Member Profile: Holly McHugh
Holly McHugh
Member Since: October 2009
Type of Member: Basic
Holly makes it to Office Nomads about once a week to be surrounded by a community of like-minded folks. She will carpool in the 45 minutes from Maple Valley with her boyfriend, Troy, so as to take advantage of the HOV. Then she settles in at ON while he’s off to OR. Talking to Holly, it is a bit of a surprise to learn that she lives out in Maple Valley as she exudes the urban green lifestyle many of the folks of Seattle lead. Instead, she’s a country girl, well, a displaced city girl in the country.
Originally, Holly hails from Portland but left there to work in China for 8 years in the manufacturing capitol of the world. “I wasn’t living healthy there and my body wasn’t handling it well.” She returned stateside, back to Portland before meeting a lovely man who lived in Maple Valley and, so, she moved up there. Such a shift from a city of 13 million to a town of 20,000 can be hard. “People drive to their mailboxes!” That does sound like the country. Although living so far from Capitol Hill, Holly is hooked and loves to come to ON on days when there is yoga. “I like a place where I can do yoga and there are ‘Your Mom’ jokes.” She is lending a helping hand to Sustainable Capitol Hill by giving them some worms for their worm bin projects. “If there was a Sustainable Maple Valley, I’d be involved.”
Life brought Holly back to the states where she continues to do similar work as she did abroad. “The company I work for works with brands and their importers to help their manufacturing partners, factories or an agent meet the requirements of local labor law in China…For example, let’s say, a women’s clothing brand is our client. We do classroom training for all their suppliers. We also get a select group of their select manufacturing partners and we do training specific to them to help them build compliance capacity. And, we work directly with individual factories to help them meet requirements of the local labor law.” Turns out, Chinese labor laws are actually stricter that US laws so Holly and the consulting firm for whom she works, advise the companies and factories as to what can be done and what needs to be done so the partnership is beneficial for all.
Her job sounds like it takes a lot so she knows how to have fun. Holly loves to mountain bike, and the family is a big fan of going bike camping. With 3 kids in the house, life is busy and it sounds like it’s pretty fun. “My daughter is a rockin’ guitarist. “ Holly gets a proud look on her face, “She’s learning Enter Sandman.”
With her life full of family, music, yoga, and bikes, it’s easy to understand how Holly always is buzzing with positive energy. We love having her at Office Nomads and can’t wait for the next Wednesday when we see her again!