards conservation work and eventually to Sustainable Northwest, where he is now the Green Markets Senior Program Manager. 

“I want to work for something I can feel a direct impact from,” he says. “Something that feels like trying to make the world a good place to be or maintain the systems we still have that are intact, or repair things that need repairing.” 

But for Micah, impact grows out of the relationships Sustainable Northwest has with its partners — and learning from them is among the most rewarding aspects of the job. 

“It’s really awesome to be in a position where I get to go out and learn from people, all of the time. Just constantly, I’m meeting folks that are expanding my own sort of knowledge set and forcing me to look up at the horizon rather than down at my own feet.” The impact of those relationships goes beyond just getting his individual job done. It’s about moving systems toward the benefit of the communities SNW works with. 

Micah still enjoys spending time outdoors, from hiking to tending his garden to mushroom foraging. But you might also find him with his cat, Porcini, named after his favorite mushroom, or perhaps curled up reading anything from fantasy to ancient Greek philosophy.