Degrees: Real talk about planet-saving careers

Climate fellow, immigrant, and networking expert Daniel Gonzalez joined Degrees to talk about how to build a network authentically - and how to call on them in your time of need.

Nidhi Kaul, Green Economy Lead at LinkedIn, explains that the path to a green job isn’t always linear. In her experience, the best way to find guidance on your journey is through conversations with others.

Greening your job often means talking about sustainability and climate solutions at work. But how do you talk about climate change when your boss doesn’t get it — and doesn’t want to hear it? On today’s show, climate communication rock star Dr. Katharine Hayhoe shares her own journey learning how to do some of the most difficult planet-saving work there is: learning how to talk about climate change across political, emotional, geographical, and generational divides. Dr. Katharine Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist and the best-selling author of Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World, host of the PBS digital series Global Weirding, and chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy. Considered a Canadian polar bear where she lives in Texas, you’ll hear how Dr. Hayhoe has approached conversations on climate with everyone from women’s book clubs, to church groups, to college students taking jobs in oil and gas. Through listening and finding common ground, she’s persuaded all kinds of people to help save the planet. And you can too!

When it comes to green careers — and planet-saving vocations — there’s a huge sector many of us overlook: faith traditions. Religious leaders from practically every tradition are now waking up to making climate change central to their theology. Today, we take a deep dive with Rev. Dr. Ambrose F. Carroll, a pastor at the forefront of a movement to “green the church” — particularly the Black church. His passion for the natural world and climate action led him to found Green the Church, an organization devoted to helping Black Churches become hubs for sustainability and environmentalism. In the sixth season of Degrees, “How to Green Your Job,” the pastor speaks with host Yesh Pavlik Slenk about his journey toward seeing himself as a steward of the planet and a faith leader. He shares the initial challenges he faced in engaging congregants and colleagues in conversations about environmentalism, and how he set out to “wake up the sleeping giant that is the Black Church.” You’ll also hear other faith perspectives on climate action, including Catholicism, Judaism, Islam and Jainism.

Is the green job search making you feel downtrodden? Do you have application burnout? Do you lie awake at night wondering: Should I follow up — again? On this Degrees hotline episode with sustainability job coach Shannon Houde, we answer these questions and more. Through Shannon’s company Walk of Life coaching, she has helped more than a thousand changemakers from around the world unlock their passions, change their careers, and make an impact. In this episode, she tackles your job-seeking challenges and guides you through the frustrating and exhausting parts of the search, whether you’re just starting your career journey or making a mid-career change. She’ll help you translate your skills to a field you want. She’ll help you celebrate every win (even if it’s not THE job) and teach you which job-hunting tactics will actually get you results. Don’t miss the insights she shares with Degrees host Yesh Pavlik Slenk, a green careers expert in her own right.

Ever wonder what it’s like to bring your own seat to the table at one of the world’s largest, high-stakes climate conferences? Youth Climate Collaborative (YCC) founder Pooja Tilvawala certainly knows. Since attending her first global climate summit in 2018 as a college senior, Pooja has been getting her foot in the door to participate in some of the most important climate convenings of our time, including the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, COP26. In 2020, at the age of 24, Pooja began laying the groundwork for YCC. She wanted to help other young people channel their climate anxiety into action on the global stage. On this episode of Degrees Season 6: How to Green Your Job, join us as Pooja–now 27–reflects on her journey. You’ll learn how you, too, can make your voice heard at global climate summits. And while it may all feel super serious, in the end there is always room for laughs.

Creating a green career out of thin air? That’s bananas! Literally. Ciara Imani May is the CEO of the company Rebundle, a hair extensions brand made out of the fiber found in banana trees. What started as a quest to live a zero waste lifestyle and find a career through which Imani May could live her values, has led to a consumer product that solves an environmental problem — and a health issue too. In this episode of Degrees Season 6: How to Green Your Job, join us as we take a trip down memory lane with Ciara Imani May to understand how she came up with her plant-based idea and transformed it into a product that’s positively impacting people and the planet. And while entrepreneurship might not be the path for everyone, her story shows that being values-driven and persistent can help you be the green change you want to see.

