Call it a mid-life assessment.<\/p>\n
I won’t call it a crisis but an assessment which may well lead to a crisis or a correction or a confirmation. \u00a0No worries – nothing to do with home and hearth. \u00a0I am totally infatuated with my husband and son, though I confess I don’t always understand them!<\/p>\n
It’s a career review, perhaps. \u00a0And I think one that may resonate with many in the field of sustainability. You see, this passion for greening buildings has been around for a long long time, but has only made serious market inroads over the last 20 years. \u00a0This is in no small part due to \u00a0the work of the USGBC and the LEED rating system.<\/a>\u00a0The launch of LEED into the market 15 or so years ago gave us a metric to understand greenness in the built environment and it coincided with or perhaps even spurred attention to GHG tracking and emissions reductions, etc.<\/p>\n I’ve been in green building officially since 2004 as a LEED AP and very involved with the U. S. Green Building Council at national and local levels since then. \u00a0Not among the first, but certainly still catching that first big wave. \u00a0I was passionate and learning and committed to greening up well before that, and my design work and personal choices have been solidly informed by TBL thought my life.<\/p>\n In 2007 I was coerced into an excellent opportunity to be the first Director of Sustainability in a NY State government entity, which occurred under the Spitzer administration. It was a very hard decision as I love project management and design, and working with construction teams is fun and challenging as well as instructive and inspirational. \u00a0In working for state government, I would lose direct connection to projects, but have a much wider influence on buildings. \u00a0I choose to enter the confusing and large pond of state government, and have worked hard to set goals and to guide state work onto a more sustainable path.<\/p>\n Let’s not talk about how my role has changed over that last eight years, but let’s touch on how the world has changed around me. \u00a0I was the first: an innovator, working on concepts that people were just beginning to grasp. I had the exceptional pleasure of working with teams of thoughtful, respectful people struggling to understand GHG emissions and tracking, to define what goals could and should be set for buildings, to implement financial mechanisms to move the performance bar. \u00a0For 10 months I was part of a team of nearly 400 people working on a Climate Action Plan for NYS, and felt my skills as an architect were well referenced while my abilities as a collaborator were fully employed and even challenged. It was exhilarating and powerful. The plan has never been signed though most of the individuals have brought the knowledge from that endeavor back into their day-jobs resulting in clear betterment of state goals and efforts. \u00a0Even so, the work overall has since slowed in passion and breadth. It is still impactful even though the focus, at least in NY state government, has shifted.<\/p>\n New York draft Climate Action Plan<\/a><\/p>\n So I now look around and realize that nearly every business has someone tasked with sustainability. \u00a0Great changes in less than ten years! Lego recently released a plan to become more sustainable with better plastic content.\u00a0Better plastic – in planning.<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0PepsiCo was one of the first to begin aggressive sustainability planning reports, and measurement.<\/a>\u00a0and even\u00a0Shell Oil<\/a>\u00a0has been reporting for 18 years, now including disclosure of\u00a0\u00a0conflict minerals and looking into plans for wind energy.<\/p>\n Companies have been created from the ground up with sustainability of people, planet and profit at their core. Companies such as Clif bar and Patagonia. \u00a0These companies would have remained niche without this growing, worldwide respect for TBL. \u00a0Basically everyone “gets it” or, at the very least, they profess to in their public outreach.<\/p>\n But have I, and others like me, been left behind? I am seeing more and more sustainability positions in state government and in business and this is wonderful and needed. \u00a0I applaud anyone who seeks sustainability inputs and knowledge or who comes to the table with these skills. \u00a0But now I also see Masters programs in sustainability at many levels such as policy, economy, management, and business, and I see nearly every job in the sustainability realm tied to a requirement for a Masters of some sort. \u00a0I find myself in an odd position that I am sure many people have experienced in many innovative professions – I’ve been so busy doing \u00a0the work at hand that I have no paper creds.<\/strong> \u00a0Of course, this is not a problem unless I have a reason to seek another job, but it is disconcerting in a general sense. \u00a0I see valuable people with real solid experience being unable to participate in research and development of goals because the minimum education requirement is a Masters degree, as in the work at Project Drawdown<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0I\u00a0see the USGBC looking for “new blood” and turning its back on old blood (even those of us in our 40’s). \u00a0I see job after job being posted for work vital to ongoing sustainability efforts, and many of them call for Masters at a minimum, with PHD preferred.<\/p>\n