“This school is a foundation point for me, fundamentally, but it also let me transition out of high school a little more comfortably than I ever would have admitted. I got a taste of what college was.”
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When Amy Ryan was in fourth grade, she stood next to her dad on Sandy Hill Foundry’s “Take Your Daughter to Work Day” — wearing a hardhat and safety glasses with her best dress — awed by the precision the team used to run a pour. Throughout the late ’80s and early ’90s, as area mills began to close, talk around the family dinner table centered on whether environmental regulations protecting the region’s natural beauty were driving jobs out.
“Growing up, both the worlds of industrial manufacturing and protecting the Adirondack Park were highly influential on me,” said Ryan, who founded ESG Strategies after a two-decade career melding risk management, sustainability and compliance. “I kept asking myself, ‘Why can’t there be a way to learn if they could work together and maybe benefit one another?’” When Ryan graduated from Glens Falls High School, her parents offered a choice: Attend SUNY Adirondack
(then ACC) and earn general education requirements with financial support or attend an “expensive college” with significantly less monetary backing. “SUNY Adirondack simply was the best choice for me at the time,” she said. She dove into on-campus activities, including playing on the basketball team and performing in the community and jazz bands (music is one of her passions), while taking classes to decide how to create a career path that encompassed both of her loves.