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Join Sustainability Consultant and Host Louis DeMaso as he talks with Kealy Herman, Global Technical Director of Net Zero Strategy at Arcadis, in this episode of the Sustainability Skill Set podcast.
Kealy has had an impressive career in sustainability, and now she’s sharing her knowledge and experience, discussing the key activities that sustainability professionals perform in their jobs and companies, and how to integrate sustainability into the way we do business and run organizations.
Kealy also compares sustainability careers in consulting versus those within companies, highlighting the differences in specialization, company politics, and collaboration with internal partners.
Listen to this episode to learn more about the skills required to work in sustainability and how you can make an impact in this fast-moving industry.
What does this job involve?
Kealy Herman is the Global Technical Director of Net Zero Strategy at Arcadis, a global design, engineering, and management consulting firm. She works as a technical expert on sustainability consulting projects.
Her main responsibility is to help organizations reduce their environmental impact and integrate sustainability into their business operations by setting goals, implementing projects, and tracking improvements.
When working with a new client, Kealy often starts by conducting a materiality assessment to learn which topics matter most to stakeholders and identify opportunities for improvement. This involves speaking with employees, managers, customers, and others to gather multiple perspectives.
Materiality assessments identify the sustainability topics stakeholders care about most, such as water quality, waste reduction, or worker education and training.
She might also conduct a waste assessment to identify inefficiencies in the company’s operations or a life cycle assessment (LCA) to learn where the company’s products have the greatest environmental impacts.
Kealy then takes baseline measurements of how the company is currently performing in sustainability, which might include a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions inventory describing the company’s carbon footprint.
Finally, she analyzes the cost of potential projects versus their expected benefits to determine which investments make the most sense and persuades decision-makers to take action.
It is important for Kealy to work with people throughout her clients’ organizations, such as process engineers, facility managers, researchers, human resource professionals, and accountants to gather ideas for projects and understand how she can make progress quickly.
What Kealy likes most about her job is the variety that comes with it. She loves having new problems to solve every day and learning about the unique aspects of each company she is working with.
Kealy also enjoys navigating the culture and politics of her clients’ companies. She finds it exciting to get to know people and understand what makes an organization ‘tick’.
What Kealy finds challenging about her job as a sustainability consultant is managing the constant task-switching required to keep up with all of her projects, which can be detrimental to productivity.
What skills are important for success?
Change Management
Sustainability professionals must be skilled at change management, which includes providing recommendations for how to improve an organization, convincing decision-makers to take action, and ensuring the successful implementation of changes.
Change management skills are crucial because organizational changes can cause significant disruptions, resistance, and inefficiencies if not handled correctly.
As they work with people to implement changes, Kealy recommends that sustainability professionals align their messaging with the values and priorities of the people they speak with to gain cooperation.
It is important to prepare people who will be affected by the change and support them throughout the transition process.
Additionally, Kealy highlights that change management skills are applicable to many careers, making them valuable for transitioning into or out of a career in sustainability.
Data Collection and Analysis
Successful sustainability professionals use data to understand an organization’s sustainability performance and make informed decisions, such as which opportunities are most valuable to pursue.
It is often essential to know how to calculate greenhouse gas emissions and translate complex datasets into actionable insights.
Kealy and her team use Microsoft Excel for data analysis, but she acknowledges that there is value in learning other coding languages or statistical analysis packages for this purpose.
Communication
Sustainability professionals must be able to explain the nuances of relevant terminology and complicated concepts to a wide variety of audiences, from technical experts to consumers.
Clear communication is essential for building consensus among team members and making progress on sustainability projects.
Kealy and her team often use graphics and other visual aids to make their findings more engaging and motivate a company to take action on sustainability.
Part of effective communication is being able to work with people from different backgrounds and departments, from research and development to human resources and finance. This requires strong interpersonal skills and the ability to adapt to different communication styles.
She recommends asking clarifying questions and actively listening to people’s responses to build trust and maintain productive relationships.
Developing Strategies
Sustainability professionals often develop strategies for reducing a company’s impact. These strategies involve setting targets, creating a plan to implement changes, and monitoring progress.
Kealy describes that prioritizing projects is key for sustainability teams that are small and under-resourced. When companies only have a few people working on sustainability, they cannot tackle everything at once.
Kealy recommends prioritizing projects based on their potential impact and probability of success, as well as their ease of implementation and alignment with the organization’s other goals.
