Joanna Hardin is the acting portfolio federal project director for the Y-12 National Security Complex (Y-12) for the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. She began this post in March 2025.
Hardin oversees all the planning and execution for current and upcoming cleanup projects at Y-12. This includes all decontamination, demolition, and disposal operations at the site. She is also leading preparations for the Mercury Treatment Facility and the Environmental Management Disposal Facility, two of OREM’s largest and most vital near-term capital projects.
Prior to this role, she served as the portfolio federal project director for the East Tennessee Technology Park overseeing the cleanup, land transfers, and closure activities at the site. This involved leading a diverse, integrated project team working in partnership with the federal and state regulators responsible for investigating and making cleanup decisions at ETTP.
Previously, Hardin served as a project manager at OREM. She has more than 17 years of combined environmental cleanup and management experience, operating primarily across the Environmental Management complex within DOE.
Prior to joining DOE, she was a site lead and environmental scientist for DOE’s Office of Legacy Management support contractor in Grand Junction, Colorado, performing oversight of groundwater, vegetation, and radiological management, as well as project management and safety for all sites. She also worked as an environmental scientist for EM support contractors at the Los Alamos National Laboratory supporting cleanup projects to include remediation of a Manhattan-era disposal area. In her early career, she assisted with scientific research across the southwest for the United States Geological Service, focusing on zoonotic diseases.
Hardin holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies/biology from Eckerd College and a master’s degree in environmental health science from East Tennessee State University.
She lives in Oak Ridge with her husband, two children, and a growing menagerie of pets, to include a beagle, hermit crabs, and a bearded dragon. She is also an avid photographer, who spends as much time as possible outside sharing nature with her kids.