📚We’re publishing a series of climate career stories, highlighting the diversity of climate journeys and what makes a climate career.
If you’re interested in contributing, we invite you to share your own story on #climate-careers or reach out to Elisa or Jon on Slack for guidance.
Sandra Pallier is a Director & Organiser of ClimateAction.tech, and a designer, manager, and Green Design Lab lead at Microsoft.
What is a climate career to you?
A career where you focus part of your time or all of your time on creating a better future for our planet and its inhabitants. It doesn’t have to be a job in a climate-focussed company — bringing climate into companies that currently don’t focus on climate can be just as meaningful.
How did you get started and what changes did you make in your career to work in this space?
I realised back in 2019 that I wanted to bring a climate aspect into my job (working at Microsoft). I started by educating people about waste management and actions they can take at work. I used our internal Hackathons as opportunities to bring this topic to the forefront. I talked to my manager about this being a priority for me in my life and career, agreed with them that
A) I wouldn’t fly anywhere for work anymore, and
B) that I would spend some of my work time on climate-related learning and projects (including my organizer work externally at CAT).
I also started bringing climate into all of my career conversations. I made some noise internally about this topic (especially how it relates to the design role) and through that I found a group of people who co-created the Green Design Principles with me which we published alongside three articles. This group of people is now called the Green Design Lab and these days I spend some of my time in my job creating a space for and with them, plus working on various CAT things.
What challenges have you faced in making this transition?
Luckily very few in terms of my sustainability side-projects — my managers were always very supportive because I still got my ‘normal work’ done and it helped that I could refer back to our company-wide announcements about sustainability being a company priority.
This has changed over time though and more recently, the push for AI has put pressure on myself and other Green Design Lab members. The time we’re all able to spend on sustainability during our working hours has diminished. Plus Microsoft is so huge that changing actual business practices is really f****** hard. I’ve hit a lot of roadblocks with actually making climate a priority in my official project work.
Any advice you’d like to share with others on their own climate journeys?
You don’t have to be in a climate-focussed company to create ripple effects. And finding people you enjoy working with and talking to about this topic (both internally and externally) can help you stay motivated.
You can connect with Sandra on LinkedIn or in the CAT Slack community.
If you’re interested in contributing, we invite you to share your own story on #climate-careers or reach out to Elisa or Jon on Slack for guidance.