Sarah Lambert Daniels T’00 MEM’05 has been a member of the Nicholas School Board of Visitors since 2024. She is currently president of the Aspen School District Board in Aspen, Colo. Prior to moving to Colorado, she served on the board of the educational foundation in Los Altos, Calif.
Sarah was an environmental consultant prior to being involved in education. She worked in Seattle and Menlo Park, Calif., for firms with private and public clients. She worked on various environmental projects, from reporting to public outreach to city and recreation planning.
What motivated you to join the Nicholas School Board of Visitors? What do you enjoy about this role?
I joined the Nicholas School Board because my husband and I are involved in a lot of alumni giving and wanted to be able to give back to Duke. At one point I realized I had more time because my kids were getting older, and joining the Board seemed like a great way to get involved. I love the work that the Nicholas School does, and I’m happy to support the school in any way.
What inspires you to give back to the Nicholas School?
My husband, Chris, and I met at Duke and our love story began there. We both went to undergrad and grad school at Duke, and we really value what Duke has done for our lives. We want to make sure we can give back in ways that inspire the next generation of students. We also love the research that is being done at the Nicholas School. We give to the Dean’s Research Venture Initiative, and we also fund an undergraduate scholarship at Duke.
What sparked your interest in environmental science?
I’ve always been interested in the sciences. Growing up in Massachusetts, just 30 minutes from the coast, I knew I wanted to study marine biology. I got involved in multiple marine science programs throughout high school. For example, I participated in a program where I tagged and tracked lemon sharks in the Bahamas. I was also involved in the Sea Education Association (SEA), where I was able to live on a boat and learn about the ecology of the intertidal zone.
I visited the Marine Lab first before I went to “Big Duke.” When I applied, I knew I wanted to spend a semester at the Marine Lab, and it was so wonderful. It’s just a very special place, and it was one of my favorite semesters at Duke. I really enjoyed what I was studying, and there were so many people there who shared my interest in science.
Andy Read was an incredibly inspiring professor, then and now. We all went out on the boat to collect fish and plankton samples, and took transects to measure water temperature, salinity, and depth. It was an amazing experience.
Tell me about your role as an environmental consultant after completing the MEM program.
After I finished my MEM at Duke, we moved to Seattle where Chris had accepted a job offer at Microsoft. I had taken a lot of GIS classes with Pat Halpin, and that really helped me get my foot in the door as an environmental consultant there. I did a lot of mapping, writing reports, and planning for parks and communities. At one point I worked on a huge mapping project to help the state of Washington’s Bureau of Land Management understand their land holdings and how they could best be used. I also worked for Washington state to help find the best locations for parks in different cities. It was a great way of marrying land use with livability in urban and suburban areas. It was really rewarding work.
Tell me more about your role on the Aspen School District Board.
Throughout my kids’ schooling I was very involved in their classroom, and I became very active in the educational foundation when we were in California. We eventually moved close to Aspen, Colo., because we love living in the woods and being among all the wildlife. It’s fun for our kids to be in a place that’s very wild. We see bears in our backyard.
Last year I became president of the Aspen School District Board, after serving on the board since 2023. It’s my way of giving back to the community. We are very proud to have passed four ballot initiatives this November. This spring we are putting in place a big pay raise for teachers. The town can be quite unaffordable, so we have large housing stock for teachers. We’re also working on developing CTE (Career and Technical Education) pathways for students, as well as a bond for improved school facilities, specifically for theater and athletics.
What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?
I love to run and hike. I run at least a marathon a year, and some of my favorite Duke memories are running in the Duke Forest and around the golf course. We hike a lot and backpack as a family, too!
Skiing is another of our favorite pastimes. I actually joined the Duke Ski Team with Chris. We loved to go out to the mountains of North Carolina to go skiing.
My kids are both Nordic skiers, which is the same as cross country skiing. And then there’s downhill Alpine skiing, which is just normal skiing. My husband and I both love Skimo, which is short for “Ski Mountaineering.” It’s the best sport ever, because you get to hike going up and then ski down. It just became an official Olympic sport this year!
