Levers of Exchange

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What we discussed: We have a proliferation of agreements, commitments, and pledges to achieve climate mitigation. But what’s underneath the pledges? And which pledges achieve the action that we need? Kaya Axelsson and I discussed incentives, purpose of business, and pledges in our reflection of Season 3 interviews.

Why it matters: What if every think tank, university department or company organized themselves with the responsibility of reducing 1 gigaton of carbon? This is a simple metric that allows people to thrive in their job yet organize the goal to meaningful impact.

What it means for you: There is carbon being emitted from every sector – whether agriculture, real estate, manufacturing, retail, and so on. Which gigaton of reduction are you focused on?

About Kaya Axelsson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaya-axelsson-7057834b/

About Levers of Exchange:

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)

Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: https://www.leversofexchange.com/

Season 3 is funded by a generous grant from the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, at the Saïd Business School, Oxford University.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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What we discussed: Systems change needs people who have broad views and understands the details. Kaya Axelsson and I reflected on the similarities behind the differences of electric utilities, water systems, telecom, financial and maritime sectors that our guests discussed.

Why it matters: The general concepts of systems change needs to be implemented by practitioners who are deeply focused on the details of how their system works. When we zoom out to see the commonalities, we see how the challenges in one sector may have already been addressed by another sector.

What it means for you: Bonus Content

About Kaya Axelsson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaya-axelsson-7057834b/

About Levers of Exchange:

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)

Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: https://www.leversofexchange.com/

Season 3 is funded by a generous grant from the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, at the Saïd Business School, Oxford University.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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Personal Resilience. Vision. Listening, and a sense of curiosity. These were the skills that our Season 3 guests recommended students and early career professionals learn today if they want to enter the sustainability sector. Our guests spanned across telecom, water, finance, maritime, electric utilities and cultural systems. I was curious, are the skills to succeed the same or different? I asked every guest, what skill they would advise a student or early professional to learn.

The answers were very revealing.

Natalia Pshenichnaya, the former Head of Programmes at the GSMA Foundation tied personal resilience to how this deeper inner awareness keeps the person grounded in what's important to them. Joaquin Viquez, a water consultant for the German Development Agency G-I-Zed, also pointed out the importance of a vision and personal passion.

James Mitchell trained as a cellist before creating a career in Sustainable Finance. Now at the Rocky Mountain Institute, he pointed out that just like in a chamber music group, listening to each other, hearing each other, responding and reacting in kind with each other, is a critical skill to learn.

Three of our guests, however, pointed out the power of curiosity and asking the right question, including Jeremy McDaniels, now the Senior Advisor for Sustainable Finance at the Institute of International Finance.

Stuart Hilen, a Portfolio Developer at EnergyAustralia, put it differently. He considered the skills he looks for when hiring team members.

Finally, Shruthi Vijayakumar summed it up beautifully. Questions invite others into our own space, to question with us.

So, there you have it. Those are the skills that students and early career professionals should learn. It's not the textbook lessons that will create systems change. It's the interpersonal skills of inviting others in, of making chamber music together, that will create the new systems for everlasting change.

Guests:

· Stuart Hillen, EnergyAustralia, Melbourne, Australia https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuart-hillen/

· Jeremy McDaniels, Institute of International Finance, Washington DC USA https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-mcdaniels/

· James Mitchell, Rocky Mountain Institute, London, UK https://www.linkedin.com/in/james20/

· Natalia Pshenichnaya, formerly GSM Association, Berlin, Germany https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalia-pshenichnaya-7107781a/

· Shruthi Vijayakumar, Education New Zealand, Auckland, New Zealand https://www.linkedin.com/in/shruthivijayakumar/

· Joaquin Viquez, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, San Jose, Costa Rica https://www.linkedin.com/in/joaquinviquez/

About Levers of Exchange:

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)

Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: https://www.leversofexchange.com/

Image by Juraj Varga from Pixabay

Season 3 is funded by a generous grant from the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, at the Saïd Business School, Oxford University.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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Have you ever wondered if skills that got us to where we are today, may not be the same skills needed to solve the world's most pressing problems? For those who have been listening to Season Three, you know that we interviewed six practitioners who work deeply at the intersection of large systems. What are the skills necessary to thrive at those intersections?

Shruthi Vijayakumar, a Global Shaper at the World Economic Forum and co-founder of the Emerge Institute, points out that making sense of cultural systems means understanding the historical context and how one fits into the social fabric.

For Stuart Hillen, a Portfolio Developer at EnergyAustralia, as an engineer, he found his calling using his problem-solving skills to understand how things work and how things are made.

Another trained engineer, Joaquin Viquez who works for the German Development Agency GIZ. He attributed a sense of knowing what's missing rather than noticing what was there.

For all of us who work at the intersection of systems, it's communication that is the ultimate skill. Communication comes in many forms. For James Mitchell, Principle at the Rocky Mountain Institute, the stakeholder engagement he had to do in the maritime sector required a lot of listening in order to get the Poseidon Principles launched.

Natalia Pshenichnaya, who spent many years at the GSMA Foundation, found new products and applications of how the Telecomm sector could alleviate poverty and improve agriculture businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa. She pointed out the importance to articulate messages in the language and jargon of whomever she was talking to.

Finally, Jeremy McDaniels credited facilitation skills at bringing people together across many sectors. As the Senior Advisor for Sustainable Finance at the Institute of International Finance, he interacts with global actors, across 400 institutions and tries to strive for consensus.

So there you have it - it's the art of figuring out what's possible. Some of it is curiosity driven, some of it is breaking down big problems into its constituent parts. But time and again, we heard just how important it is to translate between stakeholders - the jargon, the expectations and the underlying mentalities. Hopefully this episode gives you an idea of what skills you have, and what you can develop for a successful future.

Guests:

Stuart Hillen, EnergyAustralia, Melbourne, Australia https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuart-hillen/
Jeremy McDaniels, Institute of International Finance, Washington DC USA https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-mcdaniels/
James Mitchell, Rocky Mountain Institute, London, UK https://www.linkedin.com/in/james20/
Natalia Pshenichnaya, formerly GSM Association, Berlin, Germany https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalia-pshenichnaya-7107781a/
Shruthi Vijayakumar, Education New Zealand, Auckland, New Zealand https://www.linkedin.com/in/shruthivijayakumar/
Joaquin Viquez, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, San Jose, Costa Rica https://www.linkedin.com/in/joaquinviquez/

About Levers of Exchange:

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)

Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: https://www.leversofexchange.com/

Image by ErikaWittlieb from Pixabay

Season 3 is funded by a generous grant from the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, at the Saïd Business School, Oxford University.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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What we discussed: Wouldn’t it make sense, if climate change is a global issue, that we have a consensus in how to approach it? Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as it seems. Although the financial sector is building consensus around required disclosures using the framework developed by the Taskforce for Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), different countries are implementing it in different ways. Thus, a fragmentation of policies and approaches may unintentionally undermine progress.

Why it matters: There is a tension between explore/exploit. Sometimes, the best strategy is to explore new options by segmenting, fragmenting, and allowing multiple solutions to crop up, while other times it’s best to exploit the best option so as to achieve efficiency of scale. The question is: does the financial sector still need to explore ideas of how to align finance to environmental outcomes, or do we need to exploit the structures and methodologies already developed?

