Ending up in Maine was not a shock to Holly Parker, who had always felt tied to the place from summers spent there as a youth. But she never imagined the ways that her interests and skills in communications and the ocean and sustainable development would combine so seamlessly there. Find out how listening to your gut and taking a few chances can help you find your place.
Guest Holly Parker went to college knowing she’d be an English major and a squash player and stumbled upon a passion for the environment and sustainability. She graduated with the thought of being a journalist and tried her hand at it at a boating publication. Though she didn’t want to turn into her mother—a teacher—she did have a small itch to try teaching. What she thought would be a short stint at a private school near her Massachusetts hometown became a 12-year career in which she led the English department.
But after having spent summers in Maine as a kid and working with boats her whole life, she felt it was spiritual home and one she was destined to return to. When deciding whether to stay in teaching, she decided to buy her first home in Portland and realized she wanted to stay in Maine but not really in teaching. In her mid thirties, she took some time dabble and take on a number of side hustles—including working at a historical schooner company, writing educational curricula, and running a non-profit boat shop that taught life skills to at-risk youth. It wasn’t until she “took another flyer,” as she calls it, in higher education and started asking some questions about how the new appearance of Icelandic ships in the harbor might be good for Maine that she brought all of her interests and experience together.
In this episode, find out from Holly how listening to your gut and taking a few chances can help you find your place …on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.
About This Episode's Guest
Holly Parker, is currently the director of UNE NORTH—the Institute for North Atlantic Studies of the University of New England—where she connects researchers, educators, policy makers and industry leaders from across Maine and the North Atlantic region to implement collaborative approaches to building resilient communities, healthy environments and thriving economies. Find out more at une.edu/UNE-north.
Mentioned in This Episode
A series published in partnership between the Portland Press Herald and The Boston Globe entitled “The Lobster Trap”: https://apps.bostonglobe.com/metro/2021/12/the-lobster-trap/
Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley
Music: Brian Burrows
Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com
Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com
Holly Parker: The thing was, though, by being on the water and being on Casco Bay for, you know, eight, ten hours a day, you know your place and you feel it. You know, there's something about being on the ocean or being on the water for me is very spiritual. And it's very emotional. Particularly when you're sailing, you're relying on the weather. You're relying on the good graces of nature.
Leslie Jennings Rowley: Ending up in Maine was not a shock to Holly Parker, who had always felt tied to the place from summers spent there as a youth. But she never imagined the ways that her interests and skills in communications and the ocean and sustainable development would combine so seemlessly there. Find out how listening to your gut and taking a few chances can help you find your place...on today's Roads Taken with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley.
Today, I am here with Holly Parker and we are going to talk about roads that go forward, roads that go sideways and roads that bring you where you need to be. So thank you so much, Holly, for being here.
HP: Oh, it's my pleasure. It's a great, great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
LJR: Yeah, I start this the same way every time asking my guests two questions and they are these when we were in college, who were you? And when we were getting ready to leave, who to do think you would become.
HP: Oh my. So I arrived at college knowing I was an English major through and through English was my jam. It came easily to me and I thought, that's what I am: Holly, the English major and the squash player. So I came to play squash, to study English, and that's how I kind of started my Dartmouth journey. I graduated as an English major. Absolutely loved it. Did not graduate as a four year squash player, but that was okay.T hat allowed me to have me to kind of pursue the honors thesis that I wanted to do in the English department and develop some amazing relationships I have with professors in particular, in the English department. I did find a little late in the game, a real love for environmental science and studies. And so I wasn't able to minor, but it really did spark some interest and certainly being in the upper valley for four years and having such a strong sense of place, that's really what drove my interest in environmental issues. So that little nugget got stuck in my brain. So as I was leaving Dartmouth, I thought I was going to be a writer. I thought I might be a journalist. I hadn't written for The Dartmouth, but I had a job as a associate editor of a boating magazine in Boston. I had had a little shadow career for the last several decades in the maritime industry as a result of that. But yeah, if I was going to be writer that I was going to go to journalism school on a couple of years, and, and that was where I was going to be. That never happened.
LJR: Okay. We will get back to the maritime thing because that is prominent in the sense of place as well for you. But so tell us where you grew up.
