Talking Trees with Davey Tree

Arborists' Career Paths + A GIVEAWAY!

January 13, 2022 The Davey Tree Expert Company Season 2 Episode 2
Talking Trees with Davey Tree
Arborists' Career Paths + A GIVEAWAY!
Show Notes Transcript

We are celebrating our one-year podcast anniversary this month with a Davey Bluetooth earbuds giveaway! To enter, head to our Facebook page @DaveyTree or our LinkedIn page @TheDaveyTreeExpertCompany to learn how to enter. This week we're sharing some of our favorite stories over the past year of how our arborists came to find their careers in arboriculture.

In this episode we cover:

  • R.J. Laverne's story (1:16)
  • Auxilio Tovar's story (3:48)
  • Chrissy Balk's story (4:42)
  • Miles Stephens' story (7:00)
  • Dash Schenck's story (8:29)
  • Gail Nozal's story (11:44)

To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.

To learn more about careers at Davey, visit jobs.davey.com.

Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
Twitter: @DaveyTree
Facebook: @DaveyTree
Instagram: @daveytree
YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company

Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!

Doug Oster: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Companies Podcast Talking Trees. I'm your host Doug Oster. Each week, our expert arborists share advice on seasonal tree care, how to make your trees thrive, arborists' favorite trees, and much, much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more because here at The Talking Trees podcast we know trees are the answer.

This week, we are celebrating our one-year podcast anniversary. Our first episode came out January 14th, 2021 and we want to say thank you to those who have tuned in to learn more about caring for your trees. As a thank you, we're holding a Davey wireless earbuds giveaway through the end of the month while supplies last. To learn more about entering the giveaway, read this episode's podcast show notes below or head over to Davey's Facebook or LinkedIn page to learn more. To find us just search Davey Tree on Facebook or LinkedIn to see our podcast giveaway post for instructions.

One of my favorite parts of this podcast is finding out how Davey Arborists came to find their jobs in the industry. This week, we'll be listening back to a few of my favorite moments of how they came to love their jobs. Let's kick it off with R.J. Laverne and the unique field he almost chose for his profession. Tell me a little bit about why this job is right for you. How did you come into loving trees and learning so much about trees and now being able to teach arborists and others about trees?

R.J. Laverne: Well, I have to make a confession first. It wasn't always my intent to be a forester or an arborist. When I was a young boy, my hero was the great oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, and I wanted more than anything to be a marine biologist. When I started in college, I enrolled in a biology program with the intent of going on to be a marine biologist.

About three years into my studies, it occurred to me that I didn't know how to swim, and that the job opportunities for a marine biologist that couldn't swim were probably pretty narrow. It was at that point that I shifted gears and decided that I wanted to go into forestry. I guess that was probably because when I grew up in Detroit, the house we lived in on the back fence, you could jump over the back fence and be in an undeveloped woodlot that was I don't know maybe 5 to 10 acres.

I spent an awful lot of time roaming through this little woodlot when I was a boy. That's where I got my first introduction to how trees grow. I went on to get my forestry degree, and then little by little after working in traditional forestry in Northern Michigan and Maine, I came to realize that I really was interested in trees in cities. I guess that's just because I grew up in a city and that's what drew me to the Davey Tree Expert Company. I have enjoyed a lengthy career of working with trees in communities

Doug: Auxilio Tovar found his passion for trees through hard work. Tell me a little bit about how you got into this, how this job was right for you.

Auxilio Tovar: Oh, well, Doug, I've been with Davey for 18 years, almost 19 years. I came to this company knowing nothing about trees. All I knew about trees was they had leaves, and a trunk, and branches, and that was it. Slowly, I fell in love with this job. Once I knew that this was going to be for me, I decided to make it a career.

Actually, my father, an interesting fact, my father used to work for the company. He's the one that got me the job here. Like I said, he brought me in with no experience and slowly, I fell in love with this job, and 18 years later, I don't think I'm going anywhere.

Doug: Chrissy Balk's journey to the job began at childhood. Tell me a little bit about your path to the job that you do and your love of trees and obviously, a love of science.

Chrissy Balk: I grew up in Buffalo New York and every weekend, my parents would take us on a hike or something like that. I grew up going to the Adirondacks as our family vacation every year. I grew up in nature really. That started it for me, but then I went to college at St. Lawrence, which is upstate New York near the Adirondacks.

There I found classes that I could take that were ethnobotany, and botany and mycology, so kind of brought all things plant pathology together for me and made me realize I love all these things. I love fungi, I love trees, I love plants. After that, I went to Alaska on an internship and collected native plant seeds for a while. It was awesome, loved that.

Decided I really want to work with trees and fungi so I did some research, found plant pathology, and then I got my master's at Ohio State for that, and here I am. Then I came to Davey with all of that. I've had a pretty, I like to call it the call it fate basically. Every time something's happened in my life, it seems just pretty natural, and I guess that it's funny.

