Brooke Lange – Senior Team Lead

This month’s Employee Spotlight is…

Brooke Lange – Senior Team Lead – QA Services

1. Where did you grow up? Where do you reside now?

I was raised in Kentucky, where I lived the first 20 years of my life. I am from a very small town called Brooksville, the county seat with a population of 650. No, I was not explicitly named after the city, but my ancestors did arrive in Brooksville in the 1800s and just never left! I went to college at Morehead State University in Kentucky. During the formative ages of 20-24 I lived in Bordeaux, France, which has become my “found home.”

Now, I live in Ithaca, NY where PSD was founded, and I truly love it here!

2. What did you want to be when you grew up (when you were child)?

When I was younger, I wanted to be either a fashion or interior designer. I spent a lot of time with my grandmother, who was a painter- she always nurtured and encouraged my artistic visions. I eventually did go to college with art and music scholarships, and it’s something that I still practice.

3. What guided you into the energy efficiency industry?

As with many passions in my life, I started my journey towards the EE industry at a young age. One could even say it started in middle school, when I created the “Green Girls Club” among my friends, trying to make the school greener. Much later in life, I applied to PSD hoping to break into the industry where I can use my professional skills to make a difference for the future of the planet. Coming from the south, surrounded by demographics which politicize the care for our planet’s future, I’m thankful to work at a place like PSD where we all agree on the importance of energy efficiency.

4. What does a day in the life of Brooke at PSD look like?

As a Senior Team Lead for the QA Division, my days are always different depending on the time of the year. I may be working with my team of administrators, editing and submitting inspection reports, working with software developers to improve efficiency, handling escalated customer complaints, coordinating a BPI technical trainings for NJ’s weatherization programs, creating SOPs for administrative processes for PSD’s QA Programs, and many more things! My role involves a lot of creative problem solving, future thinking, care for customers, and leading an amazing team of administrative staff who handle the front, middle, and back end work that makes the QA Division tick.

I’m also proud to be serving as the Sustainability Committee chair for PSD. This has allowed me to have a greater impact on the sustainable direction of the company as a whole.

5. What is your favorite PSD-related memory?

My favorite memory happened recently, providing the December 2023 New Jersey Comfort Partners Program Technical Training. My team creates and presents quarterly technical trainings for the contractors in the NJCP program, and this December we presented from South Jersey Gas Headquarters in Atlantic City. We provided a training about advanced pressure diagnostics with a view of the ocean behind us!

6. What do you do when you aren’t at work? Any interesting hobbies?

I love to travel, so far I’ve visited 33 states and 19 countries. I’m an artist, and traveling is my favorite source of inspiration; the places, the people, and the experiences.

7. Do you have any pets?

This should have been question number one for me! I have two cats, Pierre and Vincent. They might be the most loved cats on the planet!

8. What is your favorite holiday?

I personally relate holidays to the sweets that come with them. So, I think that La Fête des Rois might be my favorite, I have a lot of great memories around this holiday and (most importantly) galette des rois is my favorite dessert!

9. Favorite travel destination? Or dream travel destination?

I love France and Bordeaux especially. I was an Au Pair near Bordeaux before moving back to the city for three years, and my found family is there. It was a formative time for me, and I’m always either dreaming of or planning my next visit. It feels like home, and it’s still my favorite destination.

10. Favorite musician/genre?

I love music and nearly all genres. My Spotify wrapped is usually a mixture between various show tunes, Post Malone, Angèle, Twenty One Pilots, Pomme, and Florence and the Machine.

11. What’s the top item that is still on your bucket list? Have you checked anything cool or fun off?

The top item which I’ve still not checked off is experiencing the route of the Camino de Santiago starting where it passed my apartment in Bordeaux, along the coast through Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, San Sebastián, and along the route to Santiago. It was tantalizing to live along one of the routes but never follow it to Santiago.

My favorite thing checked off my childhood bucket list was traveling solo to the Cinque Terre in Italy. So far I’ve been twice and I’m itching to go back. Another favorite memory was seeing Messi score a goal at the World Cup in 2018 in Saint Petersburg.

12. What is an interesting thing about yourself that not a lot of people know?

Pink is not actually my natural hair color.

 

Thank you, Brooke! We appreciate you taking the time to do this are excited to have people get to know a little more about our employees here at PSD.