Sustainable Pathways: Navigating Climate Careers and Connections

Join us on a journey with Daniel Gonzalez, from academia to the forefront of climate action. Hear about his projects and adventures in Denmark, shaping his views on sustainable living. Discover practical ways to make an impact in sustainability and insights for carving your niche.

We tackle hurdles in sustainability, especially for those from low-income or immigrant backgrounds, and discuss career paths in the field. Learn about building a strong LinkedIn network and leveraging it for opportunities.

Reflect on the interplay between education and career development, including insights from his time at Yale’s School of Management.

Connect with Daniel:
Climate Chats

LinkedIn

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome back from our mid-session break. We are thrilled to bring you more conversations on Sustainability Unveiled. Today, we are joined by Daniel Gonzalez, a passionate advocate for climate action and impact. In today's episode, Daniel shares his unique path from academia to real-world impact, offering invaluable insights and advice for those navigating their own sustainability careers. So, without further ado, let's embark on this enlightening journey together. Welcome back to another episode of Sustainability Unveiled. My name is Jessica Hunt, as you probably already know, and I am the host of this podcast, joining you from the beautiful city of Chicago. Today. I am so pleased to have our next guest with us, Daniel Gonzalez. He is going to be joining us and we have a wonderful conversation. And before I really get into questions, I want to welcome you, Daniel, and I want to just give you a chance to tell us a little bit about your background.

Speaker 2: 1:07

Great. Thank you so much, Jessica. It's great to be here. My background starts maybe in Colombia. I was born there, but then was raised in the US and moved around quite a bit before making the United States my home. For a while I didn't really think about climate change for most of my life, until probably the end of my undergrad, and then I did a climate vulnerability assessment, a couple roles in sustainability and it eventually became my career. I'm excited to chat about what that means for me and also anything in between, whether it's career advice, LinkedIn, moving around, immigration whatever comes to mind.

Speaker 1: 1:48

Wonderful. No, thank you. I think it's going to be a great conversation with you, where we're going to explore some really valuable topics within the industry the climate industry as well as how to utilize your platform via social channels like LinkedIn, which so many of us are on but don't necessarily know how to best utilize. So this is great. You said that you really jumped into the climate world towards the end of undergrad, so what was your initial thought when you were beginning to work on these projects?

Speaker 2: 2:27

Yeah, so maybe I can give some context. It was a sustainability solutions class that I was in and basically the city of Easton where my college is located. I went to Lafayette College and they were looking to create a vulnerability assessment, climate vulnerability assessment for the first time. This was partially in response to just no federal climate action happening, and so the idea was to basically build a series of maps and a report to tell the mayor this is where climate change is going to affect different populations. And you know, I was in charge of the data side, the mapping side, less of the writing side at the time and we had, you know, data sets on vulnerable populations renters, low income folks, bipoc communities and you kind of aggregate them all up, create an index and then send that report to the mayor and hope that he understands where climate change is going to affect the city. So that's where it started.

Speaker 2: 3:29

At the time I was just doing a class. It really wasn't about the climate change side, it was just like I need to get credit and that's fine. But then, right after that, yeah, no, look, it was, that's just the reality of it. But right after that I was able to go to Denmark for a study abroad and that's where everything really started to click, I think, because I had I worked and studied and I worked at a startup like three people. I was helping them move couches but also doing some of their data stuff.

Speaker 2: 3:56

Like it was really early stages of the startup that was thinking of moving carbon credits from Western Africa to Europe through blockchain. This was before blockchain had its big moment, like now people know what blockchain and Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are. This was before all of that, and so I was working with them and just thought this is so interesting, this combination of technology and sustainability. And then I took sustainability classes and a lot of urban design classes because of, like, how many bikers there are in Copenhagen and Denmark, and it just that's just when it started and I was like this is so interesting, I want to keep doing more of this.

Speaker 1: 4:32

And it makes a difference. You know the work that you're doing is going to make a difference. As someone who just got back from Europe to see the differences between how Europeans live and how they really do value sustainability. I was in France, belgium, germany and London for 12 days and did not see a single plastic cup.

Speaker 2: 4:57

Yep.

