Green Champions

Hosted by Dominique Hadad & Christy Cook

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134

Latest episode

Oct 2026

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EN-US

About the show

From energy to agriculture, retail to tech — Green Champions tells the stories of real people building sustainable solutions across every industry. Hosted by Dominique Hadad and Christy Cook, each episode provides that progress is already happening and environmental work takes many forms. New episodes every Tuesday.

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October 13, 2026Episode 523 min

Melinda Vonstein - From Rollerblades to Regional Trails

Melinda Vonstein leads the Greenways Planning Studio at MORPC, where she plans and expands Central Ohio's network of trails and works to connect communities across the region. Her origin story starts with a broken glass table. When it shattered in her backyard a little over a decade ago, her family dug up the grass instead of cleaning up the mess, built a patio, and never really stopped digging. A casual hobby turned into about an eighth of an acre of intentional ecosystem: grapevines overhead, kiwi berries, gooseberries and other berries with whimsical names, a pond with fish, and enough fruit to make a year of jam for a family of five. One season she raised quail, and a hawk showed up to circle the yard and keep the rabbits out. She does not really call it a garden anymore. She calls it an ecosystem. That instinct to see everything as connected is the throughline of her whole career. She grew up near a trail network in Dayton, rollerblading everywhere and riding the city bus downtown long before she thought of it as her ticket to freedom. An architecture degree pushed her to think past single buildings toward how people actually move through a place, which led to a master's in city and regional planning, a first job running wayfinding for Ohio State's hospitals, and a role helping COTA relocate thousands of bus stops in the largest transit redesign in its history. Land use, public space, trees, buses, and people are one system to her, the same way her backyard is. It is why she can look at a paved trail and see a living network, and why the work of building Central Ohio's greenways landed so naturally in her hands. Episode in a glance 00:05 Meet Melinda Vonstein, MORPC's Greenways Lead 03:56 The Year a Hawk Guarded Her Garden 07:54 Rollerblades and the Bus That Set Her Free 10:42 Why Installing a Sign Never Fixes Anything 14:16 The Largest Bus Overhaul in COTA's History" 17:59 400 Miles of Trails, and a Ride From Cleveland to Cincinnati About Melinda Vonstein Melinda Vonstein is the Greenways Planning Studio lead at the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC), where she works to plan and expand Central Ohio's greenways and strengthen connections between communities across the region. She holds an undergraduate degree in architecture and a master's in city and regional planning. Before MORPC she managed the wayfinding program for the Ohio State University hospitals, and she worked at the Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA), where she supported service planning during the largest transit system redesign in the agency's history, relocating thousands of bus stops. At MORPC she leads planning for Central Ohio Greenways, a network of more than 400 miles of trails with a vision for 1,000 miles of connected regional trails across a 15-county region, and she speaks at the annual Summit on Sustainability. Connect with Melinda Vonstein and her work Melinda Vonstein on LinkedIn → linkedin.com/in/melinda-vonstein-986066106 Central Ohio Greenways → centralohiogreenways.com Central Ohio Greenways Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/centralohiogreenways/ Central Ohio Greenways Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/centralohiogreenways/ Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission → morpc.org Summit on Sustainability (October 28): morpc.org/summitonsustainability Send us a message!

October 6, 2026Episode 425 min

JR Diaz-Hernandez - Did You Breathe Air Today?