HP: I grew up in Andover, Massachusetts, so I grew up a, a suburban Boston woman. I went to prep school at Andover. It was, you know, in my town. That's why I went. My folks were both public school teachers. My dad's an artist. And I grew up there. It was awesome. And I was a day student at Andover. I have an older brother who went to Andover and he and her sister went to Andover. But we spent our summers up here in Maine. So my parents right after they were married, bought a little, little, a seasonal camp up in Southport Island, which is just outside of Boothbay Harbor. And that place became absolutely magical to me from day one. And I loved it and we spent much of our summers there and that's where I got my first summer job, which was working in a boat yard. I broke the gender barrier at Boothbay Regional boat yard. I became the first dock girl and I believe it was 1990. And I was pumping a lot of fuel and cleaning a lot of boats and learning some basics about boat maintenance and things like that. And I had that job for three summer. But yeah, main has always been my spiritual home. I grew up in Massachusetts. Still go back there. My folks are still down there, but yeah, I mean, has always been the place I think I knew in my heart I had to be back there.
LJR: You're there now we'll get to that. [HP: Sure.] When you decided a journalist wasn't going to happen, was it that path seems closed to me or hard for me, or did something else pop into your view?
HP: Something else came up. So I did two years of the magazine and that was really fun, but I had kind of hit a wall in terms of how far I could go with that. So I was looking at other jobs in publishing, but I also had a slight hankering to teach. And I had sworn I wouldn't become my mother. I love my mother. She's amazing. But I said, I'm not going to become an English teacher. I was 23. I took a job at Brooks School, which is a prep school in North Andover, Massachusetts. And I said, I'll give it a shot. Okay, I'll go. I know the prep school world. They needed three English teachers that year, but they also needed a squash coach. And so I thought I'll do this for a couple of years and then I'll figure out do I want to go to journalism school or am I going to do ed school? And I promptly stayed at Brooks for 12 years and in that time got my master's in education. So I was there for, for a good, long run. And I did all of that. I ran the dorm live with 30 of my closest teenage girlfriends and coached two sports and ended up running the largest department at the school and all those things. And I became very proud to be an English teacher. And I became very proud of the fact that, you know, I went to my mom a lot to ask a lot of questions and I remember I cried a lot the first year of teaching. And I remember talking to her and she said, well, okay, that's normal. She goes, but if you're still crying after year two, it's not for you. And then somewhere in year two, I stopped crying. So, and it really was fun. It was awesome. And it was a great community to learn how to teach in and, and really hone my teaching practice. So it was, it was a great.
LJR: Yeah, what great advice just to stick it out and see, and your body will tell you.
HP: Yeah, I mean, we'll and so many people that I started teaching there with had a different reaction and had to take a different path, but my heart led me to stay.
LJR: And what age range were you doing?
HP: I was teaching high school. I didn't teach many freshmen, but I did live with them. I just happened to teach the upper level courses, but that was great fun. It was a lot, it was a lot of fun.
LJR: Yeah, but often there are inciting incidents to take a long run and take a new turn. So at that 12 year mark, what was it that was happening in life?
HP: Well around 35, I decided that I needed to do something adults. And so I thought realists. You know, I lived on campus for all 12 years. So my housing was provided, my meals were provided. I could live there year round. And I thought this is the time for me to buy my own home. And, you know, my folks have a beautiful home and going up there as awesome. But you know, in your mid thirties, you're like, I kind of want to have my own spot. So I looked actually in the mid coast and didn't find anything. And then I thought Portland, Portland would be great. It's only an hour and 20 minutes from Brooks. I could get a little place in Portland, have the little pied a terre away from, you know, the craziness of boarding school life. And so my 11th year at Brooks, I bought my first condo in downtown Portland. And I closed on that just before summer and then moved up here for the summer. And I didn't know anybody; didn't know soul, just kind of dove in. I joined some community sports organizations. I just kind of threw myself into it, got to know the city and cried all the way back to Brooks in late August when I had to go back to work and I knew I was doomed. I had to find a way to make Portland home.
LJR: Again, that body talking to you.