Speaker 1: 4:58

The entire time that I was there and it's something that we talked about while we were there you order a soda and you get a glass bottle because they, as most people know, the EU definitely does have and the UK they have much more stringent rules when it comes to recycling and circularity. So it's so interesting that you did get to study in or you got to work over in Denmark. So when you moved from the United States to Denmark for the study abroad program, what were some of the biggest differences that you noticed? And you said you've moved around a lot, so you've been to a lot of places.

Speaker 2: 5:36

Yeah, well, the biking is the biggest one. The infrastructure, because I don't remember that I think it's like 60% of people in Copenhagen bike to work and to school every day, which is, I mean, just a huge number, and it's reflected in the infrastructure. You have bridges that are just for bikers. You have streets that are designed to go like the street lights are designed to go at the speed of the biker, and so it's called the green, the green wave, and so cars obviously go faster than bikes, but they would be stopped every so often. Meanwhile, the bikers would just be able to keep going, because one of the most the hardest things to do on a bike is to stop and then go and then stop and go, and that's one of the reasons people don't choose to bike. When you, when you this green wave, it just makes it super easy. You can go from further out in the city to downtown pretty quickly. So on the biking side, that's some things. But I mean they have some infrastructure projects that are like that. Now New York and other places are trying to follow, but this was like almost a decade ago that they had already built these underground like adaptation containers and like their parking.

Speaker 2: 6:47

Situations are really different the way you think about cars. But one thing to note too that I was surprised about is that not everyone in Denmark is doing it because of the sustainability. Some people definitely are, and some people are very attuned to the climate change problem, but basically I've heard so many conversations where I ask people, why are they biking? And they say it's faster to bike than to use my car. You know, and that's it. That's like end of story. There's nothing more. It's healthier too, is what people would say, and you get more connection to nature. Anyways, I can go on and on about Denmark.

Speaker 1: 7:20

I know this could turn into like a two hour discussion if we keep talking, if we go down this path. Okay, so you didn't?

Speaker 2: 7:33

go to school for sustainability. So what did you go to school for? Yeah, so my undergrad was in international affairs and engineering studies, so I got a lot of the humanities and a more technical engineering degree and just a passion for combining both, honestly. But I am in school now. To be clear, I am doing my master's degree at Yale School of the Environment. It's a degree in environmental management which takes many forms depending on which student you ask, but for me it's mostly on the business corporate sustainability side and some climate tech.

Speaker 1: 8:02

Yes, I know you. One day you aspire to be a chief sustainability officer and I have no doubt that you are on the right path to get there.

Speaker 2: 8:10

Yeah, I appreciate that that's a. Yeah, that's a, that's a lifelong goal. You know, we'll see. We'll see when we get there.

Speaker 1: 8:17

Well, you're definitely doing things right now to help, to help you in that, in that career path, to help you in that career path. So what challenges, what big challenges do you think that you have faced, that you could give advice to people who maybe have grown up in a lower income country or environment and don't necessarily have the structures in place to get them necessarily where they wanna go? So I'd love to you know, explore some of these challenges.

Speaker 2: 8:48

Yeah, so when I think of challenges there's different buckets, because sometimes we leave sustainability challenges as just sustainability and not kind of encompassing the rest of our lives. So, yeah, sustainability can be a career and a job, kind of encompassing the rest of our lives. So, yeah, sustainability can be a career and a job, but our jobs are tied to what we're doing on our day to day, and our day to day is not just work, it's also how do we deal with external problems, whether that's relationships or whether that's for me, like immigration and visa issues or money issues, or I mean, the list is pretty endless and so the so. So the buckets are, I guess, sustainability as a career path and, for me, some of the immigration, low income stuff, and then also the, the I guess the countries and where you're residing side. So for sustainability, the reality is they're not. There are not as much entry-level roles in sustainability as, like, mid or senior level roles currently, and so when you're trying to break into sustainability, like I did a few years ago, you kind of have to come up with creative ways to do so. Obviously, if you send in your resume, ideally everyone looks at a resume, but recruiters spend, I mean, not too long looking at resumes, truly, because they get hundreds and hundreds of applications and if they can get someone recommended by someone else who they've worked with before, who the candidate has worked with before, it's just an easier way forward than to just submit a resume online.