What it means for you: As you go about implementing systems change, reflect on whether you need new ideas (explore) or you need efficiency gains of existing processes (exploit).

Interviewee’s Bio:

Jeremy McDaniels, Institute of International Finance, Washington DC USA

M.S. in Environmental Management (Dist.), University of Oxford, SSEE

As Senior Policy Advisor, Sustainable Finance, in the IIF Global Policy Initiatives department, Jeremy leads projects on climate risk assessment, disclosure, terminology and definitions. He also supports the IIF’s engagement on sustainable finance policy and regulatory issues with international standard-setting entities. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-mcdaniels/

In this interview, we discussed the following questions:

What's your favorite movies and what's your favorite media?
How we interact with sustainability data is becoming incredibly timely.
How would you frame sustainable finance as you try to move the world towards net zero goals?
Can you elaborate on what materiality means? When you say materiality, what viewpoint do you mean?
What is the Institute for International Finance (IIF), and what is your role within IIF?
Should there be a monolithic goal for the finance sector to minimize fragmentation, or should each subsector set their own localized sustainability goals?
Can you clarify TCFD, Taxonomy and other standards because they each have different roles in sustainable finance?
What are some global / geographic challenges that you think can be simplified for sustainability purposes?
When you're working at such high levels, how granular do you need to be on the ground to make these decisions?
Is any financial subsector more advanced in their sustainable finance thinking and approach?
Do you notice a 'translation' issue as different financial sectors grapple with the common problem of climate change?
We've spent a lot of time talking about risk, what do you see within the opportunity space?
Finance, like legal, accounting, telecommunication, and many others, are just enabling infrastructures for the real economy.
When we start bringing time into the equation, time introduces risk. Where is there a lot of uncertainty today?
Where did you first get exposed to sustainability as the field you wanted to dedicate your career towards?
What did you find at the intersection of media and the public?
What do you consider to be your primary skill?
To a current student, what skill or expertise do you encourage them to learn?

About Levers of Exchange:

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)

Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: https://www.leversofexchange.com/

Season 3 is funded by a generous grant from the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, at the Saïd Business School, Oxford University.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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What we discussed: From water, wastewater, biodigestion and agriculture, Joaquin and I talked about how growing up on a farm in Costa Rica influenced his approach to problem solving as well as some of the critical challenges faced by his country. Through his stories, we looked at how the issues he’s worked on are interrelated, and which skills have been transferrable between sectors.

Why it matters: Joaquin thoughtfully pointed out inquiry and curiosity as the critical skills to understanding how systems work and implementing change. He’s not embarrassed to not knowing the answer, and he unabashedly asks “why” as a way of finding out.

What it means for you: That confidence to explore what one doesn’t know is a skill that systems change agents can adopt. Shruthi pointed it out too in her interview – there needs to be a humility in acknowledging what we don’t know as much as we need to recommend best practices of what we do know.

Interviewee’s Bio:

Joaquin Viquez, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, San Jose, Costa Rica

MBA, Saïd Business School and Skoll World Forum Fellow

Joaquin Viquez is an Agricultural Engineer and a passionate social entrepreneur with 15 years of experience in Latin-American working in environmental projects, water and sanitation. He currently works for the German Agency for Cooperation GIZ in its office in Costa Rica in a regional water and sanitation projects. https://www.linkedin.com/in/joaquinviquez/

In this interview, we discussed the following questions:

You grew up in an agriculture family. How did that shape your childhood?
How do you view problems through experience?
How old were you when you had that formative moment?
What were some of the things you tried to do with the extra fruit?
You won Technology Review 35 from MIT. That award was given to you for an extension of this idea.
What was the technology you won for?
Can you elaborate a bit about the methane problem, from the climate side?
What were some of the value-added benefits you were able to get to the farmer?
How do you personalize a biodigester?
What questions were farmers asking of you and what were the factors you could tweak?
So how did you pivot working in biogas to working in water? What's the connection there?
Can you give us an overview of what are the key issues of wastewater treatment and sanitation?
Do different geographic scales (national, regional) have different sanitation issues?
Water can be super hyperlocal. How do you deal with that?
Can you ever take a technology and plop it into a community, or do you have to tweak for that community?
Tell us about GIZ and how it tries to tackle some of these water issues in Costa Rica.
What would you say is your critical skill that you're bringing to the team?
How important is it to work with local representatives to take care of one's own backyard?
What's the web of moving parts that drive towards sanitation outcomes?
Water and wastewater - is it more common for one company to manage both?
The agriculture / water nexus isn't just watering plants, it's also dissolved phosphorous. Can you explain that?
We talked about several different systems and their stakeholder groups. When you're getting introduced to a new system, how do you tease it apart?
How do you create systemic shifts?
When did you first notice the web of moving parts and when did you decide to do something about it?
It's important to notice what's missing! How would you describe the sense of noticing what's missing vs. noticing what's there?
The feeling of inquiry and naivety is a benefit of coming in as an outsider.
What's your approach to problem solving?
Do you see a type of urban development that's more sustainable than others?
Most infrastructure tries to centralize for efficiencies scale. But in wastewater you see the opposite, so that localities can take advantage of natural-based solutions.
Why is that? What's unique about water / wastewater such that decentralization is preferrable?
To a student, what skill would you encourage to learn?

About Levers of Exchange:

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)

Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: https://www.leversofexchange.com/

Season 3 is funded by a generous grant from the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, at the Saïd Business School, Oxford University.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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What we discussed: In a developing country, the mobile phone is a person’s first interaction with technology. Thus, the telecom sector is at the tip-of-the-spear to offer banking services, agricultural notifications and health services to hard-to-reach areas.

Why it matters: Within 5 years, climate change will change the agricultural crops across much of the world. Yet for small-holder farmers, working on family plots, they are cut off and unaware of the disruption to their livelihoods that is coming their way.

What it means for you: It took innovative business models in order to convince the telecom sector to offer new products and innovation in rural areas. Yet the ones who did, reached customer loyalty upwards of 70%, unheard of in the sector. This podcast is a classic case of getting to know your customers on-the-ground to develop life-changing products and services.

Interviewee’s Bio:

Natalia Pshenichnaya, formerly GSMA Foundation, Berlin, Germany

MBA, Saïd Business School

As Head of Programs, Natalia oversaw GSMA Foundation’s global portfolio of telecommunication innovation projects. She managed multi-million progammes (£10-20M+) across all stages: from design to evolution, pivot and completion, including GSMA AgriTech, CleanTech and mHealth initiatives. https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalia-pshenichnaya-7107781a/

In this interview, we discussed the following questions:

What are some of your favorite vegan recipes?
What was it like growing up vegetarian in Russia?
How did you start your career in the Telecom sector?
When you got to GSMA Foundation, you fell into just the right mix based on your interests. What was your role?
What is GSMA Foundation as an organization?
Why do you think the telecom sector got interested in impact broadly, but also agriculture specifically?
Is competition beyond your traditional industry sector going to become more common through internet-of-things and technology?
When you were talking to the farmers on the ground in Kenya, what were some of the problems they would reveal to you?
We're talking about small holders, independent farmers who own their own plots. They are subject to these massive shifts in climate.
Where does the telecom technology come in and what were some technology solutions?
Why could the telecom sector make a difference when other sector couldn't?
What was it like when you started off in AgriTech? What was your north star?
What do you think is the role of the enabling technologies to climate change?
It hints at how societal acceptance of technology lags behind technology adoption.
Did you see similarities in working with farmers and with medical tech?
What do you consider to be your primary skill?
How complex was this interconnected web that you had to work within?
There is lot if inertia to not do things when there are multiple stakeholders. How did you find leverage to make change happen?
What is what you're most proud of?
When you jump into a project that not only you haven't done before, but no one has done before, what do you do first?
To a student or early professional today, what skill or expertise do you recommend them to learn?