She also describes that it is important to remain flexible after setting priorities because those priorities may shift as new information emerges.
Career Advice
Kealy has experience working as a sustainability consultant and in-house sustainability counsel.
She has seen that sustainability professionals can take a generalist or specialist approach to their careers.
Sustainability generalists develop a wide breadth of skills so that they are ready to tackle any situation while relying on other people for more specialized knowledge when necessary.
Consultants tend to be generalists which leads to more variety in their work. They are constantly learning about new organizations and tackling new problems.
Sustainability specialists, on the other hand, learn a particular focus area deeply, developing a skill set tailored to address the specific opportunities and challenges associated with their area of expertise.
In-house sustainability team members tend to be more specialized as they spend their time navigating their organization’s unique ‘puzzle’ and finding ways to work within it.
Kealy believes that neither approach, generalist or specialist, is inherently better than the other. Choosing which approach best suits you depends on your skill set, career goals, and what you want to work on every day.
Kealy has published a fantastic LinkedIn article comparing consulting versus in-house sustainability roles which goes into greater detail on this topic.
Kealy recommends that sustainability professionals stay up-to-date with emerging trends in their field, practice creativity in their work to come up with innovative solutions, and maintain a network of peers and mentors for feedback and support.
She recommends getting to know people inside and outside your organization and becoming a ‘connector’ that helps align people with opportunities.
In the spirit of connecting, Kealy described a Slack channel called Work on Climate as a resource for those with different backgrounds who are searching for sustainability jobs.
She also described an initiative she is participating in called #OpenDoorClimate where sustainability professionals meet with anyone who is interested in developing a career in sustainability.
She has spoken with lawyers, designers, HR professionals, and many other people who want to work on sustainability. She shares her insights into the necessary skills for success and how sustainability fits into companies.
Kealy is interested in hearing from people who have successfully transitioned from another career path into a sustainability career. She believes gathering insights from those who are now successfully pursuing sustainability can help individuals interested in breaking into the field.
If you have sustainability career advice to share, or if you are seeking advice, you can reach Kealy on LinkedIn.
Transcript
The following transcript has been edited to make it easier to read.
Louis DeMaso 0:01 All right. Thanks so much for joining me. Kealy. It’s great to have you on.
Kealy Herman 0:05 It’s great to be here.
Louis DeMaso 0:06 So, you were talking just a moment ago about your interest in helping people get jobs related to climate and sustainability. Could you elaborate on what drives this interest of yours?
Kealy Herman 0:17 Yes, I have a dream or vision that every job should become a climate job. And by that, I don’t necessarily mean that everyone should be explicitly working on climate and sustainability, but more that we should integrate it so deeply into the way we do business and run organizations that everybody understands how their individual decisions on day-to-day work can have a positive or negative impact on the environment. I believe that we need more people to work with data and make it accessible to everyone so that they can make informed decisions to achieve this vision. I am passionate about getting as many people into climate careers as possible, not only to help make this vision a reality, but also because I have had an amazing career in this field and I believe others can too. My goal is to help people live their passion.
Louis DeMaso 1:16 That’s awesome! You sound super passionate, and it’s an incredible career path to be involved in. As you said, any job can be a sustainability job, right?
Kealy Herman 1:25 Absolutely.
Louis DeMaso 1:26 You have written two LinkedIn articles that are really interesting about skills in the sustainability arena. I was wondering if you could describe a little bit about three of the key activities that sustainability professionals perform in their jobs and companies?
Kealy Herman 1:42 Yes, absolutely. So, I’ve broken it down by thinking about my entire career working mostly in the corporate space, but also in the public sector on sustainability. Essentially, we do three things: we determine how to make an organization more sustainable, we convince the decision-makers of that organization to make the changes, and then we ensure that those changes are successfully implemented.
To break it down further and find ways to make your organization more sustainable, start by establishing a baseline of your current performance. A greenhouse gas emissions inventory is often used for this purpose, but waste inventories, life cycle assessments (LCAs) of your products, or any other environmental impact measurement can also be used. Conduct a materiality assessment to determine which metrics matter to your internal and external stakeholders. Carbon, waste, and water may matter differently to different stakeholders, depending on the industry you are in.
