Amanda Converse and Jitka Borowick combine years of education, experience and practice to provide greenover's clients with knowledge, insight and superior results.

Amanda Converse

Amanda Converse
Tree hugging on the road

I have been an environmentalist for as long as I can remember. I attribute it to having grown up on Cape Cod - one of the most beautiful places on earth. I was lucky enough to have been raised in a home that overlooked the ocean, had its own private beach, and a big back yard. I spent my childhood climbing trees and seawalls, swimming across the Seapit River to Washburn Island, being a neighbor to an osprey's nest, and listening to the water lap on the shore as I fell asleep. I loved this place fiercely, as if it were a member of my family. Having an extreme sense of place made me want to protect this place and respect it.

I declared my major as a sophomore at Union College-Environmental Studies. I made this decision after I was walking on campus and passed by some construction. They were cutting down a tree, and when I heard the cracking sounds, I felt as if someone had punched me in the stomach. This was a defining moment in my life, as this was when I knew I had to make protecting the natural environment my life's work.

Now, I have also been somewhat of a fashionista for as long as I can remember. I love clothes and shoes and shopping and dressing up. It is one of the ways in which I express myself-my creativity.

These two worlds collided, and I had a personal crisis in my first year of graduate school in Environmental Policy at The George Washington University. I was in an Environmental and Social Sustainability class, and I realized that all of my actions-including (and maybe especially) my clothing habit could have a detrimental affect on the natural environment. Prior to this class I had only taken environmental policy, theory, and economics classes. I was policy focused-I thought governmental regulation was the answer; I thought corporate America was the culprit. It was in this class-seeing things with a new lens-- I realized that one person can have a huge affect on the environment, and that one person is me.

I truly believe we all can have the best of both worlds-living a comfortable and fun life and living an environmentally sensitive life. But this requires finding a balance between wants and needs,
between living in excess and living off the grid. I want to find this balance for myself and for anyone else who wants it.

Jitka Borowick

Jitka Borowick
Sailing in the Czech Republic

I was born in 1978 in a little village in the Czech Republic which was communist until I was 11 years old. Because I was born into a communist society I accepted the lifestyle as it was and did not feel in any way deprived of material things that children today see as necessities.

Although my parents wanted to continue their educations, wanted to travel, there were many restrictions placed on people living in a communist country. We could only visit other countries in the communist bloc, but managed to live full and interesting lives despite the situation.

The ease of our lifestyle today is very different from the environment in which I grew up. For example I remember my grandma waiting hours in line to get bananas or oranges for Christmas. I had only a few choices of candy. Going with my mom shopping and choosing from only two dresses was the norm.

After the Velvet Revolution in 1989 we were able to travel and see how other people were living. I was shocked at the difference - people had many choices in food, clothing, entertainment, the arts, all areas of the culture.

But many people including my family were still growing their own fruits and vegetables. As always we were composting, recycling, cooking (there was always a pot of soup on the stove) and buying local foods in small family owned shops (bakery, butcher).

Until a couple of years ago my mom and my dad were sharing a car, and my sister and her husband have one car simply because they just don't need the second one.

When I came to the United States in 2003 I was shocked - there were so many things available!!! Shelves of cereals, yogurts, coffees, deli meats, cleaning products, the list goes on and on! What amazed me was that the stores were giving free bags and even packing them for the shopper. In the Czech Republic we have always had to pay for the bags and they are not cheap so almost everybody remembers to bring their own to the store. The same was true with paper towels. We never used them at home; instead we had cloth kitchen towels which we washed and used again.

At first I was like a kid in a candy store. Everything was available and out there for the choosing. And I loved it all. I became a consumer. Especially because I believed I would be here for only one year. But after meeting my husband and deciding to live here I realized how I had changed and was becoming accustomed to this way of life. Gradually I knew I did not want to live this way. In fact I missed some of the simplicity in which I had grown up.

Now that I have been in this country for 5 years I would like to share with people some of my thoughts on living a more "simple," creative life and help them realize the joy in being more conscious of their environment.