Zac Sutherland: Interconnections
Zac Sutherland is a systems thinker. It’s an approach he explored in CMC’s Integrated Sustainability Program.
Previous to his study, Zac noticed a tendency to view economics, environmental issues, and social equity through separate lenses. “It never really sat right with me,” he says. “And it wasn’t until I started taking these courses that it all just clicked. There are all these interconnections between them. If you put too much pressure on one system, everything else is going to feel it in in some way, shape, or form,” he describes.
After earning his degree from CMC in 2014, Zac joined Garfield County Public Health as an environmental health specialist. His true test of systems strategy came during the global pandemic of 2020. “I was made the operations section chief for a COVID-19 response,” Zac explains. “I oversaw local entities across Garfield County, tracked how state orders affected them, and worked to get organizations reopened as quickly and safely as possible.”
After the pandemic subsided, Zac took on other emergency preparedness roles for the county, coordinating response plans for potential mass casualties and disasters.
When RFTA (the Roaring Fork Transportation Authority) advertised a safety and risk management position, Zac jumped at the chance to work for the valley’s mass transit leader.
“From the environmental standpoint, RFTA is doing some pretty exciting things around lower emission busses,” he explains, “But I also think about it from an equity standpoint - for a lot of folks, the work is up valley and the affordable housing is down valley. Mass transit is a huge piece to that puzzle of getting people from point A to point B and back again, and RFTA has been doing incredible work in that sense since it was founded.”
Initially intent on pursuing a business degree, Zac may not have taken this career path had it not been for a couple of CMC elective courses. From the first course that put him on the ground organizing resources to finish a local school’s greenhouse project to an internship where he got the word out to local municipalities about potential grants to install electric vehicle charging stations, Zac’s future took shape.
“I’ve just I’ve had this very consistent sense this is exactly where I’m supposed to be, and I do think, at least in my adult working life and academic career, that’s a feeling that really started at CMC,” he says.