These are the basic activities that help organizations reduce their impact on the environment. Identifying hotspots that show the biggest impacts is crucial to making an organization more sustainable. In the past, most organizations focused on scope one and two greenhouse gas emissions, which are operational emissions like burning fuels for heat, fleet vehicles, and electricity use. These emissions are measurable and controllable. However, scope three, which includes emissions from the value chain, is harder to measure. Business travel emissions, for example, are a very small source of emissions for most companies. Knowing what to focus on and what is worth your time is important.
To reduce an organization’s footprint, it’s essential to look all over the organization for inspiration. Process engineers, facility managers, research and development, HR, and finance can all contribute ideas. As a sustainability consultant, it’s your job to determine what makes sense and what doesn’t. Crowdsourcing ideas to reduce a footprint is a smart approach. Then, an analysis is done to figure out the marginal cost of abatement, which helps determine which investments make sense.
The most time-consuming and significant part of the process is convincing decision-makers. Change management is crucial. Sometimes decisions are easy because they make their financial case. They have a positive ROI and payback period of less than three years. Other decisions are more challenging, such as onsite solar, which has a payback period of eight to 12 years. One way to make it easier is to present a portfolio of projects with a blended return on investment and payback period. This approach helps organizations understand the financial impact of doing all the projects together.
Another way to get decisions approved is by focusing on what matters to the organization and the decision-makers. For example, when working at Davidson College, the long-term climate targets had to be approved by the board. Spending time working with various departments on campus who interface with the Board of Trustees is crucial.
Louis DeMaso 10:17 Yes, crowdsourcing ideas from the people who are actually doing the jobs on the front lines is very important, isn’t it?
Kealy Herman 10:23 They know the operation better than any of us.
Louis DeMaso 10:27 And then sending proper incentives. Yeah, that’s all really good stuff. I love the example of aligning the messaging with core values to find out what really drives decision makers, and then being able to leverage that to make the sustainability changes that you want to see.
Kealy Herman 10:43 Honestly, if you don’t do that, you’re going to get a “no” every time.
Louis DeMaso 10:47 Those are the kinds of communication skills and change management skills that are so important. The baseline and prioritization are other components I am interested in. These seem to be key first steps because organizations can’t tackle everything at once, right?
Kealy Herman 11:08 Yes, absolutely. You need to have a way to prioritize, especially since sustainability teams are usually small, except for the Fortune 50. You may only have one, two, or three people working on it, and they can’t do everything. Having a clear plan of what to tackle first and why is going to help you because you can show your business leaders that you have thought critically about this and have a plan in place.
Louis DeMaso 11:34 How many projects do companies typically start with?
Kealy Herman 11:41 I believe that companies and other organizations should allocate a full 12 months for the initial step of setting the baseline. This includes conducting a materiality assessment and establishing a high-level plan for reducing their environmental impact. Some companies may want to rush this process and complete it in just three months, but it is not a simple task. A plan created in three months will not be detailed enough to guide action and will likely be based on many assumptions and estimations, which makes it less useful. Therefore, I recommend taking the time to step back and thoroughly assess the situation.
Once you have a solid plan, the decision of how to deploy projects becomes more personal to the organization. Factors such as the number of project managers, the capital budget, and funding sources can all influence this decision. Nowadays, there are many federal and state funding options available for decarbonization technologies. By taking advantage of these, certain projects can be front-loaded. Our team also conducts analyses that help clients understand the cost of delaying an investment. This allows us to optimize when to install solar panels in a given location based on anticipated costs and the expected grid greening of that region.
However, it is impossible to dive into these details without a detailed baseline. Therefore, I highly recommend investing the time and effort into figuring out where the organization currently stands before making any major decisions or taking action.
Louis DeMaso 13:37 It sounds like the best approach is to start with one project: building a sustainability strategy.
Kealy Herman Exactly. Yes.
Louis DeMaso For people who are interested in performing these functions within their company or another company, which skills are most important?
Kealy Herman 14:05 I talk a lot about this in my article. This is just my perspective based on my career, but a few skills stand out to me. One of them is change management. It involves aligning your messaging to other people’s values and building sustainability into organizational structure. Change management skills are transferable to many careers, making them valuable for transitioning into a climate career. Another important skill is data and analytics. You don’t have to love it, but you need a working knowledge of calculating greenhouse gas emissions inventory and translating complex datasets for executive audiences. Communication is also crucial in sustainability and climate careers. You must be able to convey nuances of terminology and concepts to a wide variety of audiences. Visual communication is also essential due to the use of big data. Lastly, curiosity is key. Asking questions is a vital part of change management, data and analytics, and effective communication. Practicing creativity in various activities is recommended to exercise creative muscles. Remember, practice makes improvement.