HP: Totally. And it was funny. I went back to the academic Dean who was my best friend at the school. And I remember I went back to him during faculty meetings at the beginning of the year. And I looked at him, I said, I got a problem. He's like, I know you do. And I knew you would. So I spent the year trying to figure things out and I got a teaching job up at North Yarmouth Academy here in Maine. And I left Brooks and I took a flyer on moving to a place where I didn't really know anybody and I had a job and that was what I needed.
LJR: Yeah. And I think I know that a bit of that hook of environmental studies, environmental everything, and maybe it's because you're in this Maine wonderland comes calling again. So how does that play out?
HP: Teachers in Maine make terrible money. And so I have to just make that point. So I don't think there are many teachers in Maine who don't have side hustles. So I knew that I was going to have to do that to make mortgage payments and things like that. So I found a summer job to have before I even started the school year at NYA. And I looked around Portland, I'm going, what am I going to do? You know, at the time, you know, this was 12 years ago before Portland became Portland. Portland has become quite this destination of very shwanky and all. So still a little gritty. And I looked around and having worked in boatyards for a long time and worked in the boating industry and covered it, written about it. I thought, well, let's see if we can get on the water. So there was a schooner company called Portland Schooner Company. They own two historic schooners, both are registered with the national registry of historic places. And I went to the guy who owned it. I said, don't know how to sail historic ships. I'm a 36 year old woman who's in good shape and can be the adult in the room. What do you think? And he hired me on the spot. So I was trained and as how to maintain and run the boats. And I did that job very happily for several, several summers
LJR: These boats are not like stuck in the water museum, boats.
HP: No. These boats go out. So we would sail them for, we’d take four of two hour trips a day and that requires, you know, hoisting sail without any modern, you know, gadgets or anything. You're really just using block and tackle to move very large sails around. And you would have a crew of two people and a captain. And one of the boats is 80 feet long and the other boat is about 70 feet long. And that's what you did. And you would go down there at the beginning of the day, you'd work about a 12-hour day and you would make $50 for a day rate plus tips. And that's what I was doing, but I loved every second of it. And I also got in the best shape of my life. I mean, I was in better shape than I was playing squash at Dartmouth. I was jacked and it was really fun.
And the thing was, though, by being on the water and being on Casco Bay four or five days a week for, you know, 8-10 hours a day, you know your place and you feel it, you know, there's something about being on the ocean or being on the water for me is very spiritual and it's very emotional. Particularly when you're sailing, you're relying on the weather, you're relying on the good graces of nature to move you around and also to keep you safe. And you have to be respectful of that. You have to be aware of that. And so, you know, my first three summers in Maine, I was working on boats and I still moonlight when I can. And it's, it is the biggest driver of my sense of place is being out on the water. And if I can't be on the water, I generally try to get in it as much as possible, which makes people think I'm crazy because it's really cold.
LJR: Yes
HP: But so know that that really is it. You know, it was a summer job that I thought would be cool and it has absolutely been transformative as to how I think about my role as a citizen and my role as a professional, which we'll get to I’m sure.
LJR: Yeah. Well, that's a perfect segue. I think in thinking about, you know, you knew you were and English major; you fought being an English teacher. So what else are you kind of knowing and fighting to get to where you are?
HP: I mean, this is crazy, Leslie. I mean, you'd have to kind of write this out as a map for people to follow for this podcast. So the year after I moved here, I actually quit teaching. So I took, I did one year at North Yarmouth Academy and in the middle of that year, discovered it wasn't boarding school life that I had needed to step away from. It was school life. The joy I got previously in the classroom, which was genuine and awesome had left the experience for me. You can only teach The Great Gatsby so many years in a row before you start mailing it in even, you know, despite your best efforts. So I thought I have to step away from this because I don't want to be the kind of teacher that's burned out. And that's not fair to the kids. So again, it was one of those leaps of faith where I remember telling my parents, I want to do some consulting. I'll do some subbing. I'll do some sailing. I'll coach some squash and see where we land. And I did that for a year. So I was consulting for Discovery Education, and writing curriculum for them. I was subbing. I was coaching squash at the Portland Y and at Bates College as an assistant. And I sailed every second I could, and I was just winging it. And so like, I had that moment where I think a lot of people are fortunate to have this moment kind of in their twenties, you know, where they just have that year of trying everything and anything, and just kind of living on the edge. And I did that when I was 38. And so that was a little bit like ‘uh’ and then the last job I took before moving back into academia was I did take a job. I needed health care. And so I started looking for a job that had some healthcare attached to it, and I ran a boat shop for two years for at-risk kids. We really use mentoring and, and teamwork to help teach them math skills and some real, you know, great foundational skills, but also just let them know that they were wanted and part of a team. And so I ran that project out of Portland, but it was non-profit. So I still side hustled. I was still coaching squash and still consulting and doing the other things.
