About

Hi! I’m Joy Scrogum–the Joy S. in Joy-S-Ness.

The site name is clearly a play on words, but it’s also a declaration of intent. I plan to live my life joyously and hope that by sharing resources as well as my thoughts and art with you, I can bring a little joy into your world. On this site, I’ll explore connections, through serious and creative writing. Those might include the connections between humans and the rest of the natural world or systems in which we live, connections among people, connections among ideas, etc., but I think the essence of everything I do here will be about connections. I think connections might be the basis for all joy.

Sustainability

• I have over two decades of experience working as a sustainability professional, having been involved in a variety of pollution prevention, zero waste, and sustainability planning initiatives for a wide array of stakeholders in both the public and private sectors.
• I’ve worked with businesses, organizations, institutions, and government agencies to identify and implement opportunities for improving the sustainability of their operations.
• I enjoy helping people from various backgrounds understand the environmental and social impacts of their products and actions. I relish the challenge of making sustainability comprehensible to a broad audience.
• I love to help people relate sustainability to their interests and feel empowered to make change.

I have a Bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts & Sciences (focusing on general biology) and a Master’s in Natural Resources & Environmental Sciences (focusing on wildlife ecology and human dimensions of environmental systems), both from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I’ve spent a few decades working at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC), one of the five state scientific surveys housed within the Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Since sustainability has been my life’s work, a lot of what I share via this site will be information and inspiration related to sustainability. This is my personal website and all opinions expressed are mine alone.

I’ll be adding portfolio pages to this site to highlight some of my professional work, including past projects and publications. You can connect with me on LinkedIn or BlueSky to discuss sustainability issues. I also occasionally write for a personal blog focused on reuse called Really ReUseful.

Poetry & other creative writing

Since I was a small child, I’ve enjoyed creative writing. When I was little, my Uncle Kenny would set me on his knee, and instead of telling me a story, he would ask me to tell him one. Before high school, when my interest in science grew deeper, I thought I would be a writer “when I grew up.” Even then, I continued to write creatively, and I still write essays and poetry. I may share those directly here or linked to them on other platforms, like Medium.

Miscellaneous

Unlike other focused topical blogs, this one is not restricted to one, or even a couple of topics. You can expect an occasional tangent to discuss cool biological facts, interesting words/word origins, books, my garden, my family, etc.