Today we’d like to introduce you to Leigh Pomeroy.
Hi Leigh, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My background is in the wine business and film business, but when I moved to Mankato with my wife for her job teaching at Minnesota State University, Mankato, I realized that my careers had no future here. I ended up teaching writing and film part-time at Minnesota State University, Mankato, and and freelance writing and editing. I also cared for our twin sons… and, it seems at times, half the kids in the neighborhood. Once the twins were a little older, I became involved with bicycling and trail advocacy, and became one of the principals in establishing the Red Jacket Trail between Mankato and Rapidan and for paving the Sakatah-Singing Hills Trail.
In the 1990s, I served on the City of Mankato planning commission and ran once unsuccessfully for city council while being active in city planning issues including the design of what is now the Mayo Clinic Health System Event Center. In 2004, after the endorsed DFL candidate for congress in Minnesota’s First District dropped out of the race due to health reasons, I volunteered to run and was endorsed as the new candidate. Since my candidacy only started in July of that year, the campaign was very short and I lost handily.
Meanwhile, I was becoming involved in environmental issues, serving on the board of the Mankato Area Environmentalists as well as the Region Nine Renewable Energy Committee. In 2007, I attended the Gustavus Adolphus College Nobel Conference on energy, which was a real wake-up call about the challenge of climate change. From then on I’ve spent the majority of my volunteer hours on advocating for climate change solutions.
To that end, in my personal life I have installed solar panels on my home as well as a heat pump for primary heating and cooling. I’ve driven a PHEV since 2018 and have an electric riding mower and snowblower.
For the last decade I have served on the board of the Southcentral Minnesota Clean Energy Council (the successor to the Region Nine Renewable Energy Committee) and was its chair for five years until January of this year.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The biggest challenge for me has been trying to make a living in my fields of wine and film. Fortunately, my wife made a good salary as a professor and I was able to contribute to the household income from my part-time teaching and freelance writing and editing work.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
In Mankato I’m best known as the guy who used to write the wine column in Mankato Magazine and who advocates for clean energy and environment issues via my op-ed pieces and letters to the editor in the Mankato Free Press.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
I’m basically an introvert who forced himself to become an extrovert in high school and college. It was a very conscious effort.
Pricing:
- Most of my work is done pro bono, but if someone wants to pay me, I’m all for that!
Contact Info:
- Website: Southcentral Minnesota Clean Energy Council: https://www.smcleanenergy.org