The EPA can call it a good air quality day while your own street tells a different story. Residents across Franklin County kept saying exactly that, and it is why MORPC built the Community-Led Enhanced Air Quality Network, a set of sensors roughly the size of a baseball that plug into an outlet, find the Wi-Fi, and publish their readings where anyone can look them up. JR Diaz-Hernandez runs that work as MORPC's air quality and sustainability program manager, along with the daily forecasts and the alerts that go out when the air turns orange or worse. He walks through the scale that runs green to maroon, the site that will tell you your ZIP code's air right now, and why any of these rules exist at all, which traces back to Ohio and a river that caught fire. Three years of block-by-block monitoring produced terabytes of data and one uncomfortable finding. A pocket of Franklin County carries double to quadruple the particulate matter of the rest of the county, and the sensors were barely reaching it. He unpacks what the patterns mean, from the 8am and 6pm traffic peaks to the 3am spikes nobody can explain yet, and why he calls the sensors empowerment tools instead of evidence. MORPC holds no enforcement power, so the whole model runs on putting something in a resident's hands that they can carry to the EPA themselves. The project also produced a step-by-step workbook and a sensor lending library so any community can copy it. Then come the things anyone can do this week: carpool through Gohio Commute, bike the trail system, swap a gas mower for an electric one, weatherize the house. Not the big actions, the little ones. He is also on the roster at this year's Summit on Sustainability, and he closes on the idea his whole career runs on. Look out for yourself, and look out for the people around you. Episode in a glance 00:05 The Scale That Runs Green to Maroon 05:03 The Day It Hurt to Breathe in Central Ohio 09:49 When the EPA Says Green and Your Block Says Otherwise 15:15 The Pollution Spikes at 3AM Nobody Can Explain 19:13 What One Person Can Actually Do About It 23:05 Look Out for the People Around You About JR Diaz-Hernandez Mauro "JR" Diaz-Hernandez is the air quality and sustainability program manager at the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC), where he works to protect public health and improve air quality across Central Ohio through daily forecasting and alerts, neighborhood-level air monitoring, and sustainability programming with partners across the region. Born and raised in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas, he was the first in his family to go to college, earning degrees in anthropology and sociology from Amherst College and later a master's in public health from the University of Connecticut. Before MORPC he worked with the Williams-Mystic Maritime Studies Program, helped low income and first generation students get into and through college, and served as program administrator for the Center on Climate Change and Health at the Yale School of Public Health. He has volunteered as an EMT with the Mystic River Ambulance Association, worked with therapy horses, and taught at a nature center. He leads MORPC's Community-Led Enhanced Air Quality Network (CLEAN) and speaks at the annual Summit on Sustainability. Connect with JR Diaz-Hernandez and his work with MORPC JR Diaz-Hernandez on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/maurodiazhernandez/ MORPC air quality programs, including forecasts, alerts, and neighborhood monitoring → morpc.org/airquality Email JR directly → airquality@morpc.org Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission → morpc.org Summit on Sustainability → morpc.org/summit Send us a message!

September 29, 2026Episode 325 min

JR Diaz-Hernandez - The World's Too Big of a Place to Be Bored

JR Diaz-Hernandez goes by the initials of two men. The J is his great-grandfather. The R is Roberto, the grandfather who helped raise him through his first nine years. He is now the air quality and sustainability program manager at MORPC, protecting public health across Central Ohio through forecasting, alerts, and neighborhood-level air monitoring. It started in Oak Cliff, a Dallas neighborhood where everything he needed sat within walking distance, where a Salvadoran family sold pupusas two for a dollar half a block from his elementary school, and where neighbors kept getting priced out one by one. He had no word for walkable yet, and no word for displacement. He just noticed people leaving. Low income and the first in his family to go to college, he bounced between majors at Amherst until he sat in a library and thought, if only there was a field of study that studied people. Anthropology and environmental sociology handed him the vocabulary for what he had already lived: why the affordable houses in his city sat closest to the airport and the municipal dump, and why fishing families could describe a changing climate long before any report reached them. He spent six years earning a master's in public health while working full time and riding as a volunteer EMT, built guitars and canoes in the gaps, and landed in Ohio because his partner chose Ohio State. Then came the MORPC job that was never advertised. Every turn in the story comes back to people, which is the common thread he names himself, and he carries it to this year's Summit on Sustainability with a PechaKucha talk about something most adults have quietly stopped doing, which is going outside to play. Ask him why any of it matters and he answers with a question of his own. Did you breathe air today? Episode in a glance 00:05 The Two Grandfathers Behind the Initials 06:57 The Louisiana Site That Vanished Under Water 11:15 Why the Affordable Houses Were Closest to the Dump 14:16 The World's Too Big of a Place to Be Bored 17:59 The Job That Was Never Advertised About JR Diaz-Hernandez Mauro "JR" Diaz-Hernandez is the air quality and sustainability program manager at the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC), where he works to protect public health and improve air quality across Central Ohio through daily forecasting and alerts, neighborhood-level air monitoring, and sustainability programming with partners across the region. Born and raised in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas, he was the first in his family to go to college, earning degrees in anthropology and sociology from Amherst College and later a master's in public health from the University of Connecticut. Before MORPC he worked with the Williams-Mystic Maritime Studies Program, helped low income and first generation students get into and through college, and served as program administrator for the Center on Climate Change and Health at the Yale School of Public Health. He has volunteered as an EMT with the Mystic River Ambulance Association, worked with therapy horses, and taught at a nature center. He leads MORPC's Community-Led Enhanced Air Quality Network (CLEAN) and speaks at the annual Summit on Sustainability. Connect with JR Diaz-Hernandez and his work with MORPC JR Diaz-Hernandez on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/maurodiazhernandez/ MORPC air quality programs, including forecasts, alerts, and neighborhood monitoring → morpc.org/airquality Email JR directly → airquality@morpc.org Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission → morpc.org Summit on Sustainability → morpc.org/summit Send us a message!