Speaker 2: 10:19

But I think, for sustainability, some of the challenges include defining what you want to do. So sustainability is so broad. You can work in energy, you can work in justice and equity, you can work in infrastructure, you can work in finance. I mean, really sustainability plays a role in all different industries, and so one of the hardest things I think I've had to face is narrowing down what it is I want to do. That takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of reflection that I don't think we're ready, that not everyone is ready to do, because it really is like staring out the window and thinking about your life and what you want to do.

Speaker 2: 10:55

And then for the immigration and low income side which I know you asked about, I think, and it really I don't want to give the advice of like pull yourself up by the bootstraps and like just dig through, because that's just not good advice, but at some point, like, you do have to face the reality that the challenges that you are facing as a low income and or that's in this case, non-us citizen, are just greater, are just greater specifically in this, in this realm, you know US citizens tend to not know about the immigration struggles or about, like, the visa rules and all that stuff. You're the one who's going to have to take the if you want to work in the US, going to have to take the initiative to teach Um, and it's a. It's a greater challenge and it's a struggle, but it's kind of just a reality. I think I'm I'm very much in like, always aspire for this optimism and like what can be of this world, but also ground yourself with the reality of what is today, and that's how I try to move around the world.

Speaker 1: 11:51

That's fantastic advice, Absolutely fantastic advice, and something that Daniel and I were talking about beforehand is just how positive he is, how positive you are during the conversations we've had, and that transcends into your presence on LinkedIn too. I'm on LinkedIn, you're on LinkedIn. I don't know many people today minus my husband, who does have a LinkedIn account but he doesn't use it who aren't on LinkedIn, but your presence on LinkedIn is extremely far reaching. You get a lot of feedback on your posts. You get a lot of likes, shares. People are noticing you. People are noticing what you're posting about because it is valuable information, but it's not just valuable, but it's personable and you're able to create that connection, and that's something I do think that you know people on LinkedIn aspire to be able to do is to make that connection to stand out a little bit, and I know you've been posting on LinkedIn for a long time. So I'd love to jump into some advice on how you started your LinkedIn presence and you know some tips to help people grow their LinkedIn like you have.

Speaker 2: 13:08

Yeah, I use LinkedIn more than any other social media. I deleted my Instagram. I really don't have any other social media, unless, maybe, if you count YouTube, which is debatable but I think LinkedIn is a platform that, unlike any other, truly, um, specifically and, by the way, we're not this is not, we're not affiliated with LinkedIn. I'm not like running any of their ads or anything like that, neither am I.

Speaker 1: 13:35

We'll put that out there.

Speaker 2: 13:36

But, um, but it has the ability to connect you with people who you never would have been connected with, and also under the idea of professionalism and career, right, um, you know, because obviously instagram you can do that as well. But this, you know, if you're on linkedin like 99 of the time it's it's career driven and like professionally driven, and I think for me that I I like that about linkedin, um, so, anyways, how did I start start and how did you grow your LinkedIn? I mean, the first posts I made were just not just bad, I think looking back on it, but they were also just. They didn't reach any audience. I didn't have a target in mind, but I think the biggest thing to do is to always be consistent. So, even in the weeks where or the months where you haven't posted at all, like the hardest thing to come back to is always to post and to be present on the social media channel. And I think, before you even get to that point, you have to ask yourself why you're doing it. If you're doing it for to get a job, then you know it's not as important to be posting and to and to be creating articles and newsletters and videos and all that stuff. It's still good, it'll increase your brand. But for jobs specifically, you go contact the hiring manager. You reach out to the teams that are a part of. You know whatever role you're applying for, and that's how you use LinkedIn.

Speaker 2: 15:03

I think it's a little bit different when you're starting to be more of a content creator and, I guess, either a thought leader or an expert in your field, because then you have to think about what type of content I want to create, how long do I want it to be, when do I post All these different questions? But the first thing always is consistency. If you have no consistency, it really doesn't matter what you're posting, because no one's going to see it. No one's going to see it. And then the other thing is fighting the imposter syndrome of like I have nothing to say. I have heard it probably hundreds of times by now and it makes sense because we think that no one wants to hear our story. But when you're able to share your story in either inspiring, optimistic, passionate way, then you'd be surprised who's willing to listen. We are all, as human beings, just really attuned to stories and I think if you find your own and if you want to share it on LinkedIn, then people will start to listen.

