Bert worked his way through the General Engineering program at the University of Illinois working as a psychiatric technician. His engineering career included regulating solid waste with the Illinois EPA, earning a Master of Engineering degree at the University of Washington, and working for a consulting firm in the private sector. Unable to find a sense of meaning in this work, he returned to mental health work after earning a Master of Arts in Human Development Counseling at the University of Illinois at Springfield.

He moved to Vermont in 1998 to be closer to family, where he worked for the Howard Center and then practiced mental health counseling in private practice. He retired from gainful employment at the end of 2023. 

Current volunteer activity includes serving as a facilitator for SMART Recovery and volunteering at the Turning Point of Chittenden County.

He hopes to find in this class and in volunteering with the composting program the meaning that was lacking in his environmental engineering work.