On May 13, during common lunch, the Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School Environmental Club welcomed their last guest speaker of the year — Jordan Wolman. Wolman, who graduated from SPFHS in 2017, is a current sustainability reporter for POLITICO who covers biodiversity issues, ESG issues and problems surrounding mining and plastics. He spoke to current Environmental Science students and other interested classmates about what he currently does and how it connects to his original learning at SPFHS.
“I came back to [Scotch Plains] because both of my siblings are graduating college this week, and Mr. Rittner invited me here and I was more than happy to speak,” Wolman told The Fanscotian.
A student in the first ever SPFHS AP Environmental Science class, Wolman combined his knowledge of writing and the environment into the job he currently holds.
“I really like that I get to talk to smart people all day long. I get to ask them hard questions and think about the issues that the country is dealing with,” Wolman said.
Wolman explained the process of breaking news and incrementally advancing a story in a new way. He shared past experiences of his job along with his involvement in issues of carbon markets while working at POLITICO. He also shared his current involvement in the issue of carbon markets and how the state of Pennsylvania has been affected by these issues.
Wolman explained his day-to-day process at POLITICO which includes: writing multiple newsletters each week, generating story ideas while tracking state legislation and also occasionally visiting Capitol Hill to interview a member of Congress.
Wolman graduated from Lehigh University in 2021 with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the school newspaper, The Brown and White. Along with writing for his college, Wolman also received a grant from the Pulitzer Center in order to report on the lack of internet access in rural Pennsylvania. For Wolman, coming back to his alma mater is a chance for him to inspire and help students who are interested in environmental studies.
“I hope to open students’ eyes a little bit to the options that are out there in the world,” Wolman said. “I think that it is important to show them that you don’t have to just do science-specific work in order to stay engaged with environmental issues and topics.”
After graduating from Lehigh, Wolman started his journalism career at POLITICO as a digital producer before transitioning to his current position of a sustainability reporter in May 2022. Though he works out of Washington D.C., issues covered by Wolman range from the environmental impact of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System’s Pension to plastics treaty negotiations in Ottawa.
Wolman’s visit to SPFHS provided students with a real life application to what they are currently learning and how environmental science studies translates to the “real world.”
