Alta Cunningham

I have been lucky to be in the right place at the right time with the right people in the environmental consulting field. Everything about my career has felt like, “oh, I guess I’m doing that now. Great!” Why did I major in history? Because my Greek and Roman (and later, Chinese) history professor told great stories, so I took all his classes and ended up with enough history credits. How did I start in the environmental consulting field? Because I needed a job, a friend told her boss that I was an expert in Word (ha!), so I started as a temporary employee doing word processing while going to college. I quickly became bored, so that boss moved me into editing and slyly began giving me CEQA generalist sections to write. Why did I become involved in cultural resources management? Because a coworker took me out on a survey. We had over 6,000 buildings to inventory and there weren’t enough architectural historians to go around. I had so much fun organizing the research and writing building descriptions, I finally knew how I wanted to focus my career. It meant going back to school for my master’s degree and the fact that it incorporated my history major was a lucky coincidence. Or maybe not? Now I’m the one telling the great stories.