Welcoming Committee: Jon LaBier
Editor's Note: This is the first of an occasional series where we will highlight new additions to our staff, focusing on their background and what brought them to our agency. We hope you enjoy getting to know them as much as we have!
Meet Jonathan LaBier, Transportation Program Specialist, and Granite State Clean Cities Coordinator
How long have you been working at NHDES?
I started with this position and at NHDES on March 17 of this year, so coming up on six months.
Give us a description of your job and daily responsibilities.
I manage the Granite State Clean Cities Coalition. Clean Cities is an EPA program that’s 30 years old. Becky Ohler, who is the bureau chief for the Technical Services Bureau in the Air Resources Division, was the first one to start Clean Cities in New Hampshire. Jessica Wilcox held the position for five years before becoming a supervisor in our section. So, I have a lot of really good knowledge, influence and ability surrounding me in my role, and NHDES is a very supportive organization when it comes to the Clean Cities mission.
My overall responsibility is connecting people, really. Connecting people with resources, connecting people with other people that can help them out and building awareness and providing education and outreach to organizations throughout New Hampshire that have a vehicle fleet and wish to reduce emissions from that fleet.
What did you do before coming to NHDES?
I was in the Air Force and Air Force Reserve for a combination of 20 years, and I retired from the reserves back in 2010. And that was also transportation related. I was a fleet manager in the Air Force Reserve. I've been a stockbroker. I was a realtor for years and a home inspector. I was in the transportation industry before. I mean I've had a ton of different sales roles, a ton of different service roles, and the transportation piece. I've been a certified teacher before for K-8 and Special Ed.
When folks look at my resume, they tend to see this person who has not had a linear career at all and has been kind of all over the place. And most people look at it and they go, “I don't know what to do with this guy,” but Jessica Wilcox looked at it and said, “I know exactly what to do with this guy.” So, it worked out for me because, in this role, you have to have great communication skills, you have to be comfortable meeting new people, you have to be comfortable reaching out to new people, you have to be comfortable talking to all organizational levels from CEOs, all the way down. With my background and everything I've done, I can really talk to anybody pretty easily.
What do you love most about your job and working at NHDES?
We all want to help each other, just do better, be better, perform better. We want to be able to put out the best possible product. I love how supportive everybody is, and everybody I've met in the organization has a growth mindset and they all just want to do better. I mean, that's the whole thrust of it, the whole thrust of the department. We want to make the environment better, right? Well, for the folks that I have met in NHDES, it goes much further than that. And I just I love that.
And I really am a firm believer that we can accomplish more together than one person can accomplish individually. The sum of the two is more than the two individually could produce, and so when you get four or five or six people working together on the same goal, common mission, just amazing things can happen, like Green Your Fleet [a biannual event hosted by Granite State Clean Cities Coalition]. That took a lot to put together. It took working on it for three months before I got here. Jess and I worked on it for three months after I got here just to pull it off. And it was, I think, a smashing success, but also just a tremendous number of emails and phone calls. The amount of effort that had to go into that is just mind-boggling and the fact that at any point in time, anybody in my group would happily jump in and help where they could, I mean, you just can't beat that.