September 22, 2026Episode 223 min

Brandi Whetstone - Steal This Playbook for a Sustainable 2050

For some communities, the word "sustainability" itself is the hurdle, tangled up in politics and easy to dismiss before the real work even starts. Brandi Whetstone spends her days getting past that. As director of sustainability at the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, or MORPC, she runs Sustainable2050, the framework that has 39 communities, from small villages to the City of Columbus, moving toward the same healthier, more livable future. The trick is not a louder argument. It is meeting people where they are and showing them they are already halfway there. The second half of the MORPC miniseries gets into the machinery. A Regional Sustainability Agenda, refreshed every four years and adopted by a board of more than 100 people. A bronze-to-platinum ladder that turns going green into a friendly competition between towns. Everyday wins most people never think to call sustainability, like composting programs, tree canopy plans, and sidewalks that make it easier to leave the car at home. The standout is Mount Vernon, a skeptical community that dropped the politics, reframed the work around saving money and quality of life, and built real momentum from there. It all builds toward the Summit on Sustainability, now in its 20th year, and a keynote from Happy City author Charles Montgomery that ties the season's Common Thread theme together. Episode in a Glance 00:00 Inside the Job of Keeping a Region Sustainable 05:14 Why 2050? The Framework Behind Sustainable2050 10:04 From Bronze to Platinum: Sustainability You Can Measure 14:54 When Sustainability Is a Hard Sell: The Mount Vernon Story 18:45 What Any Community Can Borrow From MORPC 20:59 Inside the Summit on Sustainability About Brandi Whetstone Brandi Whetstone is the director of sustainability at the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC), a regional organization that brings Central Ohio communities together to share best practices and plan for the region's growth and sustainability. A native Ohioan from Bryan, she studied environmental policy and analysis alongside political science and government at Bowling Green State University. Before MORPC, she organized communities with Ohio Citizen Action, led the Buckeye Forest Council as its executive director, and worked on water quality with the Sierra Club. Over 16 years at MORPC she has grown from outreach specialist to director of sustainability, where she leads the region's sustainability initiatives and helps produce the annual Summit on Sustainability. Connect with Brandi Whetstone and her work with MORPC Brandi Whetstone on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandiwhetstone Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission → morpc.org Summit on Sustainability (register, it tends to sell out) → morpc.org/summit Send us a message!

