Mike is a Licensed Professional Geologist working in petroleum remediation as an environmental consultant. He received a master of science from the University of Memphis Earth Science department, and is a William J Fulbright scholar. He was the director of the Giant Hogweed Project in Eastern Europe, an initiative focused on training citizen scientists how to identify and catalogue invasive species in order to develop control and eradication strategies. He is a technical adviser to the Memphis Tree Board, and the chairman of the Cooper-Young Sustainability Committee. He is the co-founder and executive Director of The Compost Fairy, a non-profit soil building initiative aimed at diverting valuable organic materials from the landfill, returning them to the community as topsoil, and creating long term jobs in the sustainability sector. He is also proud to be an operational lead and urban ecologist for the South Memphis Trees project, which is in the first stages of planting four-million trees on vacant and fallow lands inside Memphis.