Louis DeMaso 17:42 Definitely. I like your focus on curiosity and calling it out as a specific skill, especially in sustainability. It is a fast-moving industry that requires staying ahead and relevant by keeping up with trends and anticipating where things are headed. It’s an exciting space to be in.
Kealy Herman 18:07 It is. I think, especially in consulting, we are helping our clients solve problems that haven’t been solved before. We are assisting clients in answering questions where we may not know the answer at the start of the project. We help them figure it out, and that requires a lot of curiosity.
Louis DeMaso 18:25 In regards to data and analytics, you mentioned specific skills. I am wondering if you believe that specializing in unique data and analytic skills is important or if having a broad understanding of data and analytics to interpret large datasets is sufficient for certain roles?
Kealy Herman 18:45 I think both of those options are correct. It really depends on what you want to do, honestly. I am a generalist and have a broad knowledge across many topics, including data and analytics. My team and I mostly work in Excel with a bit of dabbling in things like Tableau and Power BI for data visualization. I think that is sufficient, especially for the consulting world. Although, for those with a tech background who have skills in particular coding languages, or statistical analysis packages, there is a lot of value to be added there as well. It’s not my area of expertise, but there is a whole Slack channel called “Work on Climate” where tech people try to figure out how to do better things for the planet, which I think is amazing and so necessary. We need people like me who can set the baseline and help an organization set a target, but we also need people who can code new apps to make the data more accessible to people and integrate it into their daily lives. So, I think both of these approaches are useful, but you should pick one and be very purposeful about which one you choose.
Louis DeMaso 20:07 That’s a great recommendation. Either approach would get you there, but you can be intentional about developing a wide breadth of skills or deep knowledge in one particular area. You mentioned how certain skills are particularly relevant to consulting. In one of your other LinkedIn articles, you compared sustainability careers in consulting versus those in-house to a specific company. What are the major differences, in your opinion, between a consulting role and an in-house role?
Kealy Herman 20:42 That’s such a great question. I started my career in-house, went to consulting, went back to in-house, and I’m now back in consulting. So I’ve experienced both worlds, both in the public sector and the private sector. And I think one of the main differentiators for me is just the level of specialization. In general, consultants are more generalists, and in-house teams are more specialized. There are obvious exceptions to that rule. But I think if you want to be a specialist, you are more likely to have success in-house, especially since we’ve seen over the last year and a half or two years that sustainability teams are expanding pretty rapidly. I mean, some of the big tech firms have literally hundreds of people working on sustainability. Those are specialists.
When I worked at Google, I was a specialist in supply chain decarbonization, specifically within the IT hardware manufacturing supply chain, mostly in Asia. So I was very, very specialized. At least, it felt that way to me. I was still working on energy and process emissions and renewables and lots of different topics, but within that very specified domain of IT hardware manufacturing. That is part of why I made the transition back to consulting. I am better as a generalist. I want to be curious. I want to do all the things.
Consulting and in-house roles also differ when it comes to company politics. Working in consulting, you are aware of the internal politics of your clients, but you are not deeply rooted or involved in them. Because you are a degree or two separated, the politics don’t take as much of an emotional toll. In contrast, working in-house can be emotionally taxing if the politics are not great.
Collaboration with internal partners is another area where consulting and in-house roles differ. In consulting, you typically have one primary point of contact and a few other people that you interface with regularly for a project. You don’t have the broader organizational context of what all of the different departments are doing and how the business functions. This can make change management challenging when you don’t know enough people. However, it is possible to become more integrated with the client organization. For example, some consultants spend a lot of time on-site and get to know dozens of people within the organization.
Louis DeMaso 24:34 Driving changes from the outside is a huge piece of consulting. Do you have any tips for how to manage that? How can you make changes through only one or two points of contact?
Kealy Herman 24:48 The answer is to stay curious. Ask lots and lots of questions. Something interesting is that some companies find a lot of value in third-party consultation to gain perspective and expertise on what they should be doing. If you can identify whether that’s true or not, it’s helpful because where it is true, it’ll be easier for you to talk to more people. However, some companies have a culture that is wary of consultants, maybe they’ve had a bad experience. In this case, it is not as easy to build relationship. So the client’s attitude about consultants matters.
