Today we’d like to introduce you to Melanie Hernandez.
Melanie, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I come from humble beginnings, my parents were from Puerto Rico and they would never have imagined I could come so far from their beginnings in rural, agricultural Puerto Rico. My parents instilled in me the importance of education and hard work. I’m so grateful for the opportunities they sacrificed to give to me. In fact, my mom was a trailblazer, the first Hispanic female leader in a male dominated food manufacturing company.
My parents inspired me to go to law school and start my career over 20 years ago as an attorney, the first in my family. I specialized in environmental law but was really drawn toward the consulting world, working with scientists and engineers helping clients find environmental solutions before litigation. Instead of the traditional law firm route, I worked for large environmental consulting companies throughout the U.S. and as a civilian environmental planner with the Marine Corps.
As many San Diegans, I’m a transplant. Once I got a taste of beautiful San Diego, I was hooked. After spending 7 years in Japan as the environmental planning lead for Marine Corps Installations in the Pacific, I returned to San Diego in 2013 knowing it would be my permanent home. The past few years I’ve worked with a large international environmental consulting company in San Diego, leading the largest Navy/Marine Corps environmental analysis in the Pacific.
Over a year ago I was approached about the opportunity of a lifetime, to co-found a small business in San Diego called Scout Environmental. To offer the same environmental services to military clients that I’ve been doing my whole career, but now as our own small business. I jumped at the opportunity!
I knew first hand that there were so many federal government contracting opportunities for qualified small businesses. There have been a few key times in my life that my gut told me to go for it, and this was one of those moments. I didn’t have all the answers, I didn’t know how I would fund my part, or how we would build the business. What I did know was that I would regret more not going for it than living with the regret of never trying. We haven’t paused or looked back since.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Just like everyone, we all have struggles and challenges in life. My first husband passed away from cancer when our twins were just 1 years old. I had to find my way to re-build my life for myself and my family. It was through the support of family and loved ones that I discovered I could find happiness and purpose again. That’s really guided me through struggles and challenges. It’s easy to say that no matter what challenges there are, there’s always the next day, the next sunrise, but accepting that there is happiness greater than one could imagine is harder than it sounds.
I was able to find joy again and my husband, who is a recently retired Marine, inspires me every day to keep improving and believing in the possibilities. I wouldn’t be where I am today without the encouragement from him and our children and their constant positive cheering. And that includes a lot of healthy reality checks! Life in a family still includes laundry and dinner, sports and school, and let’s not forget that. Those life challenges also gave me the opportunity to look at life in a different way. That nothing is guaranteed and to make the best with the time that we have which was part of the inspiration to start Scout Environmental.
One of the challenges of starting a small business is having to do so much more with less staff. Business school theory about “lean” is one thing, but the reality can be daunting. My business partners and I have over 70 years combined experience and we have amazing senior advisors who share our vision and core values to help guide our start-up. Along with all the classic business goals and objectives, we also all share the awareness that this must be fun and it must feel like we have lives, vibrant careers with fantastic challenges. It’s not just a job now.
Scout Environmental – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
I co-founded Scout Environmental with friends and colleagues Ryan Pingree and Jason Strayer. We saw an opportunity to blaze our own professional trail. Acting on this vision, we created Scout Environmental, a Veteran-Owned Small Business. Ryan, a Navy Veteran, Jason with a proud history of family military service, and I, an environmental attorney and Marine Corps spouse provide high quality, cost-competitive environmental planning and compliance services for the U.S. military.
And the name says it all… at Scout Environmental, we consider ourselves our client’s scouts, their agile and specialized unit of experienced professionals looking ahead to provide the best available information to meet the military mission. I love what we do. Scout Environmental leads the way by serving the military, ensuring our service members can do the training they need while protecting the environment. And because we understand the culture, we can find the best way to work with them to achieve goals and objectives, related to the environment. They’re not mutually exclusive at all!
I’m most proud of as a company is that Scout Environmental has a great balance in personalities and our ability to follow-through on goals while having fun along the way.
What sets Scout Environmental apart from others is our more than 70 years of combined experience and our shared core values to bring our A-game while enjoying the ride along the way. From my personal experience, I cherish the time that I have with family and friends. There are no guarantees in life and my partners and our senior advisors have a similar mindset.
With that balance, that vision, that stability, I’m enormously thankful to all those who’ve guided us along the way, who’ve had successful start-ups, but more importantly have had failures that we can learn from. Knowing that we can reach out, that we have resources when we hit a speed bump when we need help, has made this venture so possible, and so exciting.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
One of the proudest and most humbling moments in my career was when I completed leading a complex environmental project for basing new aircraft in Okinawa, Japan. This effort was deeply complex, fraught with conflict and social issues, as well as political challenges. But the key was safeguarding the core mission objectives, which we were able to do.
I’ll always remember seeing the aircraft squadron finally arrive on the island after we completed the environmental review and realizing that I played a key part of the successful basing of that aircraft squadron. That we provided as much training flexibility as possible while evaluating and minimizing the environmental effects.
Do you feel like our city is a good place for businesses like yours? If someone was just starting out, would you recommend them starting out here? If not, what can our city do to improve?
Clearly, for Scout Environmental, Northern San Diego is an ideal place for providing environmental services to the military. We are strategically based in San Diego, home to one of the largest concentrations of U.S. military installations with some of the most rigorous environmental regulations. But just as importantly, there’s an incredible network of local services that support small businesses in San Diego. At a more personal level, just in my community, there are so many other positive, inspiring women who are juggling family and careers such as our accountant, corporate attorney, photographer, print shop. I love the camaraderie that there is with other small businesses in the region, looking out to help each other. It inspires me to pay it forward, support other military spouses like myself, and be a role model for young Latinas.
Contact Info:
- Address: 169 Saxony Road, Suite 214, Encinitas, CA 92024
- Website: www.scoutenv.com
- Phone: (833) SCOUT-EN (726-8836)
- Email: hello@scoutenv.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/scoutenvirousa/
- Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/ScoutEnvironmental.USA
- Other: https://www.linkedin.com/company/scout-environmental-inc-usa/
Image Credit:
Scout Environmental and Catherine Hatfield
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