About Levers of Exchange:

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)

Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: https://www.leversofexchange.com/

Season 3 is funded by a generous grant from the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, at the Saïd Business School, Oxford University.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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What we discussed: Except for roads, we don’t tend to interact with large, physical infrastructures. For sure, we see the wires of the electric grid, but we don’t commonly see the electric power plans, refineries, and substations. Stuart and I discussed the business models and challenges that electric utilities face in Australia as they undertake decarbonization efforts.

Why it matters: We often forget that we rely on infrastructure being available 100% of the time. Yet the cost of keeping the electric grid operating at that level is immense. Utilities build physical hedges in terms of overcapacity so as to provide certainty on uptime.

What it means for you: As you think of system change, think of the failure modes of the system. How many failures are you willing to tolerate? How many can you avoid, and how many backup plans do you need to draw up to guarantee a certain performance criteria?

Interviewee’s Bio:

Stuart Hillen, EnergyAustralia, Melbourne, Australia

MBA, Saïd Business School

As Portfolio Development Lead Stuart is responsible for originating and executing generation development opportunities to transition EnergyAustralia’s 5,000 MW generation portfolio. Technologies covered include utility scale storage, pumped hydro and renewable investments. https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuart-hillen/

In this interview, we discussed the following questions:

What's your favorite infrastructure?
What were the critical skills you learned as a civil engineer that helps you with your day-to-day jobs?
What is the problem solving approach you take as a trained engineer?
What's your role at EnergyAustralia?
What stage of project development do you get involved in?
What is the business model of EnergyAustralia?
So you try to have the right physical portfolio mix to provide electricity. When you don't have it, you procure it from the market.
Can you describe dispatchable power?
Batteries time-shift resources, depending on what's available on the market. Given these movements of fuel shifting globally, what's the role of the utility in decarbonized future?
There is quite a bit of indication to "electrify everything". It implies the need to double the size of the electric sector to absorb the transportation sector!
You've mentioned a smattering of technologies. Technology cycles are usually 6-18 months, yet utilities need to think in 30 years. As a project developer, how do you match these time cycles?
When you're project financing, how much do you have to take into account new business models?
What is the not-often discussed field of Ancillary Services?
Can you comment on the high costs to effectively maintain 100% uptime of the electric grid?
Sometimes the overbuilding is criticized as waste, but to maintain nearly 100% uptime, one just need physical assets as hedges.
Another way of creating that resiliency is fuel switching. What's the advantage of the hybrid power plant you worked on?
Is Hydrogen a drop in fuel for Natural Gas?
Have you seen the trend of hydrogen projects?
Hydrogen electrolyzes produce the hydrogen. What sounds unclear is whether the electric utility should own the business model of producing hydrogen, right?
When you're evaluating technologies, how do you know if a technology is "good enough"?
Are we waiting for technology to improve, or for capital to implement?
How many different stakeholders get involved and how many do you have to satisfy?
When did you first get exposed to these issues that made you want to work with an electric utility?
Were you surprised by the level of complexity of the stakeholders and issues involved?
What is it about complexity that made you want to seek it out?
So basically, complexity gives you job variety!
To a student or early professional, what skill would you recommend them to learn?
Curiosity has a humbleness of knowing that there's more to know, and a seeking of what one's lacking.

About Levers of Exchange:

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)

Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: https://www.leversofexchange.com/

Season 3 is funded by a generous grant from the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, at the Saïd

Business School, Oxford University.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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What we discussed: The fabric of society is a fine mesh of cultures. When we change world views – from western to Indian to Maori – we find different interpretations of how each culture considers their environment.

Why it matters: A sustainable future requires us to make new connections and partnerships with unlikely stakeholders. Yet each of these stakeholder groups are going to have their own expectations, assumptions and modus operandi. Shruthi is really teaching us how to be aware of the different groups we identify with, and how we can translate across those groups to achieve a sustainable future.

What it means for you: This episode highlights the importance of understanding a person’s cultural roots and heritage as a lens of how they view sustainability. We can apply the same principles of listening, curiosity, and inviting others to join our journey, to our professional lives and our personal lives.

Interviewee’s Bio:

Shruthi Vijayakumar, Global Shaper, World Economic Forum, Auckland, New Zealand

MBA, Saïd Business School and Skoll World Forum Fellow

Shruthi is an educator, coach, facilitator and strategist in the field of systems leadership, sustainability and innovation. She has been recognized as a Global Shaper by the World Economic Forum and a Global Changemaker by the British Council. She has spoken at WEF’s Annual Meeting in Davos and TEDx. https://www.linkedin.com/in/shruthivijayakumar/

In this interview, we discussed the following questions:

What is your favorite Haka moment?
What is the relationship between the Maori people and the New Zealand Government?
How does your multi-ethnic background frame your work in equity, justice and inclusion?
How would you frame environmental world view from these different frames?
How would you say that influences the work that you do?
What would you consider your most important skill?
When you're facilitating these conversations, how do you impart that fabric of society onto the people you're facilitating?
When did you first noticed the interconnected web of moving parts?
About what age were you?
What were some of the grassroots projects you participated in?
When did you realize you could leverage change within this tangled web?
What was it like being inside the Boston Consulting Group?
How did you see innovation work within consulting vs. the work you do today?
What's the difference between inclusion and building the table together?
What does Emerge Institute do?
Can you please speak to some of your work at ocean lab?
When you have big systemic change goals, how do you bring people along?
If you were to re-imagine the education system, what would you do?
What skill or expertise would you encourage students to learn?

About the Levers of Exchange

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)

Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: https://www.leversofexchange.com/

Season 3 is funded by a generous grant from the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, at the Saïd Business School, Oxford University.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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What we discussed: The oceans are our last “commons” of the world, legally defined to be outside the jurisdiction of every country. Thus, maritime management is a great case study of Nobel Laurate Elinor Ostrem’s work on managing the commons.

Why it matters: Unlike the tragedy of the commons, Ostrem demonstrated that communities can come together to manage common resources without the need of a top-down, hierarchical approach. However, a grounds-up system has a set of rules to follow:

Clearly defined boundaries;
Proportional equivalence between benefits and costs;
Collective choice arrangements;
Monitoring;
Graduated sanctions;
Fast and fair conflict resolution;
Local autonomy;
Appropriate relations with other tiers of rule-making authority (polycentric governance)

What it means for you: As you go about creating systems change, create new systems that are known to work. Ostrem’s model is one such model that can be used to manage shared resources.

