Sarah Galindo
Project Manager
Sarah Galindo’s favorite part of her job is that she gets to work on a variety of projects simultaneously. In doing so, she gets many opportunities to develop new skills – everything from writing proposals to managing multi-million-dollar projects to conducting field work in subject matters unfamiliar to her.
Sarah’s manager would describe Sarah as “hard-working, intelligent, even-keeled and easy to work alongside”. Her manager goes on saying that “Sarah has successfully managed and navigated several of our most important and inherently complicated projects in our region and we could not be happier to see her continue to grow both professionally and personally.”
Sarah started with the company in April 2022, but before that, she’s had some unique and exciting opportunities.
She graduated from San Diego State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in biology in 2015. “Growing up in San Diego, I lived at the beach and in the ocean which led me to wanting to study the ocean and all the creatures within it.” While in college, Sarah did a summer internship with the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program where she learned how to train sea lions and dolphins. She also studied population trends of great white sharks off the coast of Mossel Bay, South Africa, while interning with Oceans Research. Her first “job” was with the San Diego Zoo and San Diego Zoo Safari Park as a programs coordinator. She applied for the internal zookeeper training program while she worked at the zoo and was selected as a training candidate. She worked with the zoo’s butterflies before moving to Salt Lake City, Utah, where she was hired as a field biologist with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Salt Lake Field Office. She was with the BLM for three years before being hired by Transcon (now our environmental division) as a project coordinator in 2022.
During Sarah’s interview with the company, she emphasized that she was interested in a balance of field work and desktop work. “I was pleasantly surprised to learn that working in the field and having office time was quite common at Eocene!”
Upon joining Eocene, she was hired as a project coordinator/biologist, and within the first year was provided the opportunity to work on other resource related projects and fieldwork, meeting her professional goal. Within 2 ½ years of being hired, she was promoted to assistant project manager/biologist and quickly thereafter to project manager/biologist.
“I never know when a new opportunity will present itself, but my supervisor is great at finding new opportunities and projects for me to be part of. Sometimes, those opportunities require that I travel to states I’ve never been to, or areas of Utah I have not yet explored. On one project, I went to southern Utah with my supervisor and another Eocene employee, and we spent the entire day crawling through a heavily vegetated wash to perform a wetland delineation. Our supervisor took the time to make sure we understood how to perform a wetland delineation and collect Ordinary High-Water Mark (OHWM). As we hiked out of the wash back to our trucks covered in muck and leaves, we were deliriously laughing about the experience and about how bad we smelled. I get excited for those moments and feel lucky I work with a team that works hard but also enjoys their work.”