The 2026 theme for Women’s History Month is Leading the Change: Women Shaping a Sustainable Future. In that spirit, the Office of Sustainability team wanted to take this opportunity to honor a particular woman who played a crucial role in shaping our sustainable present, Amy Joslin.
Amy was the scrappy public servant who first had the idea that Multnomah County should have an Office of Sustainability. Amy started working at the County in 1994, working on energy efficiency in the Facilities and Property Management Division, but her innovative and restless spirit soon had her devising solutions beyond the scope of her official job duties as the County’s first Sustainability Program Manager.
Amy’s early projects focused on green buildings, pushing the County to adopt LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) green building goals. By the 2000s, she was working more explicitly on helping Multnomah County take on climate change. She worked tirelessly to help County leadership acknowledge and plan for the future impacts of climate change, helping to draft the joint County-City 2001 Local Action Plan on Global Warming. She also rang the alarm about the impacts of climate change on the wider region.
In 2002, Amy hired Molly Chidsey as the County’s first Pollution Prevention Specialist. Molly remembers Amy’s focus on, and dedication to, the issue of climate change.
“She was trying to get County leaders’ attention about how harmful climate change was going to be for the health of low-income people, people with existing health conditions, and people living outside,” Molly recalled. “How we were unprepared in this region because homes and apartments generally don’t have air conditioning. How the disease-carrying vectors would worsen. How severe storms and supply chain issues could upend our ability to feed people.”
Amy’s list of accomplishments is long. She formed a Food Policy Council and got the County to partner with the City of Portland on a multi-year climate initiative. She worked to develop cross-departmental teams that began their own work to address the risks and harms of climate change, notably establishing an early collaboration with the County’s Public Health Division. As a year-round bike commuter, Amy established the County’s first Employee Commute Options program that offered incentives to employees who biked or rode public transit to work.
But the achievement she is perhaps most remembered for today is the Multnomah Building Green Roof, which was dedicated in Amy’s honor by the Board of County Commissioners in 2005. Still a new concept when she began work on the project in the early 2000s, green roofs can help to slow and filter rain water, provide habitat for insects, and insulate the building below it. The fifth floor green roof of the Multnomah Building — accented by an iconic backdrop of the downtown Portland skyline — is widely regarded in the industry as an early and ambitious project that goes beyond simple sedum roof systems, instead providing a deeper soil medium for flowering plants.
Today, the public space beside the green roof is a place of rest and celebration — where employees take a break, couples are married, and community members gather among the flowers beneath the Portland skyline. It stands as a reflection of Amy’s vision — to make even a roof more beautiful — and of her enduring advocacy for the environment and public health.
Amy died in 2005 at the age of 36 after a battle with cancer took her too soon. To help us remember Amy’s legacy, a bronze plaque on the green roof reads in part, “the Amy Joslin green eco-roof serves as a tribute to her dreams, spirit, and the belief Amy had in us all for doing the right thing.”
