Early each Saturday morning during her undergraduate years at UD, Meg Maloney ’18, ’21 was up early and ready to go. Brother Don Geiger, a Marianist brother in his 80s, would pull up to Stuart Complex at 7:30 a.m. and the two would head out to restore prairies, pull invasive plants and replant native ones across the Dayton area. It was not a class requirement. It was just what she did.
“Brother Geiger encouraged me that if you find your vocation early, the work you do does not feel like work, because it is just a higher calling,” Maloney said. “He really took me under his wing to help me figure out where in life I was meant to go.”
For Maloney, that calling led her to where she is now — working as the sustainability manager for the city of Dayton, where she has spent her career turning that same sense of purpose into measurable change for the community she calls home.
Growing up in Glen Ellyn, a suburb of Chicago, Maloney always had been drawn to biology and thought for a long time she wanted to be a doctor. That changed her senior year of high school, when an Advanced Placement environmental science course shifted her thinking.
“My teacher was really passionate about climate and the environment, and I was like, there are a lot of people in the world that want to be doctors, but how many people want to be tree doctors, or help the environment?” she said. “That is what got me interested in environmental science.”
She chose UD for its program and found herself drawn not just to campus, but to Dayton itself.
“I liked the grit that Dayton had,” she said. “I liked that people were working to make the city better. It was not just the campus community, but really the Dayton community.”
At UD, Maloney immersed herself in everything the University had to offer, serving in the sustainability club, student government association sustainability committee, river steward program and campus recreation outdoor education program.
She also volunteered with 4 Paws for Ability, training service dogs and bringing Dayton Public School students in to read to puppies, as well as with the Beavercreek Wetland Association, Five Rivers MetroParks, the Marianist Environmental Education Center and the St. Vincent de Paul Homeless Shelter.
She conducted undergraduate research in Ryan McEwan’s lab, who became a key mentor whose guidance would alter the trajectory of her career. In that lab, she was recognized with UD’s 2017 Riley Award, the 2018 Distinguished Contributions Award and the Russell Joly, S.M., Award of Excellence in Biology. She also met her husband in that same lab. She graduated with her bachelor’s degree in environmental biology in 2018.
After a season teaching environmental education in California, Maloney returned to Dayton, where her husband had taken a job. She completed her master’s degree in environmental science with a concentration in sustainability at UD in 2021, creating a resilience assessment for the city of Dayton and UD and researching the impact of invasive Callery pear on prairie ecosystems in the region. While pursuing her degree, she began interning at the city of Dayton’s new office of sustainability and worked her way up to manager. McEwan, who nominated her for the Joe Belle Memorial Young Alumni Award, married her and her husband along the way.
In her current role, Maloney has secured millions of dollars in grants for the city, completed greenhouse gas inventories for UD and the city of Dayton, developed Geographic Information Systems maps to understand climate stressors across southwest Ohio and built a sustainability curriculum summer camp program for children. She recently secured an $8 million grant to help more than 400 low-income households weatherize and improve the energy efficiency of their homes. She also played a central role in the Gem City Solar Project, negotiating a contract to direct energy from a 250-acre solar array built within city limits straight to Dayton residents, making it one of the largest community solar projects benefiting residents of any U.S. city in the country.
“If [energy] generation is happening in your community, your community should take ownership over it,” she said. “The project is estimated to save residents $42 million over the next 25 years.”
No matter the project, Maloney says the connection to her Marianist education is never far from her mind.
“I always tell people my job is not only to help the environment in Dayton be better, but to help create a healthier community, too,” she said. “Every day, I feel like the work I am doing is actually making a difference in people’s lives. That is what is really important to me.”
She and her husband live in Dayton, putting down roots in the city and community that shaped her.
Brother Geiger, who picked her up every Saturday morning at 7:30 a.m. to go change the world, passed away in December 2020, but something tells us he would not be surprised by where Maloney is today.