More than half of Gen Z and millennials are pressuring employers to green their companies — and almost that many would switch jobs to help the climate. Great news: This new season of Degree is all about “How to Green Your Job.” If you’re looking to change careers or want to “green” the job you already have – this season, hosted by sustainability jobs expert Yesh Pavlik Slenk, is for you. And even better news: there are a ton of opportunities to get paid to fight climate change — opportunities that are surprising, hidden, or just emerging. You’re likely more qualified than you think. Season 6 includes inspiring stories of people who’ve found green careers or adapted their existing jobs to be more climate friendly. Hear from screenwriter, director and producer Scott Z. Burns; Ciara Imani May, founder of Rebundle, which makes non-toxic, plant-based braids; Drew Wilkinson, climate activist and co-founder of Microsoft’s 10,000-member employees sustainability community; Rebecca Weston, co-president of the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America, and more! You’ll even hear some advice from a green career coach, who will help guide you to Green Your Job!

The table is set for widespread electrification. But, facing a shortage of electricians to make it happen, could this be an opportunity for you to make a big difference? We’re sharing an episode from a podcast we love called The Carbon Copy. To decarbonize the economy, we need to electrify everything. That means installing millions of heat pumps, EV chargers, electric water heaters and rooftop solar panels. But there’s one big problem: finding enough electricians to make it happen. Electricians across the country are flooded with work — and just as demand is skyrocketing, many in the field are nearing retirement age.

Eugene Kirpichov had a great job as a software engineer at Google. But he left it all behind. As he expressed in a resignation letter that went viral on LinkedIn, “the scale, urgency and tragedy of climate change are so immense that I can no longer justify to myself working on anything else.” That letter, which urged others to follow suit, set the course for his career path. He would go on to co-found the wildly successful Work on Climate community, which today boasts more than 20,000 members. It’s been lauded everywhere from Fast Company to The New York Times. In the latest installment of The Year of the Climate Job, Kirpichov shares how you can take stock of your own skills, which are likely far more climate-ready than you realize. And he shares his vision for making climate work “mainstream,” along with how he and his co-founders started Work on Climate as a Slack community and built it into the mighty army of planet-saving professionals that it is today.

When you know you want a green job but you have no idea how to find organizations that fit you —your interests, your experience, and your personality—what do you do? The Year of the Climate Job host, Daniel Hill, talks with Kristy Drutman, who founded Browngirl Green and the Green Jobs Board, to solve exactly this problem. Because she faced it herself, and she had to learn to demystify climate work before she could find her own path in it. The truth is, the climate economy is growing and evolving. Every day, new green jobs are being created. But it’s a confusing job market shrouded in mystery. It’s no wonder it’s difficult to identify the right companies and roles for you. In this first episode of our new mini-series, “The Year of the Climate Job,” Kristy offers strategies you can put to work today to get unstuck. And she tells us how she developed her own climate career roadmap when one wasn’t clear. She also speaks to how she’s attacking a big problem: the exclusionary history of climate-related employment. And she invites you to help make necessary changes to bring more people into the fold to address the urgent issue of the climate crisis.

Elected one of the youngest Black female mayors in the United States before serving as administrator of the EPA’s southeastern region, Heather McTeer Toney is now leading a movement to make sure that everyone is encouraged to be part of the millions of the green jobs of the future. Heather knows what it’s like to feel left out of the environmental movement, despite being affected by climate change every day and leading efforts to mitigate its effects. Today, she’s working to ensure that communities on the frontlines of climate change are recognized for their climate expertise and that community knowledge is central to climate solutions. We all need to “embrace climate justice as the social justice issue of our time,” she says. Where do you fit? After you listen to this episode, you’ll see opportunities you never imagined.