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Tackling Goals from Coast to Coast By Emily Herrington Photo by Michelle Staffield
Culture shock is no longer much of a shock for LSU alumna Victoria Ippolito.
Ippolito (2010 MAST AGR) has gone from coast to coast tackling her goals. The New Jersey native attended college in Rhode Island for her undergraduate degree then made a cross-country trip to the Deep South to earn her master’s degree in fisheries science with a minor in environmental science at LSU. Now, Ippolito finds herself on the California shore. “I loved Louisiana. I was really happy to be there,” Ippolito said. “The culture is so different, and that’s kind of why I moved [to Santa Monica], too. I like to see what our country’s like.” Ippolito is a boater education program associate for the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission (SMBRC). She works with multiple programs, but her primary role is educating boaters about environmental issues and safe practices. This is a change of pace for the scienceoriented Ippolito, who said learning how to communicate with various groups of people presented a different type of challenge than working on the giant clam project at LSU. “You have to learn that facts and numbers don’t hold as much as weight as they used to when you dealt with science,” she said. “When you deal with people, it’s a lot more about that emotion to Victoria Ippolito places plants at specific elevations as part of the Malibu Lagoon restoration project. inspire change.” In addition to encouraging boaters to change their behaviors to do what’s best for “When you deal with the environment, Ippolito manages grants on restoration and pollution prevention and people, it’s a lot more works with a program restoring the population of abalone, which, she says, are closely about that emotion to related to oysters. inspire change.” Of course, Louisiana’s seafood brings droves to the Bayou State, and Ippolito counts herself among them. But instead of coming here to debate preferences among chargrilled, fried, or raw seafood, Ippolito worked alongside the Louisiana seafood industry, examining the restoration and environmental aspects of the state’s beloved oysters. It was the latter part of her work – the environmental and restoration efforts – that really drew her in, she said. The environment, especially the marine environment, has long been one of Ippolito’s passions, and she’s always wanted to help in that area. Her work at SMBRC allows her to fulfill her goal because the organization has multiple programs that support the marine environment. Her ultimate goal, she said, is to help restore ecosystems, whether it’s that of kelp forests or oyster beds. And she wants to help the entire ecosystem – not just an individual animal. When she’s not working with boaters or marine habitats, Ippolito still prefers to embrace the environment. She names scuba diving and hiking as her favorite off-theclock hobbies. Emily Herrington, a junior public relations major in the Manship School of Mass Communication, is managing editor of The Daily Reveille.
74 LSU Alumni Magazine | Summer 2013