For Geosyntec’s Amanda McNally, the most meaningful work often happens during the hard process of consensus-building. “Environmental cleanup projects often require presenting complex environmental data to diverse groups of stakeholders, and it’s our job to be effective communicators,” she says.

In particular, Amanda references a large sediment Superfund project in a major city, where she and her team gathered input from more than 300 people and organizations, including businesses, government agencies, neighborhood groups, Tribes, and many others, in support of developing a more sustainable approach to remediation.

“Together, we advocated for a balanced remediation approach that would reduce risk while also considering the potential impacts of dredging, truck traffic, shoreline disturbance, and air emissions,” she says. This commitment to consensus-building is the most fulfilling work for a lifetime Girl Scout.

Amanda’s commitment to serving her community comes as no surprise. She is a third generation Girl Scout member, following her grandmother’s and mother’s examples. Amanda joined Girl Scouts as a Daisy in kindergarten, and her mom led her troop through Seniors when Amanda graduated high school. Now that Amanda has children, she continues the tradition.

“As my own daughter was approaching kindergarten, I was waiting on the edge of my seat, like, ‘is it time for her to join Girl Scouts yet?’” she says.

Now, three years later, Amanda co-leads her daughter’s troop in badge activities, service projects, and cookie sales. Just as it did for her, Amanda hopes her daughter’s experience sparks her curiosity and helps build a sense of purpose and courage.

For more than 17 years of her professional career, Amanda has carried this sense of purpose and applied it to environmental projects , including contaminated site investigation and remediation, sustainability, waste management and reporting, hazardous-materials management, air- and stormwater-permitting compliance, and environmental due diligence.

SPARKING A COMMITMENT TO SERVICE

In middle school, Amanda earned the Girl Scout Silver Award , the second-highest honor in Girl Scouts. She earned this distinction by leading a fundraiser for a zoo she had visited near Iquitos, Peru the previous year.

“There were some very poor conditions at the zoo. I came back from that trip and was inspired to help.” Amanda donated money she raised through a bake sale and wrote letters to the US Ambassador to Peru asking for their support to improve the zoo. Amanda went on to earn her Gold Award by collecting gently used soccer cleats to equip underprivileged youth at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater San Diego, working with corporate sponsors and local youth soccer organizations.

With the grit she built in Girl Scouts and cultivated in high school, Amanda earned a scholarship to Case Western Reserve University for civil and environmental engineering and, in her senior year, was selected for a National Network for Environmental Management Studies Fellowship at the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) headquarters.

While there, she wrote a research paper, later published by the USEPA, on using renewable energy sources for remediation projects. This paper led to her first position in an environmental engineering firm, and while working full-time, she also earned her master’s degree in Environmental Engineering and Science from Johns Hopkins University.

In addition to carrying this confidence into her career, mentoring relationships, and parenting, she brings this sense of purpose into her work with women environmental professionals across her region.

BUILDING COMMUNITY THROUGH CONNECTION

In 2016, Amanda’s Geosyntec colleague and long-time friend, Heather Tahon, approached her with the idea of building a community of women environmental professionals in western Pennsylvania.

Together with a group of passionate Pittsburgh women, they established the Three Rivers Chapter of the Society of Women Environmental Professionals (SWEP). According to Amanda, many existing organizations in the Pittsburgh area focused narrowly on topics like law or engineering. She and Heather wanted to build a community of women working in the environmental industry while strengthening connections with attorneys, industry members, municipalities, and regulatory agencies.

While supporting the leadership and career development of its 125 members, SWEP’s Three Rivers Chapter also promotes public service in the environmental field. Events often include academic programs, mentoring meetups, professional networking, charitable public service, fundraisers, and volunteering.

“It’s been a great organization to be involved in. I have gotten to know people in the Pittsburgh area and diversify the group of people within my professional network.”

In 2023, Amanda became Vice Chair of the organization, which she now chairs.

CONNECTING SCIENCE AND COMMUNITIES FOR SUCCESSFUL PROJECTS

As an engineer, Amanda’s projects continue to bring together broad groups of stakeholders who have disparate interests. She recently successfully worked with stakeholders from two municipalities on zoning for a waste processing facility.

“The neighboring city officials and their residents had concerns about odors, air emissions, traffic, so we held several meetings to understand their concerns and explain our client’s proposal,” Amanda says. “We helped arrange a tour of a similar facility and shared air monitoring data from one of our client’s other facilities.” This engagement helped address the city’s zoning officials’ concerns about negative impacts in the community.

 

“We engaged city council representatives in both municipalities to discuss benefits of the project, including increasing local business activity, creating new jobs, demolishing aging industrial infrastructure, and installing new landscaping.” Fostering honest connection built a stronger project, allowing her client to proceed with design, permitting, and development with the support of the neighboring communities.

CELEBRATING THE BENEFITS OF VOLUNTEERING NO MATTER WHERE OR HOW

Not long after joining Geosyntec, Amanda also began her service on the firm’s Sustainability Advisory Committee and became involved in Volunteer Village, an internal firm-wide initiative. At that time, Volunteer Village focused on practitioners’ pro-bono engineering projects. Amanda worked with the committee and members of Volunteer Village to expand the program to include all sorts of volunteer work.

These days, Volunteer Village highlights Geosyntec employees’ involvement in community cleanups, adopt-a-family fundraisers, food drives, donations, and Girl Scouts projects, as well as in projects related to their professional work.

“Volunteering in my community was super important to me growing up, and I’ve been lucky to be able to share that with my children.”

Her recent service work includes preparing personal care packages for women at the Women’s Center & Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh with her daughter’s Girl Scout troop and helping her son’s baseball team fill backpacks for children through the Foster Love Project and the Homeless Children’s Education Fund in Pittsburgh.

Amanda also loves to share her enthusiasm for the environment with her daughter’s troop. She and her troop co-leader, who is a computer engineer, find interactive ways to help the girls learn about the environment, outer space, robotics, and cyber security. They work together to make science fun and understandable, encouraging the girls to participate.

“We blew through most of the STEM-based badges that were available in the first year,” says Amanda.

LOOKING FORWARD

Sharing her passion for environmental conservation and community service with her children is just the beginning. She is also excited to grow Geosyntec’s environmental management and compliance practice in Pittsburgh. Environmental experts in the Pittsburgh office have worked on a range of environmental due diligence, permitting, and compliance in the US and abroad. Amanda and her team are excited to build out that practice in 2025 and the years to come.

Watch Amanda’s Videos

More Information

Contact Amanda at AMcNally@geosyntec.com.
Learn more about Amanda: Amanda McNally | LinkedIn.
Read the paper Amanda coauthored on sustainability analysis in sediment remediation.

About the Author

Maria Bonaparte is a Digital Marketing Coordinator at Geosyntec. In addition to writing and editing web content, one of the best parts of her job is talking with practitioners about why they are passionate about the work they do.