Careers in Sustainability: Integrating Sustainability into Work and Career

Katie Levey, Tata Consultancy Services; Peter Goossen, Dow; and Kimberly Schaub, Griffith Foods, joined WholeWorks CSO Laura Asiala for a webinar on November 8, 2023. The panel discussed careers in sustainability and offered the audience examples, inspiration, and advice as to how to integrate sustainability into their jobs and careers.

How do you get a job in sustainability? Make your job about sustainability!

That was the topic of the webinar hosted by WholeWorks CSO Laura Asiala as she facilitated a panel of experienced professionals and leaders, each of whom have integrated some significant environmental and/or social aspect into their work in companies.

Three Panelists

The panel featured three professionals with remarkably different jobs in different companies and different industries, but they have in common a commitment to make the world a more just and sustainable place through their work. All three are also alumni of WholeWorks Sustainability Programs.

Peter Goossen is a senior Technology Manager for environmental technology in the Silicones Technology Center at Dow, Inc., with a special interest in water. His experience in Process Safety Leadership and Global Product Stewardship, combined with his engineering and Six Sigma Black Belt experience, give him multiple perspectives for integrating sustainability in manufacturing and operations.

Kimberly Schaub is the Director of Business Development at Griffith Foods. She focuses her efforts on building new consumer-package goods partnerships through the lens of sustainability. A Chef and Certified Culinary Scientist, she recently received her MBA in Sustainable Innovation from the Gustavson School of Business at the University of Victoria.

Katie Levey is the Global Program Director for Digital Empowers, a Tata Consultancy Services initiative. In this role she spearheads global programs, engaging stakeholders to accelerate innovation at the intersection of technology and social impact.

Four Questions

The group explored 4 questions:

• What was an ‘aha’ moment for you, when you realized you wanted to pursue sustainability in some aspect of your career?

• What is your proudest moment/achievement for sustainability in your career to date?

• What is the biggest challenge that you see for your business, organizations, and/or industry, and how are you addressing it?

• What advice do you have for people who want to integrate sustainability into their work?

Lots of Advice

All four panelists emphasized the need to find meaning within their careers as an early ‘aha’ moment.  They offered examples of where they focused on at least one social and/or environmental challenge or problem that brought tangible value to their organization.

‘First of all, businesses are in the business of making money. So if you want to make sustainability improvements, you need to serve the business somehow—finding opportunities to create value or reduce risk, eliminating problems that might threaten the business,’ said Peter and offered an example. ‘One of my first assignments at Dow was to be assigned to a project to solve a hydrocarbon leak at our site in Terneuzen. I’m most proud of that project because I wrested that design until I could make it a positive NPV project.  We actually redesigned the machine to increase the yield of the plant a little bit—and we’re talking crackers here (large, energy intensive equipment that break long chains of hydrocarbons into short ones).  So a little bit of improvement can yield a lot—close to $1,000,000 a year savings. By changing the design and improving the yield, it actually paid for the expensive materials we needed to make it leak-free.  Permanently.  I actually checked last month.  It was re-built 27 years ago, and it hasn’t leaked since.

‘Another thing I’m proud of that was announced last week—a partnership between Dow and Circulsil to build a silicone recycling plant in the U.S.  I’ve actually been trying to get silicone recycling off the group since I started in my current role in 2019. Whole-thinking on circularity, or recycling, and on using raw materials in a better way has now resulted, after four years, in this partnership.  Next year, they will build a plant and it will go into operation to recycle silicones,’ said Peter.

Finding ways to help multiple groups—inside and outside—the companies is crucial for integrating sustainability.  ‘What I'm doing now is a listening tour in different functions to really understand their objectives and looking for points of mutual value with what we're trying to achieve in CSR and sustainability,’ said Katie.

The panelists noted the increasing consideration of climate change, but also noted that both water and biodiversity are emerging as critical issues for consideration.

‘Everybody's talking greenhouse gases now and global warming,’ said Peter. ‘I think the next big challenge will be freshwater availability. Either we are drowning in it, or we don't have enough. I think water will be a big problem in the future and I’m working today to be ready for that future—looking at our operations and thinking about where we can reduce water usage, reduce our (business) dependency on the natural resource.’

The advice that the panelists shared was the need to engage on the issues, bringing in diversity to solve problems, and not to focus on the titles. ‘Not everyone has the title of Sustainability Champion,’ said Kimberly. ‘But there are a lot of subject matter experts who have a lot to share, and the real achievement is bringing those experts and networks together and collaborate to achieve something—for us in the food industry, for example, that can be dealing with the issue of food waste.’

Peter added, ‘I'm going to basically say the same. If you want to do something in sustainability, just go do it.  Get as far as you can.  The world doesn't change in one big step but by thousands of little steps.  You might as well start with a little step and solve a little problem, and that success will lead to bigger opportunities, and you’ll take them on because you have the experience and the passion. You shouldn't be thinking that I need to be in a sustainability (department) in order to make a difference. No, you can do this today.’

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WholeWorks offers standard and customized consulting and learning packages for companies and organizations looking to integrate sustainability into their organizations as a way to create value and make a positive impact environmentally and socially. Our Sustainable Value Creation Map outlines how you can address both ESG risks and opportunities to create value for your organization.

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