Louis DeMaso 25:33 And don’t be afraid to ask questions.
Kealy Herman 25:35 You cannot be afraid. From a consulting perspective, I like to ensure that we have plenty of that built into the scope. This can take the form of workshops. At Arcadis, we do a lot of design thinking workshops, which I love because they bring many stakeholders into the room. It is pretty light-touch as far as the level of effort for our clients. They can invite 20 stakeholders, and all we need from them is 90 minutes. It is important to build engagement with key stakeholders and set the expectation that involving a variety of voices and perspectives will lead to a better outcome.
Louis DeMaso 26:16 That’s great. It sounds like you’ve had the opportunity to use many different types of skills. Are there any particular skills that you’d say really jumped out as being part of the consultant’s skill set versus the in-house skill set?
Kealy Herman 26:36 I would say that consultants crave variety, or at least are okay with it. Our days are extremely varied; we jump from project to project. The amount of time I spend trying to minimize task switching is incredible because there’s lots of evidence that says task switching isn’t good for your brain or productivity. However, it’s required of consultants because we have multiple projects and clients at the same time, so you have to be able to manage all of that.
I love the variety though. Having new problems to solve every day, figuring out which clan I’m working for, what their culture is like, and what they’re trying to do is exciting. I think quickly learning and navigating all of their cultures and politics is fun. For me, I love getting to know people and learning about what makes an organization tick. It’s like a puzzle, and you have to do that over and over again.
When you’re in-house, you figure out your organization’s puzzle, and then it’s kind of solved. It can evolve and change, of course, but you get it down and figure out how to work within that world. Then you don’t have to figure it out again. Whereas consultants must figure it out every time they get a new client.
Louis DeMaso 28:06 it’s clear that you crave that variety, and you really love the learning aspect of it.
Kealy Herman 28:10 I do, absolutely.
Louis DeMaso 28:14 One of the points from your article that stood out to me described that in-house work tends to involve more execution than consulting. I was wondering if you think that means in-house work can be more impactful, or whether consulting can be equally as impactful despite not focusing on the execution part?
Kealy Herman 28:34 What a hard-hitting question. So, I will start by saying that I think my work is very impactful. As a consultant, I believe that you can have a significant impact in both developing and executing strategies. To me, it’s more about identifying your strengths, what you’re good at, and what you want to be doing. I’m not an executor, I admit it, but that’s because I’m an idea person. I love figuring out how to solve a problem, making a plan, and creating lots of contingency plans for everything that could possibly go wrong so that everyone is well-prepared.
Afterwards, I need to hand my plan off to an executor who can get it done. I’m there to answer questions and help when something does go awry, of course, but executing is just not my thing and that’s okay. I think that’s part of why I love consulting, because it’s so heavily focused on strategy and helping organizations figure out what they should be doing. We leave it to their amazing project managers to execute.
People should think about whether they prefer developing or executing strategies when they’re considering consulting versus in-house roles. If you love getting into the weeds and getting a project across the finish line, maybe in-house is a slightly better fit.
At Google, I had a role that combined project management and strategy, but I’ve found that I prefer the strategy and high-level planning aspects of it. As consultants, we have a strong focus on continuous improvement, measuring, and reporting progress. We skip the execution phase. We say, “Here’s what you should do. You go do it. We will help you measure what you have done and report on that.” In that way, we can still own some of that impact and share it with the company that’s actually executing.
Louis DeMaso 31:00 It must be great when you get to see a strategy you helped design actually being implemented and driving change.
Kealy Herman 31:07 It’s so fun! I love celebrating success with my clients. Even though I don’t necessarily have boots on the ground in the execution and implementation phases, I still very much feel like a part of the win, and my clients feel that I’m a part of the win too.
Louis DeMaso 31:32 To execute, you have to put blinders on and not get distracted or drawn away by new ideas, which is a whole skill set in and of itself. However, the strategy development prior to that is equally as important. So it just depends on how you prefer to work and where you’re best suited to have that impact.
Kealy Herman 31:51 Absolutely. I mean, if the world were full of people like me who just did strategy, and no one did anything about it, I would be useless. By the same token, if the world were only full of people who are great executors, they would run around executing projects without knowing why they were doing it, what impact they might be having, or whether they should do A versus B. I mean, I’m exaggerating here, but we need both pieces to work together.
