Kathleen Kirsch, engineering officer and climate lead at USAID: Each week, My Morning Routine looks at how a successful member of the community starts their day — and then throws in a couple of random business questions just for fun. Speaking to us this week is Kathleen Kirsch (LinkedIn), engineering officer and climate lead at USAID. Below are edited excerpts from our conversation:

My name is Kathleen Kirsch, or Kathy. I wear two hats for USAID Egypt. As an environmental engineer, I serve as an engineering officer and support a lot of work on our water and wastewater utilities team. I'm also the climate integration lead for the mission.

Not much is typical in my work day anymore, as we’re focused on supporting the efforts at COP27. In line with the release of our new agency climate strategy this past year, there have been a lot of pivots as we seek mainstream climate change integration in all our programs — from food security programming, to water and wastewater programming, our economic growth activities, and our education and health projects. USAID Egypt works across all of these big broad technical areas, but climate change impacts every single one of them.

The impacts of climate change are cross-cutting, so our response must also be. We're worried, like many people here in Egypt — a country that is highly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change on things like water scarcity, drought, extreme heat, rising sea levels, and food insecurity.

The Notre Dame GAIN index has Egypt as the 83rd most vulnerable country and the 129th most ready country for climate change. So I think that we are looking to mainstream climate change integration because it’s so cross-cutting. As we look ahead to COP27, we're in more of a preparatory mode at this point. Our climate work was well underway before COP27 and will continue after as well.

In the morning, I like to wake up slowly so I feel fully awake when I run into work. I love to wake up, take a nice hot shower, eat breakfast, and slowly sip my coffee. I of course read the morning edition of Enterprise, and I love listening to NPR news and other podcasts over the course of the day. Some of my favorites are Slow Burn and This American Life. It kind of depends on if I'm in a relaxing mode or if I'm news-oriented and ready for work.

One constant in my day would probably be a cup of tea and writing a to-do list of some sort. I'll normally have a few lists going and I try to group according to the type of task or sector. There's nothing more fulfilling than crossing something off the list. I also keep one next to my bed because I find that you don't worry about forgetting anything you jotted down and it'll be there for you the next day.

I love to disconnect when I can. I'll often put my phone on airplane mode and listen to an audiobook on a long walk, so I don't get distracted and I can get some fresh air, exercise, and listen to something that pulls me somewhere else. I also love a good trivia night.

My favorite activity is scuba diving, which I've been so blessed to do a lot of while I've been here in Egypt. It's almost meditative — just the slow sounds of breathing and the quiet stillness of being under water. Often when you go out on a dive boat, you lose mobile phone reception, so it's this beautiful forced disconnection point.

There's this song Sunlight by Yuno that I've had on repeat recently. It's just an ode to joy. I've been binge-watching Borgen on Netflix. It’s an older show about the Danish parliament. The new season just came out, and it’s kind of political escapism. The best book I read recently was Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro.

One of my favorite quotes is, “Honesty without compassion is cruelty.” Sometimes you can get so bogged down in the minutia of your day, you forget that it's the respect we give each other and how we treat each other that is most important. People will remember the relationship you had with them, not your to-do list being accomplished. Trying to remember to be kind to each other is easier said than done.