Donna Leach, an environmental engineer at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, wears a lot of hats — all green — and has been recognized for them by the Federal Women’s Program in Marshall’s Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity.
Leach helps lead a variety of green initiatives in Marshall’s Environmental Engineering & Occupational Health Office. As lead engineer for sustainability, she disseminates federally mandated guidelines to boost energy and water conservation and recycling, improve fleet management and reduce infrastructure costs. As coordinator for the Environmental Management System, she develops procedures and conformance practices designed to reduce Marshall’s environmental impact and increase its operating efficiency. And as Marshall’s representative for NASA’s Regulatory Risk Analysis and Communications program, she helps identify, analyze and communicate the impact of new and proposed environmental regulations on NASA’s mission.
For all these contributions, Leach received the Federal Women’s Program Outstanding Achievement Award for exceptional professional service to Marshall and NASA. The award is among several presented annually in association with Women’s Equality Day, Aug. 26. It honors the 1920 certification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted women the right to vote. Congress created Women’s Equality Day in 1971.
Leach credits the skilled environmental engineers and technicians in her organization for helping make the honor possible. “It’s probably rare for most people to say they feel good every day about the work they do, but for me it’s always been true,” she said. “I’m so proud of the positive impact our team is having on the future of Marshall and NASA.”
That impact can be felt all over Marshall, she said, thanks to energy-saving measures and innovative sustainability initiatives such as a program she helped implement in 2012 — now used throughout Marshall — to introduce tighter safety, health and environmental guidelines for equipment purchasing. “Team members supporting our Safety, Health and Environmental Program research chemical and equipment purchase requests over their entire lifecycle and ask questions about potential alternatives,” she said. “Is there a safer product? A greener product? What other costs must be factored in, from personal protective equipment for those handling this product to the cost of disposing it safely?”
She praises the workforce’s embrace of green measures. “Marshall workers are always coming up with great ideas for conservation and environmentally conscious alternatives to conventional practices,” she said. “They really care. That’s half the challenge.”
Leach knows it’s an uphill battle. “Throwing waste in a recycling bin won’t send us to space tomorrow,” she said, “but it saves money, and over time that savings has a real, tangible impact. It helps keep Marshall solvent, a good steward of taxpayer dollars — and that will keep us flying.”
A native of Old Forge, New York, and the oldest of six siblings, Leach joined the U.S. Army in 1985 at just 17, seeking her place in the world. After a decade of military life, she arrived in Huntsville with a husband and three children, still yearning to find her niche. She earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering from the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 1994, and a master’s degree in environmental engineering there in 2001.
She began her NASA career at Marshall in 1993 as a mechanical engineering cooperative education student supporting the NASA Small Expendable Deployer System tether missions and the International Space Station Robotic Arm.
Participating in Marshall’s Professional Internship Program in 1994, realizing she was more interested in the human side of engineering than the mechanical, Leach joined the Environmental Engineering & Occupational Health Office. And found her place. Initially hired as National Environmental Policy Act coordinator, she wrote environmental impact statements and assessments and participated in large surveys of archaeology, plants, wildlife and wetlands. She served from 1997 to 2010 as cultural resource manager for Marshall, NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans and the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Simi Valley, California, preserving archaeological resources at those sites.
In addition to the Federal Women’s Program award, her honors include Marshall Director’s Commendations in 2007 and 2012, a NASA Certificate of Achievement in 2009 and Silver Achievement Medals in 2012 and 2016. She also received the Silver Snoopy Award from the NASA astronaut corps in 2008.
Outside NASA, Leach does volunteer work, including playing music three nights a week for dances at senior community centers around North Alabama. She also finds time to talk to area students pursuing the STEM curricula — science, technology, engineering and math.
The main thing she tries to pass along to them is the same lesson she learned during that internship: NASA is primarily about people, not hardware. “It isn’t just sitting at a desk all day. There are so many opportunities. You can be a computer technician, an archaeologist or a writer, and you can feel good about your work every single day.”
And, like Leach, successfully wear any number of hats.
Learn more about NASA’s Marshall Flight Center at: