TEAM PLAYER
In celebration of National Women’s Month, let’s shine a spotlight on Bishop’s Naomi Jensen, who owns TEAM Environmental, a local natural resources management firm.
Two weeks ago, she sent out a press release announcing a rebranding of the 35-year old firm founded by Walt Pachucki.
The firm was formerly called TEAM Engineering and Management, but as Jensen says, she wanted to rebrand the firm to more accurately reflect its continued evolution in an environmental direction.
Which makes sense, given that Jensen graduated with an Environmental Sciences degree, while Pachucki, the company founder, had a mining engineering background.
The evolution of services reflects the changing needs of clients in the Eastern Sierra, said Jensen. And rebranding is also about visibility. “Oh yeah. They do that.”
With Natural Resource Management as the umbrella, “we’ve branched out more broadly into EIS [reports/environmental impact analysis], NEPA and CEQA compliance, environmental analysis, archaeological studies, hydrogeology and water resources, biological surveys … “
She referenced the proposal to nominate Owens Dry Lake as a national historic district. This is an interagency project, working collaboratively with local tribes and regulatory agencies, requiring a lot of stakeholder engagement, with TEAM acting as a facilitator of sorts.
According to the press release, TEAM Environmental “provides environmental compliance, impact analysis and sustainability-focused natural resource management for governmental agencies, educational institutes and private land and business owners in Inyo and Mono Counties.”
As part of the rebranding, Jensen also had TEAM certified as a WBE (Women-Owned Business Enterprise), SBE (Small Business Enterprise), DBE (Disadvantaged Business Enterprise).
Why is this important?
By identifying as a woman-owned business, it provides a little more help in cracking/bidding Federal or State (Caltrans) projects, where you’re competing with big, out-of-area firms. Inyo and Mono counties already offer some preference in their bidding processes to local firms, and have seen the value in utilizing local expertise and resources for projects in this region.
Jensen started at TEAM in 1999. She was fresh out of college, the third employee. At the time, she worked on a lot of UST (Underground storage tank) and gas station cleanup, and groundwater monitoring at landfills.
“As a teen, I couldn’t wait to get out of Bishop,” she said, “and I didn’t expect myself to be back here. Nor did I necessarily think of myself as an entrepreneur. But the job has been a great fit for me.”
Jensen acquired the firm in 2015.
It has a core staff of five which includes Jensen, a geologist, a biologist, an archaeologist and administrative support.
It has a total staff of around 10 FTE (full-time equivalent).employees, including subject matter experts used on specific projects.
When it comes to bigger projects, it can lean on larger affiliates for help.
Jensen is a 4th generation Valley resident on her mother’s (Denton) side.. Denton. Her grandmother Betty was Bishop’s first woman mayor back in the ‘50s, her grandfather a beloved family doctor, and her great-uncle the late Mono County superior court Judge Edward Denton.
Jensen is a single mom with two teenagers.
She has been a board member of the High Sierra Energy Foundation (HSEF) for more than 10 years, and volunteers for school sport programs and community-based organizations.
