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Sustainability careers – where to start?

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Student Arianna Gialletti (MSc Climate Change and Environmental Policy) showcases their learnings from a recent Sustainability Careers Panel event, hosted by the Sustainability Service.

Sustainability is such a wide field, and people studying sustainability-related and non-related courses can face challenges in understanding how they can pursue their passion for sustainability and embed it into their professional career; if they are entitled to work on sustainability with their degree; and what the main prerequisites are to start their sustainability career journey.

The Sustainability Service at the University of Leeds is a substantial point of reference for any students who wish to participate in volunteering, internship opportunities, or events hosted by like-minded experts in the field, including Leeds alumni. Alumni can often provide students with many useful tips and suggestions to feel more confident in working in sustainability, by talking about their own, very different, academic and professional experiences.

At the Panel event, many students and I had the opportunity to meet alumni Joshua West, Shara Samra, and Arianna Griffa, and receive insight into their amazing academic and professional experience, all of which have followed different pathways to pursue their passion for sustainability.

You can listen to the entire Panel event below or see our panels top recommendations as well as a summary of what each speaker spoke about underneath the video.

Key Advice

Below is some useful advice that our speakers shared during the event, including key recommendations and fundamental things to remember when working towards a career in sustainability that can really fulfil our passions and life dreams!

• Getting your first job in sustainability - What are you really interested in? Do you already know it? What are your strengths and weaknesses? There are many related but specific areas of sustainability, from communication to data analysis, from environmental management to policymaking. Think about what you want to get out of the job. Work experience is important but so is your passion in the area! Find a role that matches your values by looking at the values of the organization. Your career requires you to think in the long-term - you will progressively learn about yourself and what you are most interested in, and you will always have the opportunity to change your pathway.

• Try as many avenues of sustainability as possible, without being afraid to fail. While working in sustainability can be versatile and requested by businesses and organisations from the most varied sectors, it may also be difficult to understand the specific area you want to go into. One solution could definitely be to try different things, for example, volunteering in multiple fields alongside your studies on a specific degree, in order to enrich your CV.

• Be patient. Sustainability is a competitive sector but there are many opportunities, including the upcoming COP26, governments’ climate mitigation and adaptation agendas, and a growing interest and ambition to achieve sustainable development, in the UK and worldwide.

• The recruitment process might be stressful, like a full-time job in itself, but persevere. Getting to the interview can be the hardest part. One key thing is to practice your CV and cover letter writing because these two are the factors that can distinguish you from all the other candidates. The interview is when you can really demonstrate how you fit with the team. If you get to the interview you need to show that you really care about the organization’s ideas. Think about your experience to tell a story creatively, and always keep an open mind: few jobs will be perfect at the first look, but you might be surprised then once you join the organisation.

• Don’t neglect transferable skills! Working in sustainability may require you to be flexible, to be able to communicate, write reports, make presentations, and engage with stakeholders. All these criteria are crucial for every job. If your current job is not strictly relevant to sustainability, you may think of the wider skills you might gain, such as the ability to communicate clearly, establish and strengthen relationships, and listen to stakeholders. In addition to technical expertise, it is important to be able to think critically and strategically. Rather than talking about technical knowledge, for example, you might want to emphasise other soft skills in cover letters and interviews.

• Never stop learning: sustainability is a fast-paced sector, and ideas on sustainability continuously change, it is, therefore, fundamental to be flexible but also to engage with recent developments. Join groups, societies, reach out to connections in LinkedIn, and create your own groups to expand your network and knowledge! Try to be curious and keep an open mind. Explore new emerging topics to make progress in your career, to find a new role but also to improve the one you already have.

• For international students like me that decide to study a Masters course in the UK, it is possible for you to work based in the UK government as a foreign citizen, for example in an international team. Even if you are based in the UK, much of the work can be based in collaboration with other countries. Sustainability is a field that is internationally focused, with many opportunities to engage with other countries worldwide. In addition, do not forget that opportunities for international collaboration through remote working are progressively increasing.

• Progress towards sustainability will be sooner or later be visible and rewarding, for example after long diplomacy conversations with other countries, we will see sustainability commitments rising internationally. In the end, working in sustainability is contributing positively to change our world, and this is what is really important to value.

Summaries of Speaker Presentations

Joshua West - Business Development Manager for Cross-River Partnership

Joshua graduated as a conservation biologist. Although this type of degree may be specifically oriented towards the environmental side of sustainability, during his studies Joshua realised that in the end, humans are the most responsible for environmental impacts and the ones who can drive the most change. That is why he decided to explore the behavioural aspects of delivering sustainability.

His first introduction to sustainability was right within the University of Leeds, working as a Sustainability Project Assistant delivering projects such as the Annual Student Sustainability Research Conference, managing the Student Sustainability Architects Programme, as well as working on communications and events. All this improved his transferable skills substantially.

Joshua is now working as Communications and Business Development Manager for Cross River Partnership, which is known as the responsible agency for creating the Millennium Bridge in London, and which evolved in delivering sustainability-focused projects, collaborating with a range of public and private stakeholders, and civil actors.

Shara Samra - Senior Policy Adviser at Confederation of British Industry (CBI)

Shara has a bachelor’s degree in International Relations, therefore more related to the social and economic sides of sustainability. But her passion for sustainability started when she had the opportunity to write her dissertation on environmental policy and energy security in the EU, although this was not something she covered academically.

She, therefore, realised that she needed further knowledge on the topic, and she enrolled in the MSc Sustainability and Consultancy at the University of Leeds. The course was practical and she learned a lot by delivering projects. During this time, she also became a Student Sustainability Architect, looking at a project on how to integrate sustainability into final year dissertations, particularly those outside of the School of Earth and Environment and without dedicated courses on the topic. She, therefore, learned how to communicate sustainability beyond niche environmental groups, a topic that she could then fulfil in her final year project working with a small charity on sustainable and environmental education.

She took a slightly different route from other students, who after the MSc, obtained environmental management jobs. Instead, she entered into the policy field, initially working at Green Alliance as a Policy Assistant. She also worked at the UK Commission for UNESCO, on projects in partnership with developing countries to foster research between countries. Her current role is a senior policy adviser at CBI, working on Brexit policies to foster future relationships for a prosperous and competitive post-Brexit UK economy. Although this may not necessarily seem sustainability-focused, she took this role to learn more about lobbying, making effective policies to influence people, and tackling major challenges in business.

Arianna Griffa - International Energy Innovation Adviser at BEIS

Arianna is an International Energy Innovation Adviser at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) within the UK government. Her first plan was not to become a policy adviser, and this demonstrates how it can be so common but also understandable to change career paths and to not know what exactly you want to be. After obtaining her degree in International Relations she had internships, jobs and volunteering roles in non-profit sectors, working for businesses as well as EU agencies, with roles in communication, stakeholder engagement, and event planning.

Her passion for sustainability started while she was working for a charity in the Netherlands supporting young entrepreneurs all over the world. All this made her acknowledge this big latent issue of sustainability which relates to environmental, social and health, as well as economic issues. She completely changed her mind by realising that the impact that her role in the job will have is more important than the type of job itself. All this led her to enrol at the University of Leeds on the MSc Climate Change and Environmental Policy, through which she had the opportunity to obtain a relevant degree and fundamental knowledge for working in sustainability and policy. This also helped her increase analytical and research skills, as well as transferable skills such as communication and presentation abilities.

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