September 15, 2026Episode 124 min

Brandi Whetstone - From a Toy-Factory Town to MORPC

Brandi Whetstone is the director of sustainability at the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, or MORPC, where she has spent 16 years helping Central Ohio communities plan for a healthier, more livable future. The MORPC miniseries opens by tracing how a kid from Bryan, Ohio turned a childhood of bikes, backyard kickball, and fishing trips with her dad into a career spent protecting the places people love. Her hometown happens to be the birthplace of the Etch A Sketch and Dum Dum Pops, but it was the parks, the woods, and the field at the end of the street that shaped her. Those early roots in the outdoors became the through-line for everything that followed. From college radio DJ to environmental policy student to community organizer knocking on doors near an oil refinery, Brandi kept following the same thread: give people a voice, and use strength in numbers to bring about real change. That thread runs through her leap to lead a small forestry nonprofit, her car-free move to Columbus by bike, and her rise from outreach specialist to director of sustainability at MORPC. The conversation draws out the lived experience behind the work while pressing on how a childhood spent outdoors becomes a career designing sustainable communities. It is also a warm introduction to the Summit on Sustainability, MORPC's annual gathering built around this year's fitting theme, Common Thread. Episode in a Glance 00:00 Kicking Off the MORPC Miniseries 04:40 From College Radio DJ to Environmental Policy 09:53 The Oil Refinery Day That Made It Personal 13:18 Taking the Leap at Buckeye Forest Council 17:00 Finding MORPC and Never Looking Back 21:19 What to Expect at the Summit on Sustainability About Brandi Whetstone Brandi Whetstone is the director of sustainability at the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC), a regional organization that brings Central Ohio communities together to share best practices and plan for the region's growth and sustainability. A native Ohioan from Bryan, she studied environmental policy and analysis alongside political science and government at Bowling Green State University. Before MORPC, she organized communities with Ohio Citizen Action, led the Buckeye Forest Council as its executive director, and worked on water quality with the Sierra Club. Over 16 years at MORPC she has grown from outreach specialist to director of sustainability, where she leads the region's sustainability initiatives and helps produce the annual Summit on Sustainability. Connect with Brandi Whetstone and her work with MORPC Brandi Whetstone on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandiwhetstone Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission → morpc.org Summit on Sustainability (register, it tends to sell out) → morpc.org/summit Send us a message!

September 8, 2026Episode 279 min

Season 5 Wrap-Up - The Conversations That Stuck With Us

Season 5 closes the way the best conversations do, by looking back at who was in the room. This wrap-up gathers the guests, the surprises, and the moments that stuck, and it marks a first: the season that welcomed a new co-host to the show. What comes through is how often an interview stopped being an interview. The real turn is the moment a guest feels seen and the pressure drops away, and suddenly everyone is just talking. The season gets replayed through its people. Nancy Zavada of MeetGreen, still trying to get freezer strawberry jam into the right hands. Vin Valentino, who could drop an F-bomb and still make a complex idea land in a single a-ha. Jake Kheel, whose island world of coral, indigenous history, and invasive sargassum turned a problem word into a resource. Andrew Shakman and his spreadsheets. Angela Huffman on food systems and the change they need. Josh Lloyd on the hidden logic behind how things get built. The season also hands out its own superlatives, before turning to what comes next. Season 6 keeps both hosts and moves the show into a conference partnership. Green Champions is teaming up with MORPC, the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, based in Columbus, Ohio, around the event it hosts each fall. The gathering is about how communities plan their shared spaces for better systems, from transit and pathways to the local economy and even the political sides of the conversation. Across the season the show will spotlight key voices heading to the conference and capture what happens there in Green Champions style. Send us a message!