It's been a natural thing for me, nature and trees. That was my track and it's definitely a little weirder than I made it seem. There's some bumps in the road, of course, but yes, I just it was this is where I was supposed to end up, working with trees, teaching people about it, getting them excited about them, getting them excited about fungi because that's how I got into it. Excited people talking about it, and it makes people want to learn and makes them want to plant trees and do all these things. We need them, they're the fate of our future. Yes, that was my path.

Doug: Miles Stephens was also inspired by time in the forest as a child. Tell me a little bit about how you found your way to this job.

Miles Stephens: Well, it goes way back I guess probably to my job here, how I got interested in what I do. Just to the fact that grew up in sort of a-- I grew up out in Clinton and wasn't a whole lot around there so I always liked tromping through the woods and building forts and all stuff you do when you're a kid.

I decided early on I didn't really want a job where I was going to be sitting in an office all the time and I wanted to work outside. I ended up going to school for forestry and graduated from WVU. '81 was a tough time to get a job and ended up getting a job with another tree company. Worked there for a year and then came back got a job with Davey and sort of gone on from there.

It's been rewarding. Not traditional forestry, but I enjoy get to meet a lot of interesting people. To me, it's like micro forestry. You talk about traditional forestry, you're managing 100 acres, this is where you're going to [unintelligible 00:08:06] people may have four or five trees so you help manage those trees.

In the end, I think what the most rewarding is I think we're more of a tree-- I'm more involved in tree preservation than anything else and so I enjoy it. That's the part I enjoy the most. Meeting people, met a lot of interesting people and I'm sure you do too and that's what makes it. People from all walks of life, a lot of different interests but that makes the job fun.

Doug: Working with trees wasn't the first thing that Dash Schenck had in mind when going to college. Hey, I do want to ask you a little bit about your job and how you got into it, and why it's right for you.

Dash Schenck: Sure. I don't think I was a very traditional route into this industry. It was just happenstance where I don't want to say I fell into it but it was definitely not the plan. I was going to university. I was going to be an accountant. That's what I was studying for. Like so often, I had a midlife crisis I guess you can say.

I was in my late 20s and I wanted a change of pace, and so a friend of mine who'd gone to school and graduated with a horticultural degree, he took a job in California at the San Francisco Davey Tree office as a-- he took a job there to move up as in the sales arborist and to take that path.

He said, "Hey, you're looking for a change? Why don't you come out to California for a year or two, and just take a break from school and I'll get you a job. You can start dragging brush, you can drive a truck, I know you're a hard worker," because I work construction most-- I put myself through college just working construction.

I said, "Sure. Great. Yes, why not? San Francisco sounds like a fun place." I moved out there I started working for Davey Tree in 2009 and I found out that I had a knack for it. I enjoyed the work. It was fulfilling. I liked the company I was working for and so this temporary, just a little vacation from my life turned out to be probably the best decision that I ever made because from that, I moved up the ranks.

I started not only just doing ground work but climbing, doing some plant health care work, and then just over time I became an ISA-certified arborist, I'm promoted to a sales job. Then another promotion, assistant manager and then the final promotion where I'm at now as a manager, I did that all in the span of 10 years.

It was not your traditional path, at least I don't think so but it's one that I like to share often especially with the employees that work for me. I'm not anything special, I just put the work in, there was a clear path put in front of me and they said, "If you want to do this, you need to do this." All I did was just those steps. If I can do it, anybody can do it.

Davey Tree is such a great company to work for with so much opportunity and so much room for growth and upward mobility that I just tell all my employees, "Look at me, you're probably smarter or harder working than I am, so I can do this, anybody can achieve that. It just takes some work." That's how I got into the industry and I'm really glad I did because it just clicked for me. Just seemed right.

Doug: Finally, Gail Nozal actually found her way to the city to work with trees. Well, I always love to ask, how did you find your way to this job?

Gail Nozal: Well, like a lot of students in college, enjoyed being outdoors and probably had a couple different majors before I settled on urban forestry and transferred colleges in there as well. I had an uncle that worked for the Fish and Wildlife Service as a forester, but I didn't want to be out in-- he lived in Alaska, I didn't want to be out in the forest per se, but I wanted more of an urban setting. That's how I stumbled upon, well, how do you come bring those together and the University of Minnesota had an urban forestry program, which really brought my interest together and that's where I've been ever since.

Doug: I just love learning about arborists and the path they took to find their job. Next week, we have a great episode about all the unique tools the professional arborists use in the field. Can't wait to hear all about that. Don't forget, you can win a pair of wireless earbuds, just head over to the Davey Tree Facebook page or LinkedIn page or just read the show notes below to find out how you can win those headphones.

Now, tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees Podcast from the Davey Tree Expert Company. I'm your host Doug Oster and do me a favor, subscribe to the podcast. I hope you're having as much fun listening as I am hosting the show. As always, we'd like to remind you on the Talking Trees podcast, trees are the answer.

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