Interviewee’s Bio:

James Mitchell, Rocky Mountain Institute, London, UK

MSc, Nature, Society, and Environmental Policy, University of Oxford, SSEE

James works to align capital flows with climate targets through innovative research on climate risks and opportunities as well as highly ambitious cross-sector collaborations. James has played a leading role in the creation of the Poseidon Principles, the first global climate alignment agreement for financial institutions. https://www.linkedin.com/in/james20/

In this interview, we discussed the following questions:

How many frequent flyer miles does your cello have?
How does a studied cellist make the transition into sustainable finance?
What got you interested in environmental policy in the first place? When did you first get exposed to these ideas?
Now that you've been in sustainable finance, how do you frame it?
Finance is ultimately an enabling sector. When we say the financial sector is aligned to climate outcomes, what does that mean?
It makes me think of other enablers like lawyers and accountants, who have small footprints but enable consumption across the broader economy.
Should a bank's portfolio be a reflection of the real economy, or does it have agency to create the real economy?
Sustainability within a company is "the whole company." You're pointing out that's true for the entire economy.
How do you drive to these market-based solutions for sustainable finance?
Do you find more interest in different geographies, such as Europe, US, Asia, or is it a global interest?
What are the Poseidon Principles and what was the impetus in developing them?
Was the maritime sector involved in the conversation?
You're doing metrics for specific subsectors. Why not do one for the entire maritime sector?
How many stakeholders did you have to engage with to find your initial set of signatories?
The Poseidon principles is simple – there’s effectively only one metric. How did the stakeholders settle on that metric?
You could have chosen 50 metrics, but you chose just one. Do you think that set the Poseidon Principles apart from the other initiatives out there?
What was your most important skill in getting Poseidon Principles Launched?
When did you first notice this interconnected web of moving parts?
How did Elinor Ostrem's work on the Commons influenced your work?
Was there something about the Maritime sector that made it a viable application of Ostrem's work?
How do you define the boundaries that the industry sub-groups will work on?
What other sectors have similar properties as the maritime sector?
One difference is that the maritime is a consumer sector whereas oil & gas is a producing sector.
It seems that the more specific the metric, the more actionable. But what about the notion of needing holistic solutions? How do you manage that tension?
To a student or early career professional, what skill or expertise do you encourage them to learn?

About Levers of Exchange

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)

Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: https://www.leversofexchange.com/

Season 3 is funded by a generous grant from the Skoll Center for Social Entrepreneurship, at the Saïd Business School, Oxford University.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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What we discussed: Systems pervade our everyday life and often go unnoticed. Yet making the world more sustainable requires system change. I asked each of our guests to describe when they first noticed the systems that they work within and to describe their formative moments that set them onto their careers.

Why it matters: These formative moments become part of how each guest approaches problem solving in their unique way. They frame the thinking and the context of how each approaches the climate crisis.

What it means for you: Each one of us has a formative moment. I ask that you, dear listener, reflect on yours. When did you notice the system? More importantly, when did you decide to do something about it? I hope that the six stories in Season 3 will offer inspiration to help us implement our own climate and sustainability strategies.

Guests this season:

Stuart Hillen, EnergyAustralia, Melbourne, Australia https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuart-hillen/
Jeremy McDaniels, Institute of International Finance, Washington DC USA https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-mcdaniels/
James Mitchell, Rocky Mountain Institute, London, UK https://www.linkedin.com/in/james20/
Natalia Pshenichnaya, formerly GSM Association, Berlin, Germany https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalia-pshenichnaya-7107781a/
Shruthi Vijayakumar, Education New Zealand, Auckland, New Zealand https://www.linkedin.com/in/shruthivijayakumar/
Joaquin Viquez, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, San Jose, Costa Rica https://www.linkedin.com/in/joaquinviquez/

About Levers of Exchange:

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)

Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: https://www.leversofexchange.com/

Season 3 is funded by a generous grant from the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, at the Saïd Business School, Oxford University.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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I always feel fortunate to get the lineup of guests that we do for this podcast. They carry with them many years of experience and wisdom. One of the areas of continued relevance is advice they give to early professionals. We asked each guest what common challenges they've observed in early career professionals and what mentorship advice they usually give.

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)

Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: http://www.leversforchangepodcast.com/

Let us start with Jay Bruns, the Senior Climate Policy Advisor to the WA State Insurance Commissioner. His answer was a succinct of the Career Advice Episode from Season 1 - to search for sustainability impact within your existing job rather than applying for a job title that includes Sustainability.

Suzanne Singer, Chief Engineer of Native Renewables, see that students as young as Junior High and High School are already getting interested in clean energy jobs. To those people, there's nothing more important than getting good grades because, unfortunately, it’s the metric most of the world relies on.

When people enter the work force, they face a multitude of challenges, from simply landing a job, to not settling for less than what matters to them, as Ben Kott, CEO of LightsourceBP Labs observed.

It's great if you already have that vision, but what if you don't? Or, what if your vision isn't right sized to your capabilities? Prachi Vakharia, Managing Director of Womanium noted that she often runs into people who underestimates their abilities and encourages people to dream bigger.

Stacy Flynn, CEO and co-founder of Evernu agrees. And not just dream bigger, but for a lot of female leaders, to not lose confidence in their abilities and the pursuit of their dreams.

But no matter one's passion, their ability to perform must match their visions of big dreams. The upshot? Work hard and know why you're doing it. Jud Virden, Associate Laboratory Director of Pacific Northwest National Labs explains

So, there you have it. Whether you're in high school or junior high, just trying to land your first job, or trying to shift careers, it is a combination of dreaming big, of knowing the "so what" question that you're working on and working hard to deliver on achieving it. But above all else, it's the grit to continue. After all, each of our guests have spent many decades on their career journeys and they would not be where they are without perseverance.

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We are inundated with information and news these days. And since Climate Action is a globally interconnected systems problem, there's a lot of information one needs to know and interact with. That can leave people feeling overwhelmed that they need to master knowledge and skills just to make an impact. So, I asked each of our guests where they receive new information from and how they stay current in an increasingly complex field.

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)

Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: http://www.leversforchangepodcast.com/

Jud Virden, Associate Laboratory Director at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, manages over 1000 engineers, and he relies on talking to people.

Both Jay Bruns, Climate Policy Advisor to the WA State Insurance Commissioner and Suzanne Singer, Chief Engineer of Native Renewables, see talking to industry people as a critical source of information. Both of them gets their information from many respected sources.

Just getting information from multiple sources isn't enough. As Ben Kott, CEO of LightsourceBP Labs reminds us, we have to make sense of our information and suggests that one way to do that is through discussions with peers.

Stacy Flynn, the consummate systems thinker, gave us her trick in synthesizing new information. It's by scanning table of contents of many books at the same time, and drawing connections between them, even before reading the books themselves.

Lastly, Prachi Vakharia, Managing Partner at Womanium, gave a very succinct framework of how to sort through the information and stay current:

So, there you have it - qualified information, synthesized ideas, hearing it from people who are doing the work. Break them out into current events, industrial news, and general knowledge. And lastly, talk to people. Share ideas. Listen. I hope you are able to adopt some of these best practices of staying current and well informed.

