Holding considerable expertise in finance and landscape design, Valinda A. Miller-Valcich was inspired to her career out of her great love of plants and being outdoors. First studying interior design at the George Washington University’s Mount Vernon campus in 1985, she completed a Bachelor of Science in architecture at the New York Institute of Technology in 1987. Marrying her husband, Mitchell “Mickey” Valcich, in 1988, she began work at her husband’s companies almost immediately, and has since made a name for herself in the fields of waste management and lawn care.
Ms. Miller-Valcich has excelled as a landscape designer and the vice president of Mickey’s Lawnscapes Inc. since 1988 and as the chief operating officer of Mickey’s Carting Corp., their waste disposal company, since 1990. Her primary duties include lawn care and design; overseeing and supervising employees, truck routes, and day-to-day business; managing customer complaints and doing vendor reports; and all the operations and finance duties, such as accounting, payroll and financial reporting. In order to keep abreast of new developments in her field, Ms. Miller-Valcich has also maintained professional affiliation with the National Waste & Recycling Association and the American Society of Landscape Architects.
Alongside her primary career responsibilities, Ms. Miller-Valcich has contributed her skills to a number of community endeavors as well. She has volunteered with a variety of local organizations and is a member of the local chapters of Kiwanis International, a volunteer organization working to improve the lives of children, and the Lions Clubs International, another service organization focused on giving back to the community. Notably, she founded the Tyler Project in 2014, which works to spread awareness and provide education and resources concerning suicide prevention.
Attributing much of her success to her honesty and being a woman of her word, Ms. Miller-Valcich further emphasizes the importance of not locking her companies to long term deals. She also notes that her skills have grown consistently throughout the years and that she has reached a point in her career where all her responsibilities feel second nature to her. For excellence in her field, she has been the recipient of a number of honors and accolades. One of her most memorable achievements was having a pool she built be awarded Best Pool Design by the American Society of Landscape Artists.
Above everything, Ms. Miller-Valcich considers the highlight of her career to be exceling as a woman in a very male dominated industry. In New York, the landscaping and waste disposal industries are almost 99% dominated by men, and having cultivated a reputation for excellence in the industry simply by being who she is has been a wonderful accomplishment. She would advise young women aspiring to enter male dominated fields that they should be true to their convictions and to not let the people who say they can’t get in their way.
Born to father Stuart A. Miller, who was an electrical engineer, and mother Linda S. Gorton, Ms. Miller-Valcich is herself the proud mother of two children. While she intends to continue working for as long as she is able, she also wants to spend more time enjoying life and cultivating her garden and her skills as a semi-professional golfer. Ms. Miller-Valcich strives to live her life by the motto, “Growing old is inevitable, but growing up is optional.”