Speaker 1: 16:01

And absolutely great advice because, starting with your why, why and having a target and a mission and just consistency, I mean that is the key and that's something that not just you have said, but other content people who are consistently posting on LinkedIn. You know just the way that, the way the algorithm works for LinkedIn. You can have a business page and post. We post on our business page every day, but it doesn't get seen necessarily as much as individuals. So you know really understanding that and and helping grow your presence. So how often do you think that you are interacting with people on LinkedIn?

Speaker 2: 16:43

Oh, every day, every day, yeah, and, like I said, like I, I don't have any other social media, so this is kind of my social media. But but what's interesting to me is that people at the beginning, you know, I had no one to interact with, right, so you're just like who to interact with? It's like the open world, you know, you don't know, but I've gotten more messages recently. You know, either people looking for advice on, like their immigration stuff or sustainability, careers and um, or they want to do partnerships and and talk about you know me coming into either classroom to talk about some of the new concepts we've developed or or to talk about, like technology and some of the stuff I've done in the past. Uh, I think that's where my LinkedIn is taking kind of a different I feel a difference than as of like three years ago. So, but, yeah, I'm on it every day.

Speaker 2: 17:35

I think if you're not on it and you get a lot of messages, like some messages I just can't respond to because the questions are too big or not specific enough. Like you know, there's sorry, there's different things, but you only have so much time in the day, right, right, yeah, and I limit and I'm in school and I'm all these different things, so I limit it. But I do think if you don't, if you don't respond, then it's just it piles up, it piles up and then you have to make other choices of still like just ignore, like three months worth of messages, which I have done in the past. And that's just the reality of it too. But also I use it to keep myself up to date because professionals who are really in in the industry they're posting things that people you won't hear. You might hear about in a podcast but you won't hear about in the news, you won't hear about even like scrolling through through other social media.

Speaker 2: 18:24

It's the type of really niche things that once you hear about it and you learn about it, you can bring it up at a job interview, you can bring it up in your next project, you can bring it up in class or whatever it is that you need. But I mean, just yesterday, the one that's on my mind, that's literally a tab open to my computer is one of the Department of Energy's reports liftoff reports, I think, that's what they're called um where they go through different technologies and like what's needed to advance that technology and the most recent one that I believe was released yesterday. Um is on the like interconnection and the grid and interconnection queue, um and it's 100 pages. But like that's something I wouldn't have seen, like I just, you're just not aware of it and.

Speaker 2: 19:04

but if you're connected with the right people that share this type of information, then you can kind of start to consume some of that stuff and, and hopefully, if you're creating content on LinkedIn, you're also a person who's sharing that those things too.

Speaker 1: 19:15

Yes, very much so, and and I know, for me personally, linkedin has been a great source for mentorship opportunities too, just for me to look out, to look for advice from people, as well as for people to, as you said, to contact you. So it's about building those relationships and connections. Especially in today's world, connections are very important, being able to, you know, work with a mentor as well as you know, take yourself a little bit out of the box and and and you know, push yourself in maybe a direction that you wouldn't have unless you were exposed to something that you did see, for example, on LinkedIn. And I know we could talk about LinkedIn forever and ever, but I really want to get into a little bit more about what you are doing at Yale, what you've done at Yale, what your plans are post-graduation, now that you. I did read on LinkedIn that you did receive your permit so you can work in the United States now, which I'm sure was a lot of work to get to.

Speaker 2: 20:17

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I started grad school for a couple of reasons. One is because, honestly, my visa was running out and I needed a way to stay in the US, which, I mean, looking back on it, it's probably not the biggest like. I wouldn't advise that, like we live and we learn and we grow, but I do think that was one reason. A second reason was I needed more education on the business side of sustainability, and so I think 70% of my classes 60 or 70% have been in the school of management, have been in the school of business and not in the school of the environment, and so we've.

Speaker 2: 20:53

I mean, you take accounting, but you also take, like, you talk about private equity and venture capital and all these terms that, like six years ago, I would have been like, so scared to even think about, and now I can talk about. I can talk about, I can talk about you know IRR, return on investment, all these different concepts that you just need to know if you want to make a pitch in the business world. And, to be clear, there are other people in the School of the Environment that do other types of work that are not business. So you have the foresters Yale School of the Environment used to be called Yale School of Forestry. So there's a lot of forest people and like they're out in the forest, like doing prescribed burns and like measuring carbon and all these different things, and you have the conservationist ecosystem, people justice. There's a lot of different categories and specializations, but what I'm doing there is focusing on corporate sustainability.