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Frequent listeners to this Podcast know that I like delving into the cleantech and climate story of many different sector, looking for similarities of problems and solutions. I was curious how many other people looked beyond their traditional silos for inspiration. So, to the podcast guests of Season 2, I asked them, what unexpected collaborations have they found themselves in. Answers came in two general categories, those who were surprised, and those who were diligent.

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)

Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: http://www.leversforchangepodcast.com/

Prachi, Managing Director of Womanium, sets the stage of being open to spontaneity, to welcome surprising collaborations to happen.

This surprise can manifest itself in many circumstances, as Suzanne Singer relayed in an anecdote. Not only is she the Chief Engineer of Native Renewables, but she also manages the Social Media account.

Sometimes the surprising collaboration isn't with someone unexpected, it's an unexpected reaction of someone within the industry. Stacy Flynn, CEO of Evernu, reflects on some of her efforts working from within the textile sector.

Even if one doesn't find themselves in surprising collaborations, they still make an effort to cast a wide net. Jay Bruns, the Senior Climate Policy Advisor to the WA State Insurance Commissioner shares how he learns new information with like-minded individuals

And no matter how long one works in the climate industry, there is always room for surprise, new opportunities, and new intersections to explore. Jud Virden, of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, shares his excitement to be working on the intersection of the energy and energy and marine technology sector.

So, there you have it - surprising results can come through both expected and unexpected collaborations. Intersections of industry and infrastructure is where future innovations will occur. Put yourself in situations where the opportunity for new ideas to emerge. Train yourself to notice them when they do and take advantage of their spontaneity. Then delight in the deep exploration of the new opportunities that present themselves.

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The United Nations Sustainability Development Goals has been a great rallying point for global action. But did you know they are set to expire in 2030? The next decade will prove decisive on achieving our climate targets. I asked each of our guests this season what brought them optimism about climate impact. It is easy to become cynical about action to mitigate or avert climate crises. So for our guests, what do they see that brings them hope?

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)
Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: www.leversforchangepodcast.com

Several pointed to the urgency of the problem, and the opportunities it creates. Ben Kott, CEO of LightsourceBP Lab reflected that there are now climate 'carrots' of opportunities, not just the stick of punishment.

Prachi Vakharia, who worked a number of transportation companies saw the same evolution in corporate America.

For Jud Virden, who has been on the cutting edge of technology innovation, with his career at Pacific Northwest National Labs, he has seen steady progress, albeit behind-the-scenes. He's optimistic that the cause is becoming more mainstream.

At the global level, Jay Bruns, Senior Climate Policy Advisor to the WA State Insurance Commissioner, reflected on the greater visibility climate is getting from regulators across the US and globally. But the actions need to happen faster.

Closer to home, Suzanne Singer, of Native Renewables, saw a rising interest in junior high and high school.

It's this next generation that gives Stacy Flynn, CEO of Evernu, her optimism. It's not just about the leaders of today, it's also about cultivating the leaders for the second half of the 21st century.

So there you have it - lots of reasons to be optimistic about our progress. As Jud pointed out, there's lots to do and as Jay is concerned about, will the change happen fast enough. However, the growing number of people who are working on it, talking about it, and embedding it into their work and lives, is one cause to be optimistic about the future of climate action.

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Stacy Flynn, Founder and CEO of Evernu, is our guest. It is a textiles innovation company looking to take recycled fiber from discarded clothes and give it a new life. Over the course of our conversation, I asked,

1) How do clothes get from the farm to the retail stores?

2) How do you innovate in conservative industries, such as textile manufacturing?

3) Where one starts in building new systems solutions.

Now let us listen to how a career that started in fashion and fabrics is now working on recycling and repurposing.

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)
Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: www.leversforchangepodcst.com

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Ben Kott, the CEO of LightsourceBP Labs, a subsidiary of BP that manufactures and sells home energy management solutions joins us. It is people like Ben who BP relies on to meet its climate goals. We caught up in October 2020 and discussed

1) What it was like inside BP when CEO Bernard Looney made his announcement.

2) The value proposition of big data in the clean energy future.

3) How to flex frameworks and pivot when necessary.

Listen to how Ben is being an entrepreneur within a major corporation.

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)
Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: www.leversforchangepodcast.com

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Today’s guest is Suzanne Singer, founder and Chief Engineer of Native Renewables, an organization that brings renewable solar energy to the 15,000 tribal homes that are off the grid. We talked about

1) How does one translate technical language about Solar Panels into Navajo?

2) What are the cultural values embedded in Native Renewables?

3) And what it was like transitioning from being a researcher at a national lab to being an entrepreneur.

Listen to this episode to hear how the lessons learned from being off-grid can educate us in our path to net-zero.

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)
Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: www.leversforchangepodcast.com

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Today’s guest is Jay Bruns, the Senior Climate Policy Advisor to WA State’s Insurance Commissioner. Over the course of this interview, we will discuss

1) How are global climate risks affecting insurance risks?

2) What is the role for the insurance sector in long-term climate change?

3) How does the insurance sector deal with up-and-coming technology innovations?

Now let us see how a multi trillion-dollar industry responds to global climate change.

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)
Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: www.leversforchangepodcast.com

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Today’s guest is Prachi Vakharia, an entrepreneur and mentor to many companies in the transportation and mobility sector. Over the course of this interview, you will hear her stories regarding

1) How that last mile is getting disrupted by technology.

2) How innovation differs, from the MIT Media Labs to AES, a major utility.

3) And How to close the gap between educating women to nurturing female leaders.

Listen to this episode to see how one applies different models of innovation to different organizations for different scales.

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)
Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: www.leversforchangepodcast.com

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Today’s guest is Jud Virden, the Associate Lab Director for Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Our wide-ranging conversations spanned topics such as,

· How do you create an innovation pipeline when we’re looking at problems with 30-year horizons?

· How do you turn data into something people want to use?

Listen to this episode to hear how the National Laboratory systems, since their founding after World War 2, continue their mission of pursuing Big Science.

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)
Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: www.leversforchangepodcast.com

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Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)
Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: www.leversforchangepodcast.com

Our guest Jay Bruns, asked Benjamin Kott, the CEO of LightsourceBP Labs,

· How does BP staff and internal people see its commitment to moving away from fossil fuels?

Ben’s question was for Prachi Vakharia, Managing Director for Womanium, an organization promoting female leaders. He asked,

· As a tech dad, how do I encourage STEM at home for my young daughter?

Prachi, in turn, posed a question for Jay Bruns, Senior Climate Policy Advisor at Washington State Office of the Insurance Commissioner.

· How does the Insurance Sector navigate the risks and responsibility of autonomous vehicles?

Suzanne Singer, a former employee at Lawrence Livermore National Labs, had a question for Jud Virden, the current Associate Laboratory Director for the Pacific Northwest National Labs

· How are technical organizations building more entrepreneurial capabilities?

Jud, in turn, asked a question that Suzanne, now an entrepreneur who founded Native Renewables, a solar company operating in Navajo Nation,

· What key policy / financing changes need to occur to accelerate the clean energy economy?

Lasty, Suzanne posed a question for Stacy Flynn, the CEO and Co-Founder of Evernu

· How do women entrepreneurs overcome the challenges of finding funding?

Thanks for joining us and I hope you will subscribe to Season 2, or listen to some of our Series 1 episodes.

