The Accidental Green Job Counselors

This week, Shayle and Stephen stumble into career counseling.

There are now 3.4 million people in America working in clean energy, spanning across transportation, renewable energy, energy efficiency, environmental services and many other related areas.

It’s a big number. But it also means there are tens of millions of others with the right skills or the desire who haven’t yet joined the advanced energy economy.

We’ve gotten numerous career questions from listeners — some starting careers, some later in careers, and some in consumer tech looking to find a more meaningful job addressing climate change. This week, we’re going to address some of them, using our own experience and drawing from others.

We’ll hear from Nicole, an anonymous manager in tech who is looking for a way into the field.

We’ll hear from Astrid Atkinson, a former senior Google engineer who quit her job to start an energy software company.

We’ll hear from Mark Hughes, an engineer at Sila Nanotechnologies, who offers some advice on finding your unique voice.

And we’ll speak with Liz Dalton, executive director of the Clean Energy Leadership Institute, about the many pathways into the industry.

Looking for some more resources? Here are a few we mentioned on the show:

• Greentech Media’s newsletters
• The Clean Energy Leadership Institute
• Jobs With Impact
• Women in Cleantech and Sustainability
• Young Professionals in Energy
• A list of renewable energy trade groups

Don’t forget to listen to our careers episode produced with Wunder Capital. We talked with Wunder CTO Dave Riess about the framework he used to completely change his career path into solar — eventually co-founding a successful company. Listen to that episode in the Interchange feed or find it here.

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