But it's fairly easy to predict that people will know she's around - to their discomfort if they're among those she considers polluters, and to their joy if they're on her side in the state's environmental battles.
In her 12 years in the state Senate, Pollack whose district included Ann Arbor, earned a reputation as smart, articulate and outspoken. To those attributes, some detractors would add shrill, annoying and argumentative.
In her new job as head of the Michigan Environmental Council, it remains to be seen if those traits are a help or hindrance.
Pollack herself says she knows how to cooperate with people, if that's what's needed.
"I was combative," she admitted. "When I needed to fight, I fought. (But) I know how to get along with people. I know there is a time for fighting and there is a time for peacemaking."
While Pollack's impact on Michigan environmentalism is uncertain, the movement may well benefit from having a person of her reputation at the head of a major organization, observers say.
"She brings stature ... a strong understanding of what the people of Michigan care about," said Alison Horton, director of the Michigan chapter of the Sierra Club. "MEC is a very important voice of all our environmental groups."
The MEC is a coalition of 39 environmental groups - most of them small - representing about 100,000 individual members.
Michigan's environmental movement has lacked a no-nonsense, in-your-face leader since last December's death of Tom Washington, executive director of the Michigan United Conservation Clubs.
Environmental issues had moved to the back burner, as Gov. John Engler and a more conservative Legislature concentrated instead on cutting taxes, trimming regulation and promoting business.
"The lack of this kind of voice certainly results in significant damage to the public health and well-being," Ms. Pollack said. "I will say things as I see them and call it as I see it. But I will be successful only insofar I can be persuasive."
How persuasive she can be, and the impact of her appointment, is open to dispute.
Ms. Pollack earned praise from William Rustem, a former environmental adviser to then-Gov. William Milliken now with Public Sector Consultants of Lansing.
"I think she'll do a good job for them," he said. "It probably raises the visibility of that group ... She is a more familiar name."
Rustem said MEC has not been a force for the past two or three years in Lansing. "But with the Democrats in control in the House (in January) and with her as a prominent Democrat, I think they may play a role," he said.
State liquor boss Phil Arthurhultz, the Republican floor leader while he and Ms. Pollack were in the Senate, had a less charitable view.
"She's strident and confrontational," he said. "Her mommy never told her you can catch more bees with honey than vinegar."
Arthurhultz said he thinks Ms. Pollack's style will cause MEC more trouble than it solves.
"She would fit in nicely at many environmental groups ... if their lobbying tactic is to threaten, to use the hammer," Arthurhultz said. "If they are people who are willing to build bridges, to compromise, to settle for half a loaf when they can't get the whole loaf, they've got the wrong person."
Ms. Pollack herself talks more about mobilizing local activists than about sitting in legislative committee meetings trying to shape state policy.
"Frankly, what I bring to this job is enough knowledge of the political process to want to take us out of it," she said in a recent interview. "It is my job to get the public voice heard once again."
Ms. Pollack said she thinks state environmental policy has gone backward in recent years. And she said it's up to the public to demand better.
"I really believe the public is well ahead of the Legislature on environmental issues," she said.
But "they're not represented very well in Lansing. Lansing is clearly a city that listens to paid lobbyists, ... (and) the anti-environmentalists have clearly captured the whole governmental process in Lansing."
Ms. Pollack said she is interested in such issues as urban sprawl, pollution of low-income areas, effects of lead poisoning of children and land use.
"It's all tied together," she said. "This stuff is real ... The threat to the earth's carrying capacity is very real."
"The scientific data is so compelling we have to make changes."
That strong belief will guide her work at the MEC, she said.
"I took the job because the issue is so important to me. Environmental issues are the underpinning of everything."