Josh's Love Letter to Vermont
Choosing to leave FNLC and move back to New York to be closer to family has given me a lot to reflect on. Some of the highlights of my time here have been water quality monitoring, the Mill River Road Stormwater Improvements, the Swanton Town Beach Rain Garden, Lake Wise Assessments, and, ultimately, a project that is in construction as I write this: the Polly Hubbard Road Floodplain Restoration. It’s hard to believe how quickly the time has passed. As I look back on my time in Vermont, I find myself thinking about much more than the projects I’ve managed or the systems I’ve built. I keep coming back to one thing: people.
Water quality work demands so much of us. It requires technical knowledge, funding, planning, persistence, and a willingness to navigate complicated challenges. But at the heart of it all, the work still comes down to people helping people, compromising with one another, and working through challenges together.
Vermont has shown me just how important those relationships are. Working with people is not always easy or pretty. Conflicts arise, disputes happen, and there are often genuine disagreements about the best path forward. But what has been most meaningful to me is seeing how those differences can ultimately lead to progress. As I leave Vermont and head to New York City as a Forester for the Department of Parks and Recreation, I want to emphasize how fortunate you are to work and live in a place where these relationships exist, where people remain committed to working through their differences, and where that collaboration translates into meaningful change on the ground and, in our case, in the water.
What inspires me most about Vermont’s water quality community is the scale at which this work happens and the network of organizations that make it possible. Conservation districts, watershed groups, regional planning commissions, land trusts, municipalities, and conservation nonprofits all play a role in holding these communities together and moving this work forward. No single organization can do it alone. It is the partnerships between them, and the people who show up every day to make those partnerships work, that make Vermont’s conservation community so special.
As I head into this next chapter in New York, I’ll carry those lessons and relationships with me. I hope to carry forward the same spirit of collaboration that has made my time in Vermont so meaningful. At the end of the day, protecting our waterways is about more than the work itself. It’s about people coming together to make a difference, and I feel fortunate to have been a part of that here.
And to my own team, thank you! Working with Bridget and Gracie has been an absolute joy. Whether it was talking birds with Bridget or collaborating with Gracie during our water quality monitoring field days, I’ll always appreciate the opportunities to work together, learn from one another, and share the honest, down-to-earth conversations that made our work meaningful. I’m grateful for the trust we built, the challenges we worked through, and the good humor we brought to the job along the way. Finally, thank you to everyone in Vermont who has made this such an inspiring place to work.
Sincerely,
Josh Serpe
FNLC's Appreciation of Josh
As Josh Serpe prepares to leave his role as Project Manager, we’re incredibly grateful for all he has brought to FNLC over the past two years. Josh has helped move water quality projects forward, strengthened our monitoring work, conducted Lake Wise assessments, and built meaningful relationships with landowners, municipalities, contractors, funders, and partners across our region.
Josh also has a real gift for seeing connections — both between people and across FNLC’s work. He helped us think more intentionally about how on-the-ground water quality projects can connect with community engagement, giving people a better understanding of the watersheds we live in and the role we all play in caring for them. Behind the scenes, he also built stronger grant and project management systems from the ground up, leaving FNLC with a foundation that will continue to serve us well and can be replicated across other areas of our work. That kind of behind-the-scenes infrastructure is essential to a small organization like ours, and Josh’s contribution in this area will have a lasting impact.
And, above all, Josh is simply a lot of fun to work with! We’ll miss his humor, curiosity, warmth, and good energy — and, of course, we’ll miss Phoebe, his beloved dog and our honorary office companion. We’re so thankful for Josh’s time with FNLC and wish him, his wife, Phoebe - their dog, and their growing family all the best in this next chapter!
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