Every job can be a green job.
So said a panel of 12 sustainability business leaders who zeroed in on this approach as the key takeaway from the Green Careers Panel Discussion presented by the Naveen Jindal School of Management Oct. 28.
The discussion was moderated by Geeta Menon, founder of One Earth One Chance and member of the Advisory Board for Sustainability at the Jindal School. The panelists represented a variety of industries:
- Claire Alston, sustainability coordinator at UT Southwestern Medical Center;
- Amy Amaon, sustainability manager at Health Care Service Corporation;
- Zoe Bolack, senior carbon accountant and sustainability expert at Greenplaces;
- Anna Clark, vice president and sustainability practice leader at Cooksey Communications;
- Xingyu (Stacy) Fu, supply chain manager at Verkada;
- Sheila Bernardo, vice president at Bank of America and founder/CEO/aeroponic farmer at Ascend Garden;
- Samar Khan, founder and chief sustainability officer at Trip AI Technologies;
- Pamela McLaren, president/CEO at Star Signal Partners;
- Ira Nicodemus, president at Holistic Utility Solutions;
- Umair Surani, senior account executive at McKinstry;
- Saskia Versteeg, director, project development, and supply chain director of the project development and supply chain division at Graphyte.
- Janki Vora, a distinguished engineer for IBM Client Engineering focused on sustainability and applied AI.
Menon asked the panelists questions in five categories: work (career tracks, compensation and growth opportunities), education (degrees and certificates that advance green skill development), regulation (legal standards and policy compliance in the panelist’s sector, advocacy campaigns), innovation (artificial intelligence, success stories) and the pros and cons of a sustainability career.
Reframe Career Paths toward Sustainability
Alston said reframing how someone views a career in sustainability can open up the growth opportunities.
“I try to look at sustainability in general not so much as an industry itself, but something more like a framework that you can apply to any industry, as you can see from the variety of industries that everybody on the panel is in,” she said.
Bolack said some careers related to sustainability — especially sales — could be quite lucrative.
“If you’re good in sales, climate tech could be a great place; you could easily be bringing in $200,000 to $250,000 in your first year of doing climate sales,” she said. “That being said, some of us are not good at sales, like me, so I started as a carbon analyst — …collecting all that corporate sustainability type data related to carbon footprinting for companies following the Greenhouse gas protocol, which is kind of the standard for carbon accounting globally. And those entry level positions around the 60 to 90K range… The ESG controller piece is very hard to come in, I would say at an entry level, but if you can get some sort of accounting experience and sustainability experience combined, that’s where you can really excel there.”
Bolka also drove home Alston’s point that any career can be sustainability driven.
“It’s really important if you’re looking for a career in sustainability that you find your sustainability and whatever (else) it may be — whether it’s sustainability and supply chain management, sustainability and logistics, sustainability and accounting,” she said. “Whatever that might be for you, it’s really important to kind of bring in multiple skills, both from your educational background, but also… those the soft skills as well.”
Educational Preparation for Sustainability Advocacy
Khan spoke about framing educational pursuits around preparing for a career as a sustainability advocate.
“Study what you want but do it from the lens of how you’re going to transform society and behaviors rather than prolong the status quo,” he said. “Learning to solve hard problems and communicating them simply can be transformative in green careers.”
Amon recommended a professional association as an avenue for entry.
“The Association of Climate Change Officers has a certified climate change professional program,” she said. “They also have a program for people who are not professionals yet to get started. It’s (the) climate change professional candidate program… You can go ahead and get started on that now.”
Clark said that much regulation related to sustainability is being driven by European countries and is being “cascaded” to the U.S.
“Fortunately,” she said, “that’s creating an explosion of companies that are interested in doing carbon disclosure.”
She said that there is still work to be done by U.S. companies who are still working at low capacity.
“Anyone in this room could find yourself in a green job that you just decide to carve out for yourself by helping your employer do any aspect of that work, even if it’s voluntary,” she said. “If you can find a number to own, something you can lower, something you can improve as a metric, then that’s something to build on as a story of success as you advance in your career.”
Sustainability Informs Innovation
Vora said that sustainability is an exciting area for artificial intelligence and the innovations it is driving since it requires both data gathering and predicting how and when companies will meet their targets.
“Because we see and we hear a lot of companies saying that 2040-2050 we are going to get carbon neutral,” she said. “But how do you prioritize your projects and correctly… make adjustments to those goals is very critical. And that’s where predictive analytics really plays a role… not only that, right, predicting what is… the climate risk going to be on your assets.”
Pros and Cons of Sustainability Careers
In any industry or company there are pros and cons, excitement and frustration, related to leading their transformation to a culture of sustainability.
Amaon, who works in the healthcare real estate sector as a sustainability manager, said that the fact that green jobs are starting to be created is exciting to her.
“My role has only existed for a little over a year,” she said. “My role before this, when I was in the sustainability analyst role, had only existed since 2019 with the organization and I started in 2022, and it all started in the corporate real estate space.”
When her company moved toward implementing a process for disclosing its carbon imprint, she was tasked with the project.
“Now we’re to the point where I’m meeting with senior leaders somewhat regularly,” she said. “I am getting to pitch new ideas that may or may not land, but they still are really great in general to be able to explore that and to have that creativity.”
Vora said the number of regulations related to sustainability and the complexity involved in compliance are sources of frustration to her.
“Sometimes it’s just hard to wrap your head around and that causes a lot of confusion and… people measuring things in different ways,” she said. “My fear is… not having a very streamlined way to measure across the board. It’s a complex problem, but hopefully that will in times to come get prioritized and streamlined.
Another obstacle that frustrates Vora is the tendency for company leaders to pivot toward a sustainability approach only when it benefits the company’s bottom line, especially when regulations become too cumbersome.
“That’s how a lot of the industry is and that’s a trend,” she said, explaining that sustainability efforts could require a longer view than quarter-to-quarter profitability.
Dr. Dorothee Honhon, associate dean for sustainability at the Jindal School, said that what struck her most was the passion each panelist showed when describing their jobs and work environments.
“I was deeply impressed by their drive to make a positive impact on the world, even as they openly discussed both the rewards and challenges of a career in sustainability,” Honhon said. “Beyond their professional roles, they emphasized the significance of individual actions in addressing climate change and the value of maintaining a consistent framework in their lives. I walked away feeling inspired, having met 12 remarkable individuals who are not only committed to creating a better future but also embody the qualities of highly successful business professionals.”
