The following is an account of one day on the job with Kathrin Winkler. She is Sr. Director and Chief Sustainability Officer at EMC Corporation, where she has a history of taking on entirely new roles in which she has to fill in the interstices between more traditional functions. She took on the full-time sustainability position in July of 2008.
Are you a recent graduate discovering how difficult the current market is, unemployed, worried you might soon lose your job or just feel that your career seems stuck in place? Are you thinking that now may be the best time to re-tool your career? Going for a green MBA, now, while the job market is stagnant may be a smart move; both for recent graduates, currently unemployed (or underemployed) professionals as well as for those who want to forge a path into a career in corporate sustainability. But what is a Green MBA, why is it important and what schools are offering them? These are the questions this post delves into.
With global eco awareness expanding on climate issues, it is not a surprise to many that the fastest growth in CO2 levels has occurred in the last 10 years. Studies indicate that electricity generation and consumption is the largest contributor and is increasing faster than any other energy sector. However, efforts to manage electricity show the slowest decline in emissions progress.
The movement to adopt sustainability practices in the corporate world can trace its roots back to the environmental movement; however it is not just a synonym for or re-branding of environmentalism. Sustainability is best understood as being its own thing; grasped in its own terms. What sets it apart is the growing realization within the executive decision making centers of corporations, governmental, educational and other organizational bodies across the world is that there is a powerful win-win dynamic that can be harnessed by adopting sustainable practices and that sustainability is not a zero sum game with winners and losers. The public wins, the environment wins, those cute animals win, but shareholders also win as well because sustainability makes excellent sense purely from a bottom line perspective.
I’m lucky, I found my vocation. But CR is becoming much more mainstream and now appeals to a wider group as a potential career. I receive emailed CV/resumes every day and aim to reply to all of them – I did say ‘aim’ – one of CR reporting’s most useful qualifications. Feel free to chase me. Opportunities are expanding in major companies, business organizations, NGOs and think tanks, socially responsible investors, academia, regulators and political parties and consultancies (us). But does CR offer the many interested graduates and mid-life changers prospects of a fulfilling and rewarding career? Here’s a test of your aptitude for the majority of CR positions available today…
It appears that Google is getting ever deeper into the sun business. Stating that it is dissatisfied with the general lack of progress on achieving breakthroughs in green technology, the company wants to build better highly reflective and rugged mirrors — as well as the mirror substrate that the reflective surface is mounted on. By reflecting more light and more of the solar spectrum than ordinary mirrors these mirrors have the potential to reduce the cost of solar thermal systems by up to 25 per cent.
Corporate Sustainability in Context: A Pocket Guide to (Nearly) Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Corporate Sustainability provides a very thorough overview about corporate sustainability. This 55-page booket, published by Context, a corporate sustainability consultant organization, has been updated to include recent developments in this rapidly evolving area.
