Originally a Business Management major, Brittany Maben found her niche in the business world by connecting her love for hiking and nature to a unique career path. “I’ve always had a love for the outdoors,” she says, “but it wasn’t until my first environmental studies class that I realized I could turn my passion into a career. Luckily Western [Washington University] has an amazing Business and Sustainability program that made the switch easy, and I never looked back.”
Brittany always had a love for hiking, traveling, backpacking and nature, as the aviation environmental intern for the Port, her hobbies are aspects of her career. Brittany graduated with the class of 2016 majoring in business and sustainability and minoring in environmental studies at Western Washington University.
As a recent graduate, Maben was intimidated by the thought of going straight into a full time job so Brittany decided to look for internships to help her ease into the working world and narrow down possible career paths.
Brittany first found out about the Port of Seattle’s internship program while looking online and found an ad from Port. She searched through the available openings, found the aviation environmental position, read through the description and thought it was a perfect fit of what she was interested in and wanted to pursue.
Despite not having much experience with aviation, the environmental aspect intrigued Brittany enough to apply. Maben thought of the internship as an opportunity to learn more about aviation and how the environment it is intertwined with it.
As part of her 12-week internship, Brittany has helped with many environmental projects for the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. One of the major projects she completed was aiding the airport receive more credentials from Leadership in Energy Environmental Design, more commonly known as LEED, who is a third-party organization of environmental evaluators who assess designs, operations and construction of high-performance and energy efficient green buildings.
Brittany helped make Sea-Tac and its North Satellite project more sustainable. She has also been a part of the decisions of new environmentally friendly and cost efficient hand dryers that will be used throughout the Sea-Tac’s bathrooms. The airport is also planning to purchase new seating for the terminals and she has to create the criteria that the new seating requires.
Brittany hopes with her current internship that she will be able to find a career path and get a better idea of a specific area of interest for environmental work she wants to pursue. Since the environmental field is broad, she hopes that her time with the Port will help narrow down her possibilities within her field of interest.
Brittany has been able to receive a taste of each area with her internship. As a 12-week intern, Brittany likes working with the Port of Seattle and hopes to be able to stay longer. Brittany has previously worked three other internships involving environmental work and “This has been my fourth internship and [it has] by far the best people, organizations and projects.”