And then I got pulled back into academia and that's when a lot of the pieces kind of fell together. [LJR: Yeah.] That's what's kind of miraculous about all this, you know, I never really left anything fully behind. It has just kind of accumulated into this new role that I have. At the University of new England. So it's just really interesting, you know, I have not dropped many things from my life to get here.
LJR: No, exactly. It all feels like full circle really. And integrating lots of different parts of you. So the one, I didn't feel like you needed a map. There was just one part that I. You jumped into kind of an administrative thing at the university, but then once you're there, you're like, oh, but wait, I'm a lifelong learner. Is that what happened? Yeah?
HP: Well sort of. I jumped into an administrative role and within a year of jumping into that role, I was offered the opportunity to go to an event called the Arctic circle assembly in Reykjavik, Iceland. And it's the largest gathering of. Academics policy makers, business leaders, world leaders invested in sustainable development of the north. Every year it's in Reykjavik, it gets 2000 people, 60 countries. And the reason I went was because again, something I saw on the water. When I was coming to UNE, I've been sailing the summer before, and we started to notice container ships coming into Portland for the first time in a long time, our international terminal was pretty much dead. Suddenly we start seeing these ships coming in with really funny names. A lot of consonants, not a lot of vowels, flying these Icelandic flags. And, and it was the arrival of Eimskip, which is the Icelandic shipping company. And they had moved their North American port of call to Portland from Norfolk, Virginia.
And I was working in an office that looked at strategic initiatives for the university, particularly around things like how do we prepare our students for jobs in Maine and jobs that will benefit Maine. And so when I said to my boss, listen, there's this thing happening with Maine and Iceland; we're starting to see a lot of economic activity. I think I should go explore this event. Seems like a big event. She let me go. I have no, like God bless her. So I go to this thing and main delegation was led by Senator Angus King. And it was amazing. It was drinking from the fire hose. It was recognizing deep historical cultural, environmental, economic connections that Maine has with its neighbors to the north and the east. And Maine, I think, has long suffered from Boston and New York envy. And suddenly there was this amazing opportunity where we're the front door to opportunity, not only for our economies, but for healthier environments and healthier communities. And so that's when the light bulb went off in my head. This is about sustainable development. This is, this is not just about importing Norwegian fish and exporting Maine blueberries. This is really about the future of Maine. And Maine is a state that is the oldest by age in the country. Our population has been dwindling, our economies, which are natural resource-based have been pretty hard hit by climate. And so what are we doing to do? And so this was really interesting to me. And of course it involved boats. So I was like, sweet, this is great. This is right in my wheelhouse. So I went to the event, I was in this administrative role, but I started to develop some strategies for the university around the North Atlantic. And then I decided, well, I'm going to be here for a while. I'm thinking I'm here to stay in higher ed. I'm going to go get a PhD and work full time because that's what people do. So I was really super lucky because the University of Southern Maine, which is part of the state university system has a PhD program that's designed for people who are currently working in education. So instead of having us teach courses and like quit jobs and remove ourselves from that space, they actually commentate it through we don't teach. We just do they count kind of our current service is our experience, our practical experiences. And then we do course work and we do our dissertation work. And in theory, you can complete it in three years. And I was part of the group that was three years and we're done. I mean, we were just like hair on fire. We're going to do this. And I was able to craft my dissertation around my interest in sustainability. So I looked at the issue of how we're training young people to be sustainability leaders in higher education, either through experiences, their own advocacy work in higher ed institutions, coursework, what is it? You know, and what are the skills we need to teach them? And I came at it from an angle of actually interviewing the students and asking them about their experiences and what they felt they learned that was positive and what they felt they lacked.