Louis DeMaso 32:19 That’s so true. And it ties back into some of the first things we talked about, such as the importance of prioritizing and creating a baseline from the beginning. This way, you can see how all your efforts will tie together into a larger outcome, instead of going down a bunch of unrelated rabbit holes.
Kealy Herman 32:40 Exactly. Plus, the strategy provides everyone with a North Star that is hopefully inspiring and builds motivation for the executing team to complete the projects and complete them well.
Louis DeMaso 32:55 That’s awesome. With a history of multiple in-house and consulting roles, it’s clear that you can really distinguish those differences, which I really enjoy. Now, I’d like to dive into your current job because one of the purposes of this podcast is to help people understand different careers and roles, to see what might speak to them. Starting with the impact that you’re having, I’m wondering what kinds of challenges you’re solving at work with Arcadis?
Kealy Herman 33:32 That’s a great question. My title is Global Technical Director for Net Zero Strategy. The big challenge I’m solving is achieving net zero, which is obviously multifaceted. A lot of the work I do is focused on organizations that have measured their carbon footprint and have set targets, which could be net zero or science-based. I help them, along with the whole team at Arcadis, figure out what they should be doing to achieve those goals and develop decarbonization roadmaps. This process starts with ideation and brainstorming, getting as many people to the table as possible to discuss how the organization could decarbonize. We then take all of those inputs back to the team and leverage our deep engineering expertise to estimate how much carbon and money each solution will save, how much it will cost, how long it will take, and how complex it is to implement. We create a marginal abatement cost curve that shows the anticipated carbon reduction for each dollar or euro spent on the project. We help our clients optimize their projects from a carbon and budget perspective, and we can also optimize for various constraints, such as regulations and available resources. For example, in the United States, the new FCC ruling is relevant, and we can help clients decide which projects make the most sense and in what order. We provide a multi-year roadmap that includes recommendations such as how many electric vehicles to replace each year, how many charging stations to install each year to ensure there is enough capacity to charge all those vehicles, how many renewable energy projects to invest in and in which regions, or the different procurement mechanisms that make the most sense for each renewable energy procurement.
Louis DeMaso 35:48 You all really get down into the details.
Kealy Herman 35:51 We do and I love it. It’s very nerdy, and I think that’s really fun.
Louis DeMaso 35:58 I like how it starts with the client. It’s not “we come in and provide our expertise and tell you what to do.” But the first thing you mentioned was getting ideas from multiple people within the client’s organization and trying to understand what is important to them.
Kealy Herman 36:12 During ideation sessions, we bring our own ideas to the table while also relying on the expertise of our client’s employees who live and breathe the company’s operations. I am always amazed at the quality of ideas that come out of those brainstorming sessions. I believe in quantity over quality when it comes to ideas because some of them are going to be gems. These sessions help us learn about how things need to be implemented since the conversation naturally brings up pain points. Knowing what challenges an organization faces helps us prioritize projects from a change management perspective. We can better understand which projects will have the most impact on the organization’s carbon footprint and which may not be worth the effort.
Louis DeMaso 37:46 That’s great. It sounds inspiring when you find an idea that has been suppressed for one reason or another, unlock that idea, and help the individual bring the idea to the table.
Kealy Herman 37:56 Yeah, and honestly, a lot of times, people just don’t know what will reduce carbon. I’ve had so many engineers, and people who are running the floor in a manufacturing plant, say, “Well, would doing such and such reduce our carbon emissions? Like, keeping this piece of equipment longer, instead of replacing it as often, would that reduce our carbon emissions?” I’m thinking, “Heck, yes! It would reduce them by a lot. Because the embodied carbon of that piece of equipment is huge. And if you can get more life out of it, then you’re going to reduce their emissions.”
By working together, we can say, “Here’s how much more life I can get out of this piece of equipment without losing quality of our process, or having a risk to safety, or those kinds of impacts.” And I can say, “Here’s how much carbon you will save, if you can extend the life of that piece of equipment by that many years.”
So, it’s a partnership that we need. I don’t know if there’s the ability to extend the life of a piece of equipment on their manufacturing floor, because I’m not a manufacturing expert, and they’re not a carbon expert. It really takes both of us to get that done.
