About the Thousandmilers

We told you all about Brian Field, our bold and gracious runner, a couple months ago. Here's the rest of us.

Brian Goldberg
(Un)Official Starter and Official Photographer for Weekly Training Runs; Coordinator of the AECOM Marathon Initiative; Neutral-Clad Warrior of Peace and Consensus; fan of asphalt inlay

Brian serves as the (Un)Official Starter of the Weekly Training Runs, counting all the participants and announcing when it is time for us to start running. Seconds before announcing the start, Brian takes the photo of the training run team and share it with the thousandmilers blog.

Brian also helps coordinate the overall AECOM Maasai Marathon effort, liaising among the Maasai Trust, AECOM runners and the AECOM Marathon Committee. He has led AECOM’s pro-bono planning assistance for the Maasai Trust, including facilitating a two-day strategic planning workshop; producing a marketing and business plan for the Trust’s ecotourism lodge, Campi ya Kanzi (www.maasai.com); collaborating with Google to prepare a baseline mapping framework and working with Yale to explore carbon finance payments.

Shaun O'Rourke
Team Captain, Organizer, Mystery Man

Shaun doesn't like to write bios. But he does like Vermont, and time off.

Erika Matthias
MasterBlogger, Mutineer; Grey Sky Enthusiast

Hailing from Seattle, a year of New York City living has Erika straddling the East/West Coast divide. An idealist at heart, she finds herself baffled at the high presence of A-type personalities here, and the low (though increasing) presence of recycling receptacles in the NYC public realm, while also finding herself in love with good bagels and the refreshing openness of the New Yorker spirit. A landscape architect and environmental educator, she is passionate about creating places that inspire and connect people to the places they inhabit.

When she is not covering marathon/Maasai-related events here, drafting construction details or revising Public Design Commission submissions, Erika enjoys writing, laughing, arguing, and taking photos. She lives in the East Village, USA. Her personal blog can be found at mindseye-ea.blogspot.com.

Alejandra Marambio
Chilean Cheerleader; Cross-cultural Diplomat; not a fan of lines or profiteering

Alejandra is a landscape designer with a background in architecture focused on responding to environmental, cultural, and historic contexts. She has a particular interest in promoting landscape design in developing countries (notably, Chile!!!). Alejandra spent her formative years in New York City and moved with her family back to their native Chile at the age of ten. She recently transferred from our San Francisco office to return to New York roots.

Alejandra has been focusing her energy in the effort toward fundraising, notably using her Chilean connections to reach out and help support Brian and the trust. In the actual training she serves more as more of an observer (due to a knee problem) but takes to channeling her positive energies for morale and riding her bike in support.

Jenny Hamann
Girl Friday, Cheerleader, Boilermaker; Most Colorful Attire

Jenny, a landscape designer, has been at EDAW for almost two years. A sprinter by nature, she cannot imagine ever having the desire to run a marathon. Her experience running is strictly on track and never running more than 400 meters. Even so, she still enjoys joining the team on training runs to help achieve our thousand miles.

Jenny's role in the thousandmilers effort is often to channel her social nature toward fundraising and looking for way to increase participation across our global offices. Some little known facts about Jenny are as follows:

-Huge college football fan. (team, Boilermakers; conference, Big Ten, although she also loves SEC games)
-Jenny also has about 60 pairs of shoes, many of them sneakers with flair.
-Lesser-known fact: loves musical biographical movies. Favorite likely the 1998 made-for-TV movie “The Temptations”

Laurel Hunter
Gracious Green Taskmaster; Compost-Worshipping Sun Goddess; costuming

Laurel is an amateur worm farmer and urban gardener who lives in Brooklyn, NY. A southern Californian transplant, Laurel enjoys fresh produce, sunshine, and the beach. She also likes to travel, read, photograph, sketch, build, cook, eat, smell, run, laugh, plant and talk. Touch is her favorite sense. She is a free-spirited person stuck in the body of a compulsive German Scot.

At EDAW, Laurel is on the resorts team and has been involved in the Parking Day and Green Roof charrettes, the Green Team + Sustainability Core Group, the CAD committee, and the Design Core Group. Most recently, Laurel chaired NYC’s LEED study group, producing 15 new LEED AP's in the NYC office. Which to anyone who doesn't think about building stuff like we do all day, means Laurel helped cheer on 15 people to become more knowledgeable and capable of creating environtmentally-friendly, energy-efficient buildings and landscapes.

Laurel keeps the thousandmilers in check, keeping track of the miles we run, our calendar, and fundraising data, and coordinating our running outfits. She will serve a crucial cheering section hostess in Brooklyn on marathon day.

In The Wings
these people have helped us immensely so I'll tell you a little about them.

Katti Yamashita
Fundraising Liason; Shaman; "Knows People"

Katti is really pregnant. She recently injured her rib coughing too hard. Though these things cannot and should not be ignored (in that order, respectively), Katti runs the administration of our office and serves in aiding our fundraising efforts, generously offering her resourcefulness, savoir faire, mad cuisine skills, and industry connections.

Anthony Blanco
AV Club; Wants to Take Your Picture; English, not just British

Anthony does our motion pictures, and is making a star of Brian in the process. To make a living, he is in charge of video for AECOM and does graphic design. He has helped direct movies and has worked with important people. He has two small children. He finds pirates fascinating.

Karen Appel
Fundraising Warrior; Queen of Compliance; Protector of Marshes

Karen juggles two hats at our firm; quality assurance and control for the office, and restoring the natural systems of the Northeast. No small feat. Karen was raised and lives in New Jersey but often travels around the country saving the environment and making sure everyone has crossed their T's and dotted their I's on official documents. She has helped us in coordinating fundraising for the marathon effort.