Kathleen T. Giardina, Environmental Engineer

Kathleen Tobin Giardina of East Hampton, an environmental engineer who helped companies develop eco-friendly practices, died of cancer on Feb. 9 at the Kanas Center for Hospice Care on Quiogue. She was 63 and had been ill for more than two years. 

Born on Feb. 7, 1956, in Yonkers to the former Lois Woods and Thomas Michael Tobin Jr., she graduated in 1978 from the State University at Stony Brook with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. She worked in broadcast media in California for a time and changed career paths to earn a degree in chemical engineering from City College of New York. She later received state certification as an engineer. 

She began her professional career at the Environmental Protection Agency but left to work for NYNEX, the telephone company that is now part of Verizon. During her career, she oversaw the company’s removal of underground gasoline and oil tanks, developed a process that removes lead from telephone cables, and helped implement health and safety audits at facilities in Asia, Australia, and Europe. Before taking a disability leave from Verizon in 2017, she was the company’s corporate environmental manager. 

In 1989, she married Paul Giardina, an East Hampton resident, and the couple raised two sons. She took an active role in their education and served as a class mother at the private Collegiate School when they lived in the city. She was also a partner with her husband in Cedar Meadow, a horse farm in East Hampton that breeds thoroughbred racehorses. Their horses have earned more than $1 million in prize money. 

Ms. Giardina was a member of the East Hampton Methodist Church, where Pastor Denise Allen will officiate at a memorial service at 1 p.m. on March 24. Her family said she loved traveling, hiking, and birdwatching, and they have suggested memorial donations to the Audubon Society at audubon.org. 

In addition to her husband, Ms. Giardina is survived by two sons, Charles Tobin Giardina of Hayward, Calif., and Thomas Tobin Giardina of Madison, Wis. Her siblings, Joan Wayne of Bellingham, Wash., Christine Tobin Smith of June Lake, Calif., and Patricia Tobin of New York, also survive.