September 1, 2026Episode 2623 min

Josh Lloyd - What It Takes to Be the Number One Green Builder

Buildings carry carbon long before anyone turns on a light, locked into the steel and concrete it took to put them up. Josh Lloyd's job is to drive that number down. As Regional Sustainability Manager at Turner Construction, the firm ranked the number one green builder every year since 2008, he leads sustainability across 10 offices in eight states, on job sites where one decision about a concrete mix outweighs anything a person could do at home. That comparison is his favorite way to make the point land. Reducing the concrete on a project by a single truckload beats living car free for a year or giving up meat. The conversation gets specific about how that actually happens, from piloting low carbon mixes with local ready mix suppliers to running renewable diesel and pushing drywall recycling in four states where almost nobody recycles drywall. It also gets honest about the setbacks, including a hauler that changed how it counts and dropped a 75 percent diversion rate to 60 overnight with no change in practice. The story he did not expect to be proudest of started when an administrative assistant on one of his sites asked a simple question: why are we throwing away so much food? Since September, the answer has kept nearly 22,000 pounds of it out of the landfill and put it in front of people who needed it. Episode in a glance 01:37 What It Means to Be the Number One Green Builder 04:12 Going Beyond What the Client Asked For 07:31 When the Hauler Changed the Math on Waste Diversion 09:15 One Less Truckload of Concrete Beats a Car-Free Year 10:02 Why Data Centers Are His Best Sustainability Projects 13:29 Recycling Drywall and Building a Market From Scratch 16:23 Nearly 22,000 Pounds of Food Rescued From Job Sites 20:53 Designing for the People Who Build the Building About Josh Lloyd Josh Lloyd is the Regional Sustainability Manager at Turner Construction, where he leads sustainability initiatives to reduce environmental and operational footprint across 10 offices in eight states: Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Tennessee, Alabama, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. He studied architectural engineering at Alfred State and architecture at Kent State University, and he has built his career around green building since LEED's earliest years. He contributed design and construction documents to the first LEED Platinum home in Ohio, built by students at Worthington Kilbourne High School, and previously ran commercial energy efficiency and incentive programs at CLEAResult. He is a longtime US Green Building Council volunteer, organized rain garden builds for local schools through Green Apple Day of Service, and serves on the city of Worthington's green team. Connect with Josh Lloyd and his work Josh Lloyd on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshualloyd/ Turner Construction → turnerconstruction.com US Green Building Council → usgbc.org Send us a message!

August 25, 2026Episode 2522 min

Josh Lloyd - The Architect Who Wanted the Rope to Pull, Not Push

Josh Lloyd is the Regional Sustainability Manager at Turner Construction, where he leads sustainability work across 10 offices in eight states. He came up through architecture, adopted LEED early enough to have watched it launch, and volunteered the design and construction documents for the first LEED Platinum home in Ohio, a house built by high school students. The path there started with a dad who was always renovating something and a college fascination with using sunlight to heat a building. Josh grew up outside Rochester as a latchkey kid who pitched a tent rather than sleep in his parents' motor home, and that pull toward the outdoors turned into a career built on a single question: how do you get people to move? The conversation draws out the lived experience underneath that, including his candid admission that he is an introvert who had to learn to work a room, and the summit where he clammed up the moment the topic left sustainability. It also presses on the mechanics he has spent a career refining, from reading a room in the first five minutes to knowing when to stop saying the word sustainability and start saying waste reduction instead. What comes through is someone whose North Star never really moved, who just kept finding bigger levers to pull. Episode in a glance 01:21 From His Dad's Renovations to Passive Solar Design 04:16 The First LEED Platinum Home in Ohio, Built by High Schoolers 07:22 Building for the Community, Not Just the Site 10:36 Getting Kicked in the Pants and Learning to Read the Room 14:29 The Introvert Who Learned to Work the Room 17:11 His Shot at Being a Change Agent at Turner 18:49 Persistence, Questions, and Leading With Your Passion About Josh Lloyd Josh Lloyd is the Regional Sustainability Manager at Turner Construction, where he leads sustainability initiatives to reduce environmental and operational footprint across 10 offices in eight states: Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Tennessee, Alabama, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. He studied architectural engineering at Alfred State and architecture at Kent State University, and he has built his career around green building since LEED's earliest years. He contributed design and construction documents to the first LEED Platinum home in Ohio, built by students at Worthington Kilbourne High School, and previously ran commercial energy efficiency and incentive programs at CLEAResult. He is a longtime US Green Building Council volunteer, organized rain garden builds for local schools through Green Apple Day of Service, and serves on the city of Worthington's green team. Connect with Josh Lloyd and his work Josh Lloyd on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshualloyd/ Turner Construction → turnerconstruction.com US Green Building Council → usgbc.org Send us a message!

