Keep Austin Beautiful is proud to honor Susie Shockley with the Texas Disposal Systems Dennis Hobbs Individual Achievement award. Susie has been a passionate environmental steward for more than 15 years, when she first served as one of the founding volunteers of the Lake Travis Cleanup. She has come back every year to Lake Travis, and always brings friends and family members to help out. Susie has also served as a longtime site leader at Zilker Park for Clean Lady Bird Lake, and has coordinated numerous service events with fellow Dell employees across Austin. In the past year alone, Susie has helped remove more than 4,000 pounds of litter from Austin waterways and parks and led events involving hundreds of volunteers.
Describing her passion for organizing cleanups and getting coworkers involved, Susie says she particularly enjoys working with volunteers, and seeing them make new friends and grow connected to Austin’s parks, waterways, and open spaces. She says, “I love seeing first timers come and participate and how much everyone falls in love with the cleanups. I love when families bring their little ones to participate [and to] learn about how important it is to not litter and to volunteer at a young age.” Susie notes that her own daughter has become an environmental scientist, and credits her volunteerism from an early age with Keep Austin Beautiful for sparking her interest in understanding and caring for the natural world.
Susie’s ability to motivate the volunteers around her is especially inspiring. Leading a group of Dell coworkers and family members for a two-day cleanup at Walnut Creek Park this past summer, the team removed nine truckloads of trash and recyclables from park grounds and waterways. Despite the July heat, the group managed to transport more than 3,000 pounds of litter and illegally dumped items across uneven terrain, including numerous railroad ties, rusty barrels, a mattress, and a broken dryer.
Keep Austin Beautiful is honored by Susie Shockley’s many years of dedicated work, and proud to recognize her with this year’s Individual Achievement Award.