Thanks for listening, and as always, when looking to make an impact, start by searching for your levers for change.

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As much as we are in a hurry to see change, being thoughtful about it can pay dividends in the long term. Balancing these two forces out - takes real leadership. So who will win the race? The Sustainability Tortoise or the CleanTech Hare?

Let us hear how our Season 1 experts determined when it was the right time to act fast, and when they made decisions slowly.

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)

Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: www.leversforchangepodcast.com

Show Notes

“Our philosophy was just - fail fast”

“The decisions about major investments were made slowly”

Welcome to this compilation episode of the Levers for Change Podcast. I'm your host, Jimmy Jia.

Let us see how our Season 1 guests grappled with the decisions placed in front of them.

Shilpa Patel, ClimateWorks

A decision that seems to have the support of the team. Because, remember, you very rarely do these things solo. You have teams of people you talk to and you have the overall support of the team. it’s a much easier to take rather than something dissonant.

Jimmy Jia (JJ): That was Shilpa Patel, talking about her experience at the World Bank and the International finance corporation. Decisions can be fast if all of the stakeholder engagement has already occurred. This was a running theme across the podcast series. Steve Klein, former CEO of Snohomish PUD, defined his autonomy as what was within the strategic plan.

Steve Klein, former CEO, Snohomish PUD

I could definitely operate within the bounds of the budget and the strategic plan. I believed and followed through very strongly to be on the same page with the board. So therefore, I put together a strategic plan that wasn’t just grand platitudes. It had specific targets and statements of positions on things so that I would have the flexibility. Then when we set the budget up, I would go to the board and explain how this budget I presented to them carries out this strategy

JJ: Some decisions happened surprisingly fast, as Jackie Drumheller of Alaskan Airlines relayed in the removal of plastic straws from the airline.

Jackie Drumheller, Sustainability Director, Alaskan Airlines

Removing plastic straws from people’s cups – almost overnight, it was that simple. It was like, “hey that’s a great idea. Yeah, this is good timing.” - “ok.” - “Let’s use up our stock and then we’re done.” - “Ok”. Once we finally decided now was the time, because we had been talking around and never did it. When we said let’s do it, we just did it!

JJ: Even then, there was consensus among the stakeholders. Rich Sonstelie, former CEO of Puget Sound Energy, believed in the power of teams.

Rich Sonstelie, Retired CEO, Puget Sound Energy

Decisions that had to be made quickly, and therefore were, had to do with getting the right people into the right place. Any utility executive, whether at the CEO level, the managerial level, vice present, or whatever, is only going to be as effective as his or her subordinates are effective. The CEO’s ability to “get things done” is relatively limited. The thing that had to be done relatively quickly all the time was to get the right people into the right job. If there were people that had to be removed, in the utility industry, you did that rather gently, but you had to do it. You have to get the right people in place. I think people make mistakes in all kinds of companies, including utilities, when they sit there and watch non-performers and don’t do anything about it.

JJ: Brewster Earle of Comfort Systems reflected that the executives had much autonomy and making fast decisions was within the scope of the company.

Brewster Earle, former EVP Energy Systems, Comfort System USA

Our philosophy was just fail fast. If something came in, we’d get the right people into a room and just have at it for whatever it took, an hour, two three, about an opportunity to make some changes and make some decisions. Everybody would get the chance to present their perspective and then collectively we would decide. And if we were gong to amek a decision, we were going to go as fast as we possibly could and then adjust to what happened going forward. If there was change or if it didn’t work out like we thought, we’d simply reassess. We’d literally take the hit, said OK, that was a mistake, we’re going to stop doing that.

JJ: So what are the limits to this autonomy? Is the mantra always making fast decisions? Of course not. So when are decisions made intentionally slowly? Brewster?

Brewster Earle, former EVP Energy Systems, Comfort System USA

The actual situation in a large company like that was, who else might this impact? If this could have any kind of negative impact on a sister operating company, or even reflect poorly on Comfort, if we were taking that kind of risk, we would move very slowly and we’d engage a whole bunch of people to get other opinions, particularly those who might be impacted.

JJ: Thus if fast decisions happen because the consensus was already built, it is the consensus-building process that takes a long time. Rich Sonstelie elaborates:

Rich Sonstelie, Retired CEO, Puget Sound Energy

The decisions about major investments were made slowly. They were made slowly both because the investments tended to be so large, which they are, and utility boards tend to be conservative by their nature, and should be. They should be people who ask tough questions and don’t readily venture out into new ventures. And we have all of these parties that we’ve been talking about, to convince that this makes sense. You don’t just jump into these investments when you can have regulators decide they weren’t prudent and you never recover the costs. Things like that are what brings utilities to bankruptcy.

JJ: And when stakeholder agreement requires the entire company’s participation , decisions might seem super slow! Sabrina Watkins noticed this in running Sustainabiltiy at ConocoPhilllips

Sabrina Watkins, former Global Head of Sustainability, ConocoPhillips

When you think about the sustainability of the company, is the whole company. In some sense, there is a lot of autonomy in a sustainability group because there’s a function that you are responsible for called sustainability. In then if you look at it in a different way, there’s no autonomy whatsoever because in order to actually get anything done, it requires action by folks outside of the group. To actually move the company forward in sustainability, requires the action of people all over the company.

JJ: Slow and steady wins the sustainability race. Karen Wayland mentioned the Quadrennial Energy Report as an example. It is a massive report, published by the Department of Energy, that reviewed the energy issues across the entire United States.

Karen Wayland, kW Strategies

I think the Quadrennial Energy Reivew. It took us not quite two years to do this huge inter-agency bill, where we had hundreds of different research projects with the national labs that fed in and were synthesized and written and we had many inter-agency meetings and meetings with the White House and stakeholders and that was a long process. The end result was a really incredible report that I’m really proud of having being part of. That turned into legislation that was signed by the president. So it was worth doing it right and doing it comprehensively.

JJ: Sustainability is a long-term goal. Jameson Morrell of Jacobs Engineering reminds us to keep an eye on the ball, even when no one else is paying attention to the Sustainability Game.

Jameson Morrell, Sustainability Intelligence, Jacobs Engineering

Where it’s really slow I think are in areas where we’ve stalled. The pressure has changed or progress has been made good enough. These are long-term risks that certainly impact the bottom line and sometimes in those business cycles we stall out. It’s the ability to have the patience to say we got a good strategy, we’ve got a good plan, we understand we need to address that, it’s just the wrong time. There are different material risks that are more pertinent right now to survive as a company, and so it’s trying not to lose sight of those. It’s trying to say ‘these are still a priority, but we’re going to table them this year.”

JJ: Steve Kline, you get the last word. It's about expectation setting of any decision, regardless of whether it's fast or slow.

Steve Klein

I think the key to any CEO is that you never want to surprise the board. You always want to bring the board along. I followed that same theory even when a problem arose. Some people thought I was foolish or silly to do this but I even did it when I was an early supervisor and manager before I was a CEO. When a significant problem would come up, I’d go to my boss and say “I’ve just become informed of this significant problem” And I knew the first thing they’d say. And before they could get it out, I’d say, “Here is the plan I intent to implement to address this and I will keep you appraised if these milestones aren’t met”. They don’t find out about it from someone else. They know I’m on top of it already. So if their boss came to them and said that they’ve heard about a problem, my boss could say, “hey don’t worry about it”.

