Today’s employer advice is from David Adamian, President & Chief Executive Officer at GreenerU.
Q: Tell us about your organization.
GreenerU helps institutions navigate the organizational, operational, and infrastructure changes required to reach climate neutrality through planning, engineering, and implementation. GreenerU envisions educational and community institutions leading the world in mitigating climate change. Our mission is to help our clients achieve climate neutrality and sustainable operations.
Q: What advice would you give to people in midlife who want to transition to a green job?
The “green job” sector needs the gamut of skill sets, ranging from technical (engineering, biology, forestry, construction management, etc.) to politics, finance, communications, sales, strategic planning, engagement, business management, and more. If you shake out the basic elements of your previous experiences and develop the understanding and vocabulary in the field of climate change and sustainability, you can connect those dots and use those skills to advance the field of climate change mitigation. Be sure to use the usual networking techniques: get to know as many people as you can, ask for informational interviews, volunteer for green causes, and try to acquire skills and experiences that demonstrate real outcomes beneficial to job creators.
Q: What are the skills that you believe will be required most in the short-medium term in your industry?
We are seeing a need for big-picture thinkers with detail orientation who can absorb a lot of information from multiple sources and draw connections among a lot of points. When someone can understand how institutions and organizations operate and make decisions and work within that context to convince diverse stakeholder groups to focus on mitigating climate change and achieving climate neutrality, we can move the needle on solving this global problem collaboratively. Specific knowledge areas will include climate resiliency, innovative technologies that can lead to improvements in efficiency and energy storage, equity and inclusion, and creative financing.