The program selected Spoonheim and 19 others from more than 300 applications for the two-year national fellowship, which trains a network of talented environmental leaders. The focus of the fellowship is to seek new solutions to environmental problems facing local, national, and international communities.

Spoonheim was recognized for her ground-breaking work with HomeWORD, a new community development corporation in Missoula, Montana, that has received national acclaim for its innovative strategies, housing designs and use of resourceful materials. Housing through HomeWORD is designed to be affordable to households earning less than 80 percent of the median income for Missoula. Spoonheim and Ron Essene helped design a home that earned honorable mention in the 1996 National Energy Value Housing Award Competition.

A 1995 graduate of Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut, Spoonheim spent five years helping low income women through HomeWORD. Her work in Missoula is a way for her to "address the systemic causes of poverty and environmental destruction along with the symptoms," as she sees it. Spoonheim also has served with the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice in Chicago.