And so created this kind of model for leadership and then made some suggestions on how that could be implemented in higher education. So I did that work for about a year and a half. I wrote my dissertation and became a newly minted PhD in 2019.
LJR: And still working.
HP: Yeah. I use my vacation for some pretty intense like writing sessions, but no, I didn't stop working. I was working full-time. I was still going back and forth to Iceland. In the middle of it, I helped design and launch UNE north, the Institute for North Atlantic studies, which I now direct. Yeah, it was a lot and I had great support. So what was awesome was that I I've had some really good bosses at UNE who have really facilitated my continued learning and my growth. And you can't always say that. So there's a lot of gratitude there.
LJR: Yeah. And I mean, to have those things come together and say, this is good for the institution. This is good for the students. This is good for the world that I really care about. It's good for Maine that I really care about. It's good for the world. All of those things just sound like so, right for now.
HP: I have a really great gig that speaks to my heart. I mean, you can't ask for more than that. And you know, I got to go to COP26 this fall and it was completely overwhelming. And I came back thinking is anything I'm doing at the university or UNE north, really having any impact when you think of just the scale of what is in front of us in terms of climate change. And then I come back and I think: Local. I think of kids I work with an afterschool programs teaching about sustainable development. I think about my state and the opportunities our state here in Maine has for not only surviving, but thriving, you know, in the next iteration of our lives. And so…
LJR: If we pay attention, right?
HP: If we pay attention. Yeah. I mean, it's really, it's really interesting. There was a great series in the Boston Globe and the Portland Press Herald called “The Lobster Trap” that came out maybe at the beginning of the year. And it detailed the conflict between the lobstering industry, climate change, and right whale conservation in the Gulf of Maine and how some of the policies are really, you know, the lobstermen are fighting them the whole time. Everywhere in that article, they acknowledged that they see climate changing. They acknowledged they see the changes in their environment. The challenge is: you have to meet people where they are and understand why they're still fear change. If they see the change coming, why are they holding on to their current methodology? Why they're holding on the current thing so hard in spite of the fact that they can see it? They pay attention. They know more than I do about the ocean and how it's changing. I have all the data, but they live it every day. [LJR: Right.] So it's not, it's, it's impossible for them to miss it. It's just that. There are deep seated beliefs and actually really deep-seated fears with a lot of our communities around the world around what does it mean to transform how we think to meet this great challenge of sustainable development. And particularly when it comes to climate. Climate scares people, climate can feel very distant for people or people seeking comfort will make it feel really distant. And so it's really important for us to kind of look at climate and climate action. And for me, the sustainable development lens helps with that because we can do things that yes, reduce our admissions, but there are also cascading effects from other areas and sustainable development where you can make a difference.
So for me, I don't eat red meat anymore. I grew up on hamburgers, steaks, the whole thing. I loved it. I don't have a quandary around eating meat in general, like vegetarianism hasn't been my thing. But when you look at the data of how much carbon and water is needed to produce a pound of beef protein versus a pound of poultry protein versus a pound of seafood protein. There you got me. And I'm lucky I live in Maine so I can eat a lot of fish.
LJR: That’s right.
HP: Well, that's the thing you can make that choice. And then that choice about what I eat on a day-to-day basis could have an impact if more people made that choice. So yeah, I think of it in that way. And when I think of, yes, we have to pay attention.
We can also pay attention to what we're doing in our own homes or even our small communities or in our businesses to make that difference. And it doesn't just have to be about I'm going to get my EV and make sure I'm charged up with solar panels. That's awesome. But that's not accessible to a lot of people in the world. You know, so if we're going to do this in an equitable just way, we have to have different pathways for people to access a sustainable development.
LJR: Yeah. So back to that thought of pathways, if you could think of 20-something Holly, English major totally my jam. Yeah. I like the environment and I'm going to write and I'm going to yeah. And you'd told her: Guess what? You're going to run this center on north Atlantic studies and look at big, like our big issues of our time. What would she have said?
