Hometown/home base: Born in Serbia, southeast Europe; moved to the U.S. more than 10 years ago, lived in Aspen Colorado and is now settled in Bergen County, NJ.
Years at Weston: 3+ years.
Course of study: “In Serbia, I graduated from the College of Applied Ecology Futura with a BS in Environmental Science and Environmental Analysis. I’m currently pursuing my master’s degree in Environmental Risk Management online, at the same institution.”
On his meaningful work at Weston and standout projects: “I’m Associate Scientist and primarily lead large-scale remediation. Currently, I serve as a Task Manager for one of Weston’s largest clients, the United States Postal Service (USPS). We conduct building assessments and provide corrective actions to ensure the health and safety of our clients and the public as well.
I have also had several different roles on the NJDEP Team serving USACE and U.S. Navy projects, performing groundwater sampling, surface water sampling, soil sampling and well installation and oversight.
A Mercury Contamination Emergency Response for a large distribution client and my role as Project Leader for clean-up at multiple Former Indoor Firing Ranges for the National Guard stand out in my mind as impactful projects that I was proud to be a part of.”
Memorable moment in the field: “I’ll never forget going into an unknown former indoor entombed firing range to do an exploratory assessment of soil contaminants. It was an old rifle range that was enclosed with a concrete slab. We ended up using a police robot tank with an attached camera to video and reach some further areas. The team worked creatively and safely to achieve our goal.”
Thoughts on ‘Why Weston’: “Different opportunities at different locations with different people! I’ve truly had numerous opportunities to work with varying clients and scopes of work (assessments, sampling, leading projects, oversight) in locations throughout the country.
The company is really open to suggestions and conducive to peer-to-peer communication, which is greatly important to me as an employee-owner. The way we’re organized and how we closely collaborate brings us together and to care more about decisions and our firm’s path forward.
Flexibility is always supported; and that means a lot and allows me to travel back to Europe to visit friends and family.”
Quick advice on leadership: “Be proactive, be the first to reach out on certain problems, and be always willing to learn.”
Staying positive in an imperfect world: “Nothing has better served me in my life, living in different states in this country and internationally, than remaining open minded; not only in theory, but also in practicality. Meet and speak with other people that you know less about. Reach out. Listen. Make the effort. That can be in many different domains: different culture, different race, different language, or even different habits from the same community/neighborhood to which you are accustomed.
Learn to change and learn to learn!”