Louis DeMaso 39:11 Absolutely. That’s a great example. So, when you’re implementing these net-zero projects, how do you communicate the ways in which they increase resilience and have positive impacts on the company, community, or industry?
Kealy Herman 39:26 Oh, that’s another great question. We recently hired a global technical director for climate risk and reporting, and we’re working together to address Net Zero, which is an important part of any low carbon transition plan. It’s crucial to consider climate risk and decarbonization as key factors that drive innovation, new product sales, and new customers. Demonstrating the business value of sustainability can help us expand the program from just Net Zero to include climate risk and resilience projects. We’ve partnered with organizations that set environmental community goals, and it’s exciting to work with them because they understand that this work is about more than just decarbonization. They have funds to invest, and we can help them invest in ways that benefit communities. Encouraging companies to invest in their community as much as they invest in their business is an excellent approach, and we can provide climate metrics to support it.
Louis DeMaso 41:22 Definitely, helping companies invest in communities is a big win-win. Alright, could you describe what your day-to-day work life is like? What kinds of activities are you involved with and what kinds of tasks are you working on?
Kealy Herman 41:45 Yes, I am glad that you asked this question because my next LinkedIn article is on this very topic. I am going to put my calendar on the internet, which is terrifying, but I’m going to do it because so many people ask this question. I asked this question myself when I was in graduate school and exploring career options and doing informational interviews, which everybody should be doing if you are looking for a job. I could not figure out what people did every day, and that was really frustrating to me.
I would say I spend about 50% of my time on direct client work. For me, that means joining client calls and being a subject matter expert on net zero. It also involves a lot of advising teams on how to approach project work. At the beginning of a project, I sit down with the team and look at what we’re supposed to be doing, and when, and help them figure out a plan for execution. I connect people to tools and resources within Arcadis. For example, I help identify who’s the expert on renewable energy in this region or who’s the expert on electric vehicles.
I also manage our tools for net zero. That’s the client-facing side. I do quality assurance for deliverables, which is not the most exciting thing to do, but it’s essential because upwards of 70% of spreadsheets in the corporate world have mistakes in them. We do our best to catch those mistakes before they go out the door. So, I spend a lot of time looking at other people’s spreadsheets, which is a skill in itself. To be honest, it’s not my favorite thing, but that’s okay.
All of that requires about half of my time. The remaining time is mostly spent on strategy work. I am responsible for determining how Arcadis approaches Net Zero strategy with our clients globally. I also briefly spoke about the maintenance and development of our internal tools on net zero. I maintain these tools and have teams working on them to improve and build out their functionality. I also maintain a repository of past proposals that we can draw from if a client is looking for something similar that we’ve delivered before, and a huge repository of client experience. These are projects we’ve executed successfully that we can include in proposals to say, “Here’s where we’ve done this before.”
I also think about where our sustainability advisory team is headed in terms of serving net zero. I consider what our clients need and how we can deliver that. I look at the horizon and say, “What skills do we have now, and what skills do we need in two or three years?” Then I start to hire and train internal people who are already here to make sure that we have the skills that we need to serve our clients today, but also several years from now. A lot of that is forward-thinking, looking at the market, what our competitors are doing, what our clients need, and how we can do better. I love it.
I also spend a lot of time in one-on-ones with people individually and the organization. Part of that is because I have only been at Arcadis for about five months, and it’s a 35,000+ person organization. I have a global role, so I touch over eight time zones and work with dozens of different people in any given week. Spending time one-on-one and really digging into what they need is essential.
My role is essentially an enabling function. I am there to make sure that our teams can deliver great work and develop actionable material roadmaps for our clients. So, I spend a lot of time asking, “What do you need?” I love asking that question because it makes me feel helpful. I also like when people ask me that too, which is really fun, especially since I see myself as the enabler. We talk about what’s hard, what proposals they have coming up, and I might have a one-on-one with a prospective client and just say, “Hey, what are your pain points? What are you trying to do that’s not going well? And can we help you?” There’s a lot of learning and curiosity involved in this process.
I would be remiss not to mention the administrative part of consulting, like timesheets and budget tracking, which isn’t that fun and takes up less than 10% of my time.
