Deanna Pickett - ABSMaterials, Inc.

Nominator: Stephen Spoonamore, ABS Materials, Inc.

How has the nominee implemented sustainable business practices in his or her business or organization and what are the triple bottom line benefits (people, planet, prosperity) of the nominee's work?

Ms. Deanna Pickett has developed an in-situ groundwater remediation process to destroy TCE, PCE, related solvents and many pesiticides which the EPA has singled out as "a groundbreaking development." A Columbus Ohio native, she attended The College of Wooster and developed her theory of how to engineer and inject Osorb nano-glass to completely remediate a site as her Senior Thesis Project. One year after graduation she has reduced a section of a TCE plume near Coshocton Ohio from 1000ppb to No Detect with no daughter products or negative impacts.

How does the nominee actively participate in the sustainability community? How do they collaborate and share their knowledge with others?

Ms. Pickett has been invited to speak at remediation and brownfield conferences and has provided testimony to the US Congress House Subcommittee on Science and Education on the impact undergraduate research can have on science and environmental education. Ms. Pickett co-narrates a video on emerging jobs in CleanTech produced by for the College of Wooster and is co-author of the CLU-IN Article published by the US EPA on her remediation work, and is co-author of forthcoming article for the AWWA Journal on her groundwater remediation.

How has the nominee inspired you to implement sustainable business practices? What is your relationship with the nominee: supervisor, employee, peer, father, friend or other.

I am now Ms. Pickett's supervisor. When I met her, she was a college junior. She explained, in thoughtful detail, how she had since Junior High School wanted to work to understand how plants work, how water systems work. She explained why she decided to study Chemistry at College of Wooster, and then she explained how she wanted our small company to support her senior year research into her theory of how to best use our materials. I was...incredibly impressed. We supported her work, provided her access to field sites, put her on crew teams, and I promised her if she was even "half-right about half her ideas" we would give her a job upon graduation. She was in fact nearly all right about all of her ideas. Nobody. Ever. In the history of remediation has reduced a 1000ppb TCE Plume at 100' depth to No Detect, until Ms. Pickett did it in August of 2010. At 23 years of age she is now running our in-situ remediation group, being invited to speak and work around the nation and soon the world. We are, in awe of her.

How can someone else translate the success of the nominee? Is the work of the nominee an example or model that others can follow?

Yes. Ms. Pickett participated in programs that gave young women access to, and support for, interest in the sciences. The results are stunning. She is already begun to give back providing teaching to the B-WISER program for Jnr. High Girls who want to pursue chemistry and helping promote chemistry education for women.