Kristen Joiner swapped a decade of working alongside Hollywood directors making films in New York for a desk alongside a rain barrel display in Madison.

Career reinvention is common now, but Joiner’s switch — taking the helm as executive director of Sustain Dane in late March — was dramatic.

The energetic, 39-year-old Shorewood Hills native worked in West Africa, Japan, Washington, D.C., and along the Texas-Mexican border doing nonprofit work in development and housing. Then in 1999 she co-founded Scenarios USA, a film production and distribution company in New York, which made films uniting teen writers with top Hollywood directors on the topics of AIDS, sexuality and gender. These films have appeared on MTV, Showtime, PBS, the Oxygen Network and in film festivals.

Teens wrote their stories and Scenarios turned the best narratives into films with the help of such famous directors as Doug Liman ("The Bourne Identity,’’ "Mr. & Mrs. Smith’’) and Michael Apted ("Gorillas in the Mist’’).

So why did this globe-trotter move back to Madison and buy a home less than a mile from where she grew up?

"Professionally, I wanted to go more directly and deeper into sustainability," Joiner explained. "There is a connection between sex education and sustainability issues, but I wanted to focus on the later. That was pulling at me."

Sustain Dane is dedicated to improving the local environment focusing on energy, water, transportation and food. Its goal: Make Madison a model sustainable community.

"They wanted a group that would not hit people over the heads but instead really connect with people’s sense of place to motivate them," Joiner said.

Sustain Dane is known for its patented rain barrels, which it sells out of its 211 S. Paterson office. Other projects include neighborhood eco-teams, discussion courses on environmental impact and the Mpower program, where businesses commit to monitoring and reducing carbon dioxide emissions for a year.

Around the same time Joiner was founding Scenarios USA in New York, her father Brian Joiner, a retired UW-Madison professor and owner of a management consulting firm, was co-founding Sustain Dane in Madison.

He stayed out of her hiring, but he tears up talking about his daughter leading the group he helped build.

"She makes connections," Brian Joiner said of his daughter. "People talk about six degrees of separation, with Kristen it is about 1½ degrees. She’s been working at the edges of sustainability — this brings her home."

And Madison, said Kristen Joiner, is not just home but an epicenter of the environmental movement and a place where change is feasible.

"We’re the leaders in the country in sustainability," Joiner asserted. "When I was reading The New York Times or talking to people in New York about sustainability issues, they were always talking about Portland or Madison."