August 18, 2026Episode 2425 min

Mary Cropenbaker - Building a Green Program Any Business Can Join

Most people think a solid waste district exists to run the landfill. Mary Cropenbaker's job is the opposite: keep as much material out of it as possible. As the Assistant Solid Waste Manager at Hamilton County ReSource, she works with businesses, schools, and communities across the Cincinnati region to divert waste, and she does it without a single mandate to force anyone's hand. Her answer to that challenge is 513 Green, a free sustainability certification any business can earn. 513 Green started from a frustration. Mary could help a business start recycling, but she had no way to keep it moving toward bigger goals, until a free program she saw at a conference gave her the model. This episode presses on the mechanics: how a certification built around employee behavior works for everyone from the Cincinnati Zoo to a small Pilates studio, and how a checklist of 45 achievable steps turns good intentions into action. It also draws out the honest parts, including why the hardest thing to measure is the impact itself, and why she built the whole program to be copied by any community willing to try. Episode in a glance 02:42 The Waste District That Wants to Put Itself Out of a Job 05:12 Why Starting a Recycling Program Is Harder Than You Think 07:39 How 513 Green Went From Idea to Free Certification 11:27 What It Actually Takes to Get Certified 14:36 From the Cincinnati Zoo to a Pilates Studio 21:43 A Certification Built to Be Copied About Mary Cropenbaker Mary Cropenbaker is the Assistant Solid Waste Manager at Hamilton County ReSource, the solid waste district serving the Cincinnati, Ohio region, where she helps businesses, schools, and communities implement waste reduction strategies on the path to zero waste. She holds a master's in environmental science from Miami University's Institute for Environment and Sustainability and an MBA with a certificate in sustainable business, and her background spans psychology research, a sustainability practicum at the Cincinnati Zoo, and a role at the US EPA. She piloted the 513 Green Certification Program, a free sustainability certification that has certified 67 organizations across the region. Connect with Mary Cropenbaker and her work LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/marycropenbaker Hamilton County ReSource → hamiltoncountyresource.org 513 Green Certification → 513green.com Send us a message!

August 11, 2026Episode 2324 min

Mary Cropenbaker - What Gambling Pigeons Taught Her About People

Mary Cropenbaker is the Assistant Solid Waste Manager at Hamilton County ReSource, the solid waste district for the Cincinnati region, where she helps businesses, schools, and communities cut what they send to the landfill. She piloted 513 Green, a free sustainability certification now used by dozens of local organizations. But her path into waste and sustainability started somewhere you would never guess: a psychology lab studying how pigeons gamble. Mary grew up along the Ohio River, hopping fences and running through cow pastures, and headed to college for animal cognition research, not the environment. A single class on business sustainability changed her direction. This first episode traces the human turns behind that shift, including the senior-year crisis of realizing research alone would never let her act on what she was learning. The conversation draws out that lived experience while pressing on how a foundation in data and science communication became the throughline of everything she does now. What emerges is a portrait of someone who kept following her curiosity until it added up to a career. Episode in a glance 00:57 Growing Up in Cow Pastures Along the Ohio River 02:38 The Psychology Major Who Fell for Sustainability 04:24 What Gambling Pigeons Taught Her About People 07:10 From a Zoo Practicum to the EPA to Zero Waste 13:04 Inside a Solid Waste District That Serves Everyone 21:44 Why This Work Still Gives Her Hope About Mary Cropenbaker Mary Cropenbaker is the Assistant Solid Waste Manager at Hamilton County ReSource, the solid waste district serving the Cincinnati, Ohio region, where she helps businesses, schools, and communities implement waste reduction strategies on the path to zero waste. She holds a master's in environmental science from Miami University's Institute for Environment and Sustainability and an MBA with a certificate in sustainable business, and her background spans psychology research, a sustainability practicum at the Cincinnati Zoo, and a role at the US EPA. She piloted the 513 Green Certification Program, a free sustainability certification that has certified 67 organizations across the region. Connect with Mary Cropenbaker and her work LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/marycropenbaker Hamilton County ReSource → hamiltoncountyresource.org 513 Green Certification → 513green.com Send us a message!

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