JJ: In summary, take your time in building a stakeholder group correctly. It will help you sprint faster and with a stronger mandate if you do. To find out more, visit us at www.leversforchangepodcast.com and look for the What If Sandbox retreats. It is here where stakeholders meet and collaborate across many cleantech sectors.

Thanks again for listening to this compilation episode. Again, my name is Jimmy Jia. The music is by Sean Hart. I hope the advice given by the experts will help you in your journey as you search for your Levers for Change.

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Jobs.

They are on the top of everyone's minds, and sustainability jobs even more so. Millennials are even willing to take a fairly substantial pay cut in order to move in a job with more sustainability responsibilities.

My name is Jimmy Jia. In this bonus episode of the Levers for Change Podcast, we compile the advice and suggestions given by our Season 1 experts on how to best enter the sustainability workforce as well as what expertise the sector needs.

To hear the full interviews, please go to www.leversforchangepodcast.com. Season 2 will be launching this Fall of 2020 and we will announce more details soon.

Let us start with Jackie Drumheller of Alaskan Airlines, who told us what to do; and Jameson Morrell of Jacobs Engineering who told us what not to do.

Jackie Drumheller, Sustainability Director, Alaskan Airlines

· I get a lot of intern application. You can be looking at 300 applications and I would throw out every single one where the person didn’t reach out to me independently during the resume process. Because there’s no point. You have to be a self-starter, you have to have initiative and you have to have drive.

· If you’re just sending in an application to our giant HR-in-the-cloud, you’re not demonstrating any sort of initiative. Show me that you’ve started a composting collection in your school or you’ve persuaded management in your job to get rid of water bottles. Because then you know what it really takes to implement sustainability initiatives in the workplace. Then you really understand what it took to relay the business case or how to influence people or how the organization works. And then you have the passion and persistence to get it done.

JJ: Thanks Jackie. So Jameson, what shouldn't we do?

Jameson Morrell, Sustainability Intelligence, Jacobs Engineering

· The biggest mistake I see? You go into LinkedIn or a job description on a job board and you google search for “sustainability”. And you see the name “Sustainability Manger” or “Sustainability Director” or something like that. It’s like the front door of a crowded restaurant.

· There’s a lot of people who are focused on that word. You can easily walk around the back and become a cook for a year, and move right into that sustainability job. And so that’s my advice. Study something that you love and augment it.

JJ: It’s good to know that there are many impactful jobs, even if they don't have sustainability in the job title. So then what type of job titles should you be looking for? Sabrina Watkins of ConocoPhillips tells us where to look.

Sabrina Watkins, former Global Head of Sustainability, ConocoPhillips

· Everywhere! It’s a silly answer but it’s actually quite true. I have had so many mentoring sessions with professions who want to do more in sustainability but they are in information technology, or they want to do more in sustainability but they are a mechanical engineer. Honestly, all of those skillsets are needed to move the company forward in sustainability.

· We need to have interest and aptitude. It takes an engineer to sort out a new piece of equipment that could reduce emissions and to understand what sort of emissions monitoring equipment is best suited for our operations.

· It needs people who are good at social engagement to work with communities to really understand what they’re expectations are of the company and not someone who isn’t skilled at that sort of conversation and just clams up.

· I think there’ slots of way to contribute to sustainability. If you want to be in a sustainability group, then it requires both academic work in sustainability as well as depth of expertise in a particular industry.

JJ: Brewster Earle of comfort systems debunks the notion that sustainability jobs require a college education, saying we need more technicians.

Brewster Earle, former EVP Energy Systems, Comfort System USA

· It’s purely technicians. The technical tradespeople. The workforce is aging. It is quite interesting and shocking. The notion that college is the preferred path, I can’t debunk that enough. It’s simply not true. Some people would be great at trades and can make a good living. That’s the big challenge in the industry at the whole. We need more tradespeople that can look at a plot of land and make something out of nothing. make some grow out of nothing.

JJ: Steve Klein couldn't agree more. He used to be the CEO of Snohomish PUD, a major utility, and he had to hire many tradespeople.

Steve Klein, former CEO, Snohomish PUD

· We put so much emphasis on college and getting advanced degrees and here we are dying to find line electricians and meter technicians that, with overtime, make over $120,000 a year and we can’t find people to fill those jobs. Certainly, it’s a very fulfilling career. And based on today, it’s not swinging a hammer. It’s some physical work, but it’s still a lot of mental work because everyone carries a laptop nowadays. All of these systems are complex so even if you’re tweaking it with a screwdriver, you got to understand the technology.

· Then you go beyond that, utilities get involved with everything. They have accountants. They have biologists, particularly here in the Northwest where with hydro projects, we are managing fish protection. In terms of the electrical energy side, there are many different sides of it. When I was in college, you had to specialize in power engineering. Now there’s many different areas to look at.

JJ: What if you're looking for a promotion rather than looking for a new job? As Rich Sonstelie, retired CEO of Puget Sound Energy says, take an interest in how the business works beyond your day-to-day duties.

Rich Sonstelie, Retired CEO, Puget Sound Energy

· For those like me who came in like I did with an MBA, prove that you’re really interested in the utility business. This concept of MBAs coming into companies and thinking that they’re prepared to go into top management immediately, boy, what a way to alienate everybody around you.

· Again, show that you’re interested in the big picture. Quiz your leaders about why we’re doing this. Tell me who else is involved.

· I think the older business people delight in young people who ask questions. There’s a lot to learn from the mid-career, late career folks. It’s very flattering really.

· I had people in the latter part of my career, who came and ask for a meeting and my assistant always knew that my door was always open. Some great people came to ask some really great questions. And I got to know them a little as well. And I don’t think it hurt either of us.

JJ: Learn the business process, yes. Also, learn the political process, as Karen Wayland who spent a career in Congress and the Department of Energy, reminds us.

Karen Wayland, kW Strategies

· I think everybody should have a stint in Washington. I look on Facebook and Twitter and I listen to the conversations I have when visiting friends and family outside Washington and they really, truly do not understand the process. I think it’s useful to have a better understanding of the process so that you’re more forgiving of the process and not so cynical about it or misinformed about it.

· For instance, the framers of the constitution, envisioned things moving fast in the House and things moving slow in the Senate and of the thousands of bills that are produced every year by the 535 members, very few of them ever become law, by design.

JJ: Where you find a job might be surprising. The most unexpected companies might be hiring people with expertise in climate. Shilpa Patel of ClimateWorks elaborates:

Shilpa Patel, ClimateWorks

· There’s so many entry points now. I think the financial sector as a whole recognizes that this is a critical thing we have to deal with. You can do it in banks, certainly the investment banks, the private equity or funds that are focused on environment and climate.

· You can do it through philanthropy, a think tank, like WRI, you can certainly do it through a multi-lateral development bank. All of them have climate as a priority.

· The corporate world is very much looking into this. And very frankly, even the oil and gas majors are looking at climate and what it will do to their business. I think you can influence and work on climate finance in so many different was now.

JJ: Lastly, here are some skills to succeed.

Jameson Morrell

· Understand system thinking. Understand what’s new.

