EMILY EVEN ’13: Making Sporting Events Sustainable

Ice hockey has always been a significant part of Emily’s life.

Born in the Netherlands (her mother is Dutch, and her father is Canadian), she grew up on the ice when not many young girls were skating competitively. When she was 14, her family moved to Quebec, Canada, where hockey is king. By 16, Emily had tired of living in a French-speaking city (she was not fluent), and when her Canadian team competed in prep school tours against independent U.S. schools like Kimball Union, she saw an opportunity to live and learn south of the Canadian border.

She applied to several boarding schools in the northeast. She chose Millbrook because she felt at ease when she toured—she could be herself—and Millbrook’s smaller size seemed to be ideal.

Emily began as a Vth former at Millbrook in 2011, and during her two years, she experienced tremendous academic and personal growth. The small school environment she was attracted to proved beneficial as she developed close relationships with faculty and classmates. Her advisor, Ms. Ramos, and hockey coach, Mr. Allen, among others, played important roles in her development, offering support and fostering her leadership skills. Despite her dyslexia and ADHD, she excelled in the classroom; she continued to be extremely comfortable and productive on the ice.

Emily matriculated to Concordia University in Montreal in 2013, majoring in leisure sciences within the Human Sciences Department. Minors in marketing and management, an internship in event planning, and leadership on the university’s women’s ice hockey team rounded out her four years of college. She and her Concordia Flyers teammates finished on a high note in March 2017, battling at the women’s national hockey championship and placing fourth in all of Canada. Since graduation, she has traversed the globe many times, drawn by opportunities on the ice and finding a path to personal and professional fulfillment.

International Women’s Ice Hockey

Emily began playing for the Dutch national team in 2006. By the time she was 16, shortly before transferring to Millbrook, she had played for Team Netherlands at the World Championships in Australia, and that experience left a lasting impression on her. After graduating from Concordia in 2017 and being inspired by her previous Australian experience, she flew off to Sydney to join their women’s ice hockey team for a year, working part-time in restaurant management between her hockey travels. Visa complications brought her home to Montreal briefly before she headed to Austria in 2019 to play professional ice hockey for an Austrian club based in Steiermark as a member of the European Women’s Hockey League (EWHL). Her time as a player and captain of this team continued even during COVID-19. Through 2022, she worked part-time and played club hockey in Austria, all while her quest for a world championship with team Netherlands continued year after year.

For such a small country, team Netherlands performs incredibly well on the international stage. In two consecutive years, 2018 and 2019, team Netherlands won gold in their division, which significantly boosted her team’s international rankings. In 2023, the team was one goal away from another divisional win, which would have moved them into the Olympic division. For all their success, the Dutch players only come together to practice at international training camps two or three times a year. Despite how infrequently the team plays together, the close connections within the small hockey community in the Netherlands and the years of playing together allow them continued success.

Skating Toward Professional and Sustainable Sporting Events

While she was playing hockey through her 20s, graduate school was always on the horizon and part of Emily’s plan. When a hockey injury necessitated surgery in 2022, she realized the time was right to return to live and study in the Netherlands for the first time since she was 14. In Amsterdam, she enrolled in the fall of 2022 in a joint master’s degree program between Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and British Northumbria University; her studies focused on global sustainable business management.

Millbrook’s commitment to sustainability made a lasting impression on Emily, and she knew she wanted to focus on sustainability in her career rather than just business, finance, or accounting. From September 2023 through April 2024, she researched and wrote her thesis while working as a campaign and event planner for the university’s Green Office. She organized events highlighting student-led sustainability initiatives and projects, including networking sessions for sustainable start-ups.

Her thesis focuses on sporting events, specifically within the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF), and making them more sustainable worldwide, integrating her past experiences into one project. While researching, she spoke with leaders in the IIHF across Europe on every detail related to their 50 annual international events. Ideas already in place in cities where sustainability is a civic pillar include ice rinks made more sustainable by swapping energy with swimming pools in the same building, using LED lighting—which can be dimmed in between periods—and collecting rainwater for use in showers and toilets. Emily’s thesis ultimately proposes making small impacts at each event for a more significant cumulative effect. Instead of using plastic-covered IDs, she suggests an app for live updates on player information. She advocates for reducing paper and plastic use by moving tournament information online and choosing sustainable hotels and rinks accessible by public transportation. By collaborating with cities with sustainable development goals, IIHF can leave a positive legacy and give back to local communities.

She admits the IIHF faces external pressures from governments to comply with sustainability initiatives and new internal pressures from the younger generation of players. The IIHF is already exploring synthetic ice options as alternatives to natural ice. This includes options made from recycled materials, including plastics recovered from the ocean, that are easy to put down and take up, and that use far less energy to create.

What’s Next?

With her master’s degree complete as of April, Emily started in a new professional role in May as a sustainability advisor for the Scale Up Project, teaming up with the City of Amsterdam and Ellebru, an engineering and architecture firm. “This project is subsidized by the European Commission, and we are currently in the midst of a highly innovative tendering process with various consortia. The market has been tasked with creating future-proof, innovative artificial turf pitches that address city sustainability challenges like water storage capacity, energy generation, and circular materials. My role involves monitoring EU KPIs and different sustainable certifications. Additionally, I work closely with our national government and the Olympic federation to scale up this method across the Netherlands and wider Europe to improve the sports sector’s sustainability impact.”

Emily knows that what she has come to understand about hockey facilities can be applied to other sports. One of her long-term goals has been to help organize the Olympics, and with the Winter Olympics set for Milan in 2026, there will be many opportunities to plan sustainably. There is no doubt Emily will find ways to bring her many talents to bear, and the world will be better because of her efforts.