Climate Careers and Solutions: Mapping the Terrain

Gioia Marchiano and Olivia Kane interviewing Jayant Kairam ’03, former director of Environment & Sustainability at Walmart.

This summer, our group – Kae Czeasak, Olivia Kane, and Gioia Marchiano – worked with Professor Seidman on the Climate Solutions and Climate Careers website. The site is divided into two sides – one that provides a comprehensive understanding of the solutions necessary to address climate change, and another that focuses on careers in climate. Over the course of the summer, we focused on building out the Careers side of the site, and fleshing out a database of climate technology startups. 

We worked on pages for many different kinds of careers – Environmental law, Urban planning, Finance, Corporate Sustainability, International Development, and Culture and Communication. We researched to find inspiring resources that could inform students and young professionals about these careers. We also conducted interviews with professionals in some of these fields – environmental law, green building design & retrofitting, and corporate sustainability – to provide students a glimpse into careers they might not have much previous knowledge about. As we wrote these pages, we took care to be intentional about our audience. We sought to inspire readers and help them feel that there was a space for them in climate even if they did not come from a science background or were not interested in stereotypical technical climate change careers. 

Another aspect of our project was working on a database of climate tech startups, with a focus on green startups in agriculture. This database provides site users with a broad list of companies working on exciting and under-the-radar climate solutions today.

This site is not done; work will continue to build out the careers page and database. We want the site to function as a hub that can point readers to high quality resources about climate change and climate careers. The careers side highlights careers that are not traditionally thought to be involved in climate change, such as finance. Our goal was to help every reader see that they can have a place in the climate fight. 

You can visit our site at https://climatesolutions-careers.org/