Speaker 2: 21:40

I graduated in May, so you know the big question is what am I doing next? It's really interesting because when you're helping others with their careers, it's a lot easier to help them navigate. But then when you have to do that self-reflection and for me I've done some of that self-reflection I think there's a couple of things I know to be true. One is, just as most people in the environmental field, you want to have impact. To be clear, impact and passion does not get you a job. That is like step one. That's probably step zero.

Speaker 1: 22:12

I like the step zero.

Speaker 2: 22:15

Yes. So that's not enough of a definition to be like, ok, now what am I going to do? What am I going to do? But I do think I enjoy kind of building the strategy and the business model for sustainability. Right now I'm leaning more towards the energy side and the tech side, but longer term it could be on the manufacturing and just other industries as well.

Speaker 2: 22:37

And I'm on the job search, which is like crazy because you're helping.

Speaker 2: 22:41

For the last four or five years I've been helping people with the job search and being like this is what you have to do for your resume.

Speaker 2: 22:46

This is how you and now I'm like doing the actual advice that I've been giving people and it's gone well. I will say, when you're in grad school, like your mind is divided by 70 different things and so like 50% of my life right now is finishing my degree, like 40% is on this green card application that I'm doing, and then like 10 percent on the job search. So it's it's just the reality of life that you have competing interests and I mentally decided to prioritize that way. But the other question too, and the last thing I'll say here is is I also think Europe is a place that might be, I might hold part of my future at least while this green card process is going through. It's just there's so much that's going on over there that I think, from a professional standpoint, just having some exposure to Europe and the regulations there and how people are thinking about sustainability there and maybe even potentially bringing it back to the US or Colombia, might be the way forward.

Speaker 1: 23:44

I love that. Yeah, I love the concepts of the 20-minute cities that some European countries have. We've done some coverage on that and it's such a wonderful concept for various reasons, and I think that your passion for this can transcend wherever you go. But if you were to go back to Colombia, what do you think you want to accomplish there?

Speaker 2: 24:08

Yeah, I do think, like decades from now I will be back. It feels like a, it feels a bit far away, for a couple reasons. One is just like money wise, right, you know you go to school, you have loans, you have to pay off your loans, you have, like certain financial goals that I want to hit for my life. That you know. You don't have the same salary. Obviously, cost of living in Colombia is lower, but you don't have the same salary that you would find in Europe or the US. So that's again me being grounded in realism while still being optimistic. But if I were to go back, I mean, colombia has so much potential in a couple areas. One is definitely carbon credits and carbon markets, carbon removals. It's giving access to capital that otherwise would not have existed for countries like Colombia, and so they're working very hard on an emission trading scheme, on a way of basically creating financial mechanisms for conservation, for nature, because you know, colombia has so much, so much nature and also biodiversity, so it's in their best interest as a country to be able to find mechanisms for people to pay for this stuff. So that's one area. The second area too is, I think, renewable energy. So their grid is about 80% renewable throughout the year, mostly from hydro, some very small amounts of solar and wind, but it's mostly from hydro. Yet the US sorry, the Colombian government is building right now I mean this was a couple months ago, but just released permits for some wind projects on the northern part of Colombia and La Guajira, which has, I mean, insane wind potential, offshore wind potential and then solar as well. So that's another part.

Speaker 2: 25:57

I think the biggest issue right now and you have, by the way, you have a president right now who's very much, probably the most environmental president of the last history, the entire history of Colombia there's a whole complicated thing there, cause he was an ex guerrilla member. That that I mean there's a whole. There's a whole. There's a huge thing that we're not going to get into, cause that's what that's.