HP: If you told her explicitly that she was going to be living in. I think she would have been all for it. If you told 20-something, Holly, she's going to be a PhD in public policy, running a university center on sustainable issues, sustainable development issues in Maine, in the North Atlantic, the Maine thing would have resonated sustainable development would have been a mystery. And I think I would have been really confused about how an English major was going to get. Yeah, right? [LJR: Yeah.] And it turns out that everything I learned in my English major about storytelling and communication and empathy, and being able to read and experience across cultures and belief systems informs everything I do every day as someone who now works as a social scientist and brings together groups of glaciologists and policymakers. And, you know, I have a fabulous woman I work with who studies in you at storytelling around sled dogs? Like, I mean, it's just, you bring these amazing groups of people together. So. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't have known that at 20, I thought an English major either went into a writing career or a teaching career. I think the one thing I will give Dartmouth is Dartmouth gave me the confidence to follow those gut instincts when it came to leaving gigs, that seemed really good. And like the right thing to do at the time and take a flyer. Leaving Brooks was a really hard decision. Something in my gut told me I needed to get out of Dodge and become a schooner bum. Become a squash coach, get out on the water, connect with this place. And that's what I did. And then I took another flyer and tried a PhD and I advocated to take a trip that I knew nothing about. And if, since fallen in love with Iceland in the North Atlantic and the Arctic. And so yeah, it's great.
LJR: Well, I just think that speaks to not just gathering these skills that ultimately are going to serve you, but gathering experiences and being willing to take those flyers.
HP: Well I think in talking to you, what's amazing to me is that, so I talk about transforming systems a lot in my work, so that the system or the mindset that we're working with at a given time may not be suited for the problem at hand. I think of the UN the climate conference, which has a structure I'm not sure is even suited to the task at hand is really kind of arcane. It's very rigid. And climate action is something that is very complex and weblike, and so maybe the system needs to transform. And in just having this conversation with you. I think that were moments of impending transformation in my life that I had to embrace. I had opportunities to say, Nope, that's scary. I mean, that's really transforming how I think about my life. You know, how I think about my role and a couple of those times I just said, Let's do it. Let's see what the next thing is. And that's allowed me to now approach this work that I do, which is all about trying to have people make those transformations in themselves and their communities, I think a little bit easier. So just in having this conversation with you, that kind of popped into my head going, wow, I have really changed, really changed. Even just since I moved to Maine, but certainly since I left Dartmouth, I mean, certainly there's been a lot of transformation happening there and I think people sometimes get scared of that and I get it. It's really scary.
LJR: But you do it to fit better with the problem at hand or the times.
HP: Or your being. In my gut, I've always, you know, in, in Maine has this weird thing about people from away and all this other stuff I've always felt at home here. I've always felt that this was my place and it took me 36 years to get here, to live here and be here. And I think my spirit was calling for that, you know, for a very long time. And for a while, it was fine to live in Massachusetts and work with the kids. It was awesome. But at some point the voice gets very loud and you're either going to say yes, or you’re going to say back off. And I said yes.
LJR: Well, you can tell that it was the right way to answer that call for you. For sure.
HP: Yes, it was, it was.
LJR: So I think it was amazing for you to walk us through that. No map needed, just kind of following your gut, following what makes s.. what seems right. And what feels like is an avenue for you to make impact. And you're certainly doing that. So thanks so much for sharing, Holly.
HP: Oh, it was my pleasure. And yeah. Thank you so much for inviting me to add to all these amazing conversations that you've been having. It's been, it's been a treat.
LJR: That was Holly Parker who is currently the director of UNE NORTH – the Institute for North Atlantic Studies of the University of New England – where she connects researchers, educators, policy makers and industry leaders from across Maine and the North Atlantic region to implement collaborative approaches to building resilient communities, healthy environments and thriving economies.
Find out more at une.edu/UNE-north. Just as Holly is connecting folks across the north Atlantic, we are connecting people all over the world, from Karachi to Beijing, El Paso to Winston-Salem, and everywhere in between. Thank you to all our listeners and keep sending friends to RoadsTakenShow.com or their favorite podcast platform to find more guests and me, Leslie Jennings Rowley, on Roads Taken.