My name is Kristin Toussaint and I’m the Staff Editor for the Impact section at Fast Company, covering innovations and efforts to change the world for the better—from New Orleans nuns who are helping turn their convent into a flood-preventing wetland to new neighborhood designs that incorporate mass timber construction or prioritize biking over vehicle use.

Previously, as a freelance reporter, I explored the irony of all those zero waste products companies try to sell, and the complicated issue of teaching miscarriage in sex ed classes. Before that I was a senior news reporter at Metro in New York City, where I covered everything from new tech innovations to the burgeoning world of weed to the latest immigration news at the local level, and a staff writer at Boston.com, where I profiled a small-town Massachusetts man who makes maple syrup by tapping his neighbor's trees,  learned how Boston's homeless population survived the particularly brutal winter of 2015, and witnessed the flight of a drone that aims to save whales by studying their snot.