Louis DeMaso 46:45 You have a lot going on with all those different functions, both client work and internal strategy work. Some of the things that stuck out to me are the need for attention to detail when checking those reports and picking out key aspects of different people’s perspectives that might need to be focused on when networking and being a connector who can draw different people together throughout such a large organization. This sounds very important. You also need to have a strategic perspective and be a forward-looking individual who looks towards the future.
Kealy Herman 47:21 You’re absolutely right. The good news is that those are all things you can do no matter where you are in your career. Although they may sound like leadership skills, everybody should be thinking about them. Sometimes junior staff have this idea that they can’t be a leader because their title doesn’t have “leadership” in it, or they’re not experienced enough, but I disagree.
Everybody can lead from where they are. Everyone can be forward-looking and be on the lookout for trends. When you’re earlier in your career, that might look more like reading articles, attending conferences, and asking lots of questions. You can also share things with your team, like “Hey, I read this article recently, and it was really interesting.” I do a lot of that, but I love it when junior consultants on our team do that because they see things differently than I do, and they can help me see trends that I don’t notice.
Being a connector is also something that everybody can do. Get to know people. It’s very flattering for senior people to have a junior person say, “Hey, I’d love to have a coffee chat with you, in person or virtually, to learn a little bit about what you do and how you’ve been so successful.” You build your network so that, when a project comes up that requires one of those people, you can raise your hand and say, “Oh, I know so-and-so. They might be able to provide some insights here.” You can do this at any stage of your career.
Louis DeMaso 49:14 That’s such an important perspective, especially for people who are looking to make sustainability a larger part of their current function, whether or not it’s already a part of their work. That’s amazing. So we have just a minute or two left here. And I know you had a question you wanted to pose to those who are listening. Would you like to outline that real quick?
Kealy Herman 49:33 Yes, thank you. I have been plagued by this question recently. I do a lot of informational interviews as part of #OpenDoorClimate, a hashtag on LinkedIn. So feel free to sign up for a slot. I will do an informational interview with anyone.
Lately, I have been getting many questions about how to transition from a non-climate career into a climate career. I have talked to lawyers, UX designers, HR professionals, and people in all different types of functions who have realized that they want to do something more with their career and that they could do that by working on climate. I sometimes have a hard time advising those people because I have spent my whole career in climate, but I know what skills it takes and I know a lot about how sustainability works within an organization. There are some things I can share and some pieces of advice that I typically give, but I am really interested to hear from people who have successfully changed careers or who are in the midst of it and have seen things work versus not work.
I struggle, especially with how to present your resume, especially if you have more than five years of experience. You are a professional with valuable skills to bring to the table, but when I am looking at 400 resumes for one role, if you don’t have sustainability on it, unfortunately, I can’t really consider you because so many people do. I usually need you to have that sustainability expertise unless it’s a very junior role. The chances of me hiring someone with five plus years of experience for a role that’s meant for someone straight from undergrad is low because I can’t pay you enough. It’s hard from a hiring manager’s perspective. It’s a very hard conversation to have. So, I am curious to know what you would tell career changers to do and maybe what you have heard from other podcast guests.
Louis DeMaso 51:43 Everything that we’ve talked about today is so vital to that question in terms of what kinds of skills to develop and what kinds of roles you should be looking out for. So I would welcome anyone to reach out to you and talk about it. And you said it was through #OpenDoorClimate? That is the hashtag that people can use to reach out to you?
Kealy Herman 52:02 Yes, there’s a hashtag on LinkedIn for that, which will lead you to a website where you can actually sign up to see all the professionals who volunteer their time in that way. So if my career doesn’t sound super interesting to you, there are lots of other folks who will be open to talking to you. You can also find me on LinkedIn that way and just message me directly to request a spot.
Louis DeMaso 52:24 Well, that sounds like one of the most valuable things that could be offered to somebody who’s interested in learning more about how they can integrate sustainability work into their career, especially, learning from someone who’s been in the climate industry for 14 years now. That’s awesome. Thank you, Kealy. I appreciate you taking the time to speak with me today. It’s been an amazing conversation.
Kealy Herman 52:43 Yes, thank you so much for having me. This was great and fun. It was wonderful getting to know a bit about you. I’m so pleased with this podcast and the work that you’re trying to do. I think we need more people like you.
Louis DeMaso 52:56 Well, I’m sure that we could talk for several more hours, and perhaps record future episodes about all of the great advice you have regarding sustainability careers. Thanks for sharing with everyone, and good luck with everything.
