Working on Alaska’s North Slope as a petroleum geophysicist for Mobil Oil Corp., Susan Heathcote began to have doubts.
“Seeing how beautiful and pristine that was and comparing that to what had happened to the Prudhoe Bay area that was trashed, I thought, ‘We should trust the oil companies?’” Heathcote said. “Yeah, right.”
Her crisis of confidence forced her to make a change. She is now water program director for the Iowa Environmental Council based in Des Moines. The nonprofit organization represents dozens of environmental groups in Iowa.
Working for Mobil was a “real good lesson for me,” Heathcote said.
“Here I am a good person with good values doing things that were counter to my core values,” she said. “How do I make that OK?”
Heathcote grew up in Stratford in north-central Iowa and earned her master’s degree in geology and geophysics from the University of Iowa in 1979.
Before joining the council, Heathcote, 56, worked 11 years for Mobil. So did her husband, Richard. Heathcote worked on the North Slope of Alaska, off the coast of California and in Norway.
“It was a wonderful, exciting opportunity to see the world,” Heathcote said. “But, gosh, it really didn’t feel like I was doing something I really felt was in line with my personal ethics and goals for the environment.”
The couple moved from Dallas to Denver and then Bakersfield, Calif., but didn’t want to raise their two children there. “We both decided we had to change our lives,” Heathcote said.
When she and her husband returned to Iowa, Heathcote first worked as an environmental consultant. A year after the Iowa Environmental Council was formed in 1994, she was hired as research director.
“Each time I’ve changed jobs, I’ve taken a cut in salary, but I’ve gotten closer to what I really wanted to do,” she said. “Those rewards were more important to me — the opportunity to really support the things I care about, clean water, clean air.”
— John Goodlove