Speaker 2: 26:17

That takes like 10 hours to explain, but I will say all those pieces together um, leave Colombia in this very, very interesting space where they have a lot of potential, but it's like really trying to capitalize on that potential, and they're hosting COP, the Biodiversity Summit, in October, I believe, in Cali. The one thing that I still need an answer to when I think about Colombia's future in the environmental movement is oil exports. Colombia receives a lot of money from oil exports and that money goes into things like education and science and museums and all these different things, and there needs to be an alternative to the selling of oil, because it's not used internally, it's really sold to other countries and I don't know what it is and I don't think. I think there's still a lot of open questions there of how to change the oil exports, the money that comes from oil exports, into something more sustainable.

Speaker 1: 27:22

And that country is not alone. They're not the only country, yeah.

Speaker 2: 27:25

Oh yeah, I mean, you have country in that boat.

Speaker 1: 27:32

Well, I know we could keep having this conversation, go on and on and on, but I want to kind of wrap up with you giving advice to the next generation of individuals who maybe they are in school for sustainability, maybe they are not, and you know. Just to put it out there, that is it is okay to change careers, it is okay to change your path, no matter what stage you are in. That was me. I was a teacher for 10 and a half years and now I'm a business owner. So things change and you know that's, that's OK.

Speaker 2: 28:00

Yeah, I mean I talk to people. By the way, I host these. One thing I wanted to say is I host these climate career chats every week and people go in and talk about careers and transitioning into climate and all those different and I mean we talk about equal anxiety. We've talked about resumes, we've talked about all sorts of things and there's been entry level straight from undergrad, there's been some high schoolers, there's been some vice presidents of banks. Like it really is such a wide range of people. We need to get together to attend that.

Speaker 1: 28:28

I would love to sit in.

Speaker 2: 28:30

Yes, yeah, please do, please do. I'll send you a link. But yeah, I think I think that's really shaped the way I picture the environment to movement, because I realize it's not one type of person. There's hundreds of thousands of us who are who are ready to do the work, hundreds of thousands of us who are ready to do the work, and I think it's really just mobilizing that energy. That's what's required of the environmental movement. Next, there's obviously a big focus on climate change and some resistance, of course, but the movement has started. It's already there. It started decades ago and now we're at a point of acceleration where I think what we need to really do is mobilize all the energy we have into solutions, and there's obviously not one solution to climate change, but a whole dozens of solutions. But the last piece of advice I think I would give it's from Lafayette.

Speaker 2: 29:20

Their motto was CUR-NON, which stands for why not? It's Latin for why not, and it's kind of stuck with me for for a while and I still use it to this day, especially when I'm facing some difficulties or a challenge that seems a little bit too big, um, for what I can handle. I just ask myself, like, why not? Why not take on the challenge. Why not try to believe in yourself? Why not inspire others? And it just fills in like the. The rest of the sentence just fills in, and that's what keeps me going sometimes. So if that motto helps, I hope you can use it. If not, find a motto that does help you, because it gives you some inspiration when you feel like you don't have much.

Speaker 1: 29:59

No, find one that resonates with you. I love that motto. I'm gonna I think I'm gonna take that up as something that I'm going to use in my everyday life, because why not? Yeah, I like it. I like it a lot. So thank you, lafayette, and thank you, daniel, for that. Well, I cannot thank you enough for being on with us today. I hope this is not the last time we get to have a conversation together. I'd love to keep in touch and join one of these climate talks as well, and we will put daniel's uh link to linkedin um in the podcast abstract. So please feel free connect with him. I'm sure he would love to talk to you, and we wish you all of the best. And thank you for being on.

Speaker 2: 30:43

Sustainability unveiled thank you so much for having me and love that you're doing this podcast. Honestly, we need more of these, and just so happy that you're on this path. So, yeah, happy to keep in touch.

Speaker 1: 30:55

Yeah, no, thank you. We appreciate that. You know we want to talk about everything. As you said, there are so many different facets and sustainability, but the human connection and is extremely important to us, so we appreciate you being a part of it so well. I hope you have a great day and good luck with the rest of school.

Speaker 2: 31:15

Thank you so much.

Speaker 1: 31:17

In the next 60 seconds, ask yourself how can I contribute to a brighter, more sustainable future, not just personally, but professionally? Let's embark on this journey together and shape the landscape of sustainable leadership for tomorrow. Take the first step now and make a commitment to lead with sustainability in mind. That's all for this episode of Sustainability Unveiled. Join us next time as we continue exploring the forefront of sustainable business practices. Until then, stay informed, stay sustainable.