· Get your foot in the door of an organization you want to work for. And when your foot’s in the door, find those people because the teams are in there and they’re cross-functional teams and they’re moving somewhere.

· And then from there, you can move all over the place.

JJ: To summarize, it's not about looking for a sustainability job title. It's about turning your job into a sustainability job. I have heard of CFOs going to Green Team meetings to find people to promote because those who attended were working towards the company succeeding, not just their own careers. Those people cared about how the business worked, improving its functions and building cross-functional teams. In essence, they were learning how to lead.

Thanks again for listening to this compilation episode. Again, my name is Jimmy Jia. I hope the advice given by the experts will help you in your journey as you search for your Levers for Change.

Visit our website at www.leversforchangepodcast.com for additional podcasts, books, courses, and other resources.

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)
Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: www.leversforchangepodcast.com

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First is the importance of taking initiative.

Rich Sonstelie, Retired CEO of Puget Sound Energy,

People worry about being noticed for mistakes but they forget that they also need to be noticed for successes as well. Always ask questions and take on new challenges

Jackie Drumheller, former Dir. Of Sustainability at Alaska Airlines

Take initiative. If you don't reach out beyond the resume process, what's the point? That's not showing initiative to get things done. You have to be a self-starter, be independent and take initiative.

Finding the right balance between taking initiative and innovations.

Shilpa Patel, currently of ClimateWorks, spent many years at the World Bank

Somehow, the World Bank was very innovative on the inside. It's easy to say the pace of change is slow inside of a large, bureaucratic institution. But the pace of change to adopt new ideas in the market, isn't that fast on the outside either.

Rich Sonstelie

Utilities faced de-regulation as a challenge to their business models in the 1990's and 2000. Today they face EV, batteries, and solar panels as disruption to their business models. Embrace it rather than feel threatened by it. There is so much opportunity.

Steve Klein, Former CEO of Snohomish PUD

Business model needs to change from volumetric charge to a fee for service - service for shipping your electrons from your solar panel to your neighbor across the street. Just like the doughnut van rides on top of the roadway that is built off of taxes.

The second point is systems thinking. If everything’s connected, where do you start?

Karen Wayland, Senior Policy Advisor to Nancy Pelosi

The Quadrennial Energy Review was successful because it saw the connections. We looked at the energy system and how it connected to the non-energy topics. People bored with energy found the energy/water nexus fascinating. Or were really engaged with the cybersecurity issues.

Jameson Morrell, Sustainability Intelligence at Jacobs Engineering

The systems are connected but you can't impact the whole system at once. You impact the part that you're touching and work on the issues that are material to that part. From there, you trace the red threads through the systems

Interconnected systems create implementation challenges thought!

Brewster Earle, former President of Energy Services at Comfort Systems

The handoff is critical - from the architects to the mechanical contractor and then to the operators. There are cracks in each transfer of knowledge. Someone needs to unify it. That person can be an Owner's Commissioning Agent, when constructing a new building

Sabrina Watkins, former Head of Sustainability, ConocoPhillips

Over 300 Oil & Gas companies, some focus on mining and extraction (upstream), some on just the refining (midstream), and others on marketing and consumer sales (downstream), and still others do all three. Each have a different definition for sustainability and work towards slightly different goals. Coming to agreement as an industry can be extremely difficult, beyond the broad strokes of the concept.

Steve Klein helped bring it all together

We train electrical engineers, accountants, financers, lawyers to work in utilities. But who's going to figure out a tidal project, where don't even know who the regulator will be? Someone has to take the lead and someone has to have the skill set to pull the project together. That was the motivation in the creation of the WWU Energy Institute.

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Steve Klein was the former CEO and General Manager of Snohomish PUD, the 12th largest public utility in the US. We talked about the utility’s obligation to serve. It’s the notion that, in return for a local monopoly, a utility is not permitted to turn customers away.

This constrains how they set their rates, how they pursue innovation, and how they interact with the regulators and general public.

Let’s look at what it takes to instill a culture of innovation into a utility.

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)

Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

Website: www.leversforchangepodcast.com

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In the first few months of 2020, several of the major oil and gas companies, including BP and Shell made bold pronouncements of a transition to a clean future.

Sabrina Watkins gives her perspective of whether these declarations will amount to much, or whether the public should be skeptical of such claims. She retired from ConocoPhillips in 2017 after a decade as Global Head of Sustainability and is very familiar with not just the internal corporate decision-making necessary behind such a statement, but also community engagement at a grassroots level to connect with the people within their sphere.

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)

Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

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In this episode, we discussed the challenges managing at the intersection of multiple systems, whether presenting a value proposition to the buying group in a complex sale, or managing 35 operating companies in 115 cities across the US. Regardless of the situation, managing the long-term, lifecycle cost of a decision is always better in the long run than being fixated with the upfront cost or the immediate benefit.

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)

Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

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Green bonds have been a successful innovation to drive billions of dollars towards climate investments. Yet what did it take to get them started? From a small project at the World Bank in 2008, to the hundreds of billions that are now deployed, the success of the program was not expected nor predicted by the initiators.

Shilpa Patel takes us on a journey, not only of what it took for the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s sister organization, to underwrite their own green bond, but also on some thoughts on how one can be an innovative intrapreneur within large and hierarchical institutions. Perhaps the secret sauce: being surrounded by a large diverse group of people who are aligned to the organization’s mission.

As a generalist, Shilpa’s personal secret is to be a generalist who is able to bring together disparate stakeholders. A generalist gives one the analytical framework to integrate different streams of expertise into a holistic solution.

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)

Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

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Supply Chain. That is what Jameson Morrell of Jacobs Engineering starts with when diagnosing sustainability at any company. It’s the upstream and downstream impacts that a company needs to be aware of for its own impact.

This journey started as an army chef and a small business owner, where Jameson got to view the supply chain up close. Those lessons served well when working for DHL and tackling the carbon footprint of one of the world’s largest logistics companies.

Today, as the practice lead for Sustainability Intelligence at Jacobs Engineering, he uses his experiences to help Fortune500 clients create, implement and execute on their sustainability journey, fully understanding that every company is going to be different. What’s important is to see how the different supply chain systems – be it water, electricity, waste, agriculture – intersect and influence each other.

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)

Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

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Jackie Drumheller talks about Alaska Airline’s challenges in making the supply chain of an airline more sustainable.

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)

Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

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Although the specific technical, financial and political issues may have changed since Richard was CEO of a major utility, many of the managerial best practices of leading a high-performing team, are just as relevant today as they were thirty years ago.

So, here’s an inside look at what it takes to run a major investor-owned utility.

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)

Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

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What is it like to successfully pass legislation in both houses of Congress? Karen Wayland did that in both the House of Representatives as a Senior Policy Advisor to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and in the Senate as a staffer for Senator Harry Reid.

Interview by Jimmy Jia (www.jimmyjia.com)

Music by Sean Hart (www.seanhart.com)

www.leversforchangepodcast.com

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Who do you go to when you have a new cleantech idea?

Which organization should you approach to implement climate action?

Where can the biggest impact be made, in de-carbonizing your sector?

My name is Jimmy Jia, and in the next eight episodes, we will search for the Levers for Change in utilities, government, philanthropies and companies.

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Jimmy Jia