Life's a Venture with Victoria Avi

Meet Victoria Avi, owner of Venture Forward Strategies. Victoria has many rich stories and insights from her 17-year sustainability career and her personal life. Victoria immigrated to Cleveland from Azerbaijan when she was just 16 and navigated language, high school, and finally college, where she found her passions for graphic design and the environment. What does it take to weave a life that interlaces a personal immigration story with a genuine commitment to sustainability? Join us for this thoughtful interview where Victoria speaks candidly about her personal and professional journey, why she does this work, what keeps her going, and how she manages "eco-anxiety." Hint: it's all about the deep connections she has made here in Cleveland, where community bonds and eco-consciousness go hand in hand. For Victoria, Life's a Venture and an Adventure.

Guest:
Victoria Avi, President, Venture Forward Strategies

Resources:
Ways to Connect
Eco Meet CLE, February 20, 2024
Northeast Ohio Women in Sustainability (contact Victoria to be added) 
Greyt Culture events
Northeastern Ohio chapter of Conscious Capitalism
Where to Learn More
The Ecology of Commerce, by Paul Hawkin
The Business Case for Sustainability, featuring Ray Anderson
The Center for Social Impact Strategy, University of Pennsylvania

Follow us:
https://www.facebook.com/ecospeakscle
https://www.instagram.com/ecospeakscle

Contact us:
hello@ecospeakscle.com

Transcript

Diane: 0:04

You're listening to EcoSpeak CLE, where the EcoCurious explore the unique and thriving environmental community here in Northeast Ohio. My name is Diane Bickett and my producer is Greg Rotuno. Together, we bring you inspiring stories from local sustainability leaders and invite you to connect, learn and live with our community and planet in mind.

Greg: 0:26

This episode of EcoSpeak CLE is sponsored by Good Nature Organic Lawn Care. Lawns need care, not chemicals. Since 1999, Good Nature Organic Lawn Care has helped homeowners enjoy safer, chemical-free lawns and landscapes. Their earth-friendly approach creates a healthy, beautiful lawn from the inside. Enjoy peace of mind with Good Nature Lawn Care. Diane and I are excited to announce that we have a sponsor, Alec MacLennan. Alec is the founder of Good Nature Organic Lawn Care and an early guest on EcoSpeak CLE. His episode number six focused on native plants and tips for pollinator-friendly lawns and yards. This episode really resonated with our audience, so we are really excited to be bringing you more from his company over the next seven episodes. Thank you, Alec.

Diane: 1:14

Hello friends, today on EcoSpeak CLE, we're talking about sustainability as a career path. On this show, we've spoken with dozens of people who are making their mark on their planet as sustainability professionals, educators, business owners, nonprofit leaders, changemakers and policy shapers. But how did they get there and how can others find their place in this space? Here today to provide some insights and to share her personal and professional journey is my friend, victoria Avi, owner of Venture Forward Strategies. Victoria has been a sustainability professional for over 17 years and she's worked in the worlds of academia, nonprofit entrepreneurism, small business and corporate consulting. She is committed to impacting the world through sustainable practices and in her spare time she's always connecting with people, whether it's through her networking group, the Northeast Ohio Sustainability Ladies, our EcoMeet CLE events and even clothing swaps with friends. So for Victoria, life is a venture and an adventure. Welcome, victoria.

Victoria: 2:19

Thank you Diane, thank you Greg.

Diane: 2:21

Thanks for joining us, so this is not your first time on the podcast. You were here maybe a year ago after we did our first EcoMeet. You and Danielle Doza came and we kind of shot the breeze about how the first EcoMeet went and here we are planning our fifth one coming up in February.

Victoria: 2:45

That's so exciting. Yeah, we did do a podcast a year ago and it was great to recap because we were kind of reengaging the community and we were kind of taking a pulse on what the community wants. And since then we've had three more EcoMeet, cle events and next one in February. So, yeah, I love how everything is connected and intertwined in our personal professional lives. In Cleveland especially feels like everything is one or two degrees of separation and I'm happy to be back on the podcast to share a little bit more about myself and how I got here and how I decided to do this work and where it's going.

Diane: 3:31

Yeah Well, we're going to have fun kind of digging a little deeper this time into your personal and professional journey. Can we start with your personal journey? You were an immigrant to the US as a teenager from Azerbaijan in 1997, and what was that like and how did that impact and shape you?

Victoria: 3:53

Oh, that's such a big question. Yeah, I'm sure I am an immigrant and sometimes I forget that. To be honest, I do forget that sometimes, but it is who I am. My family did move here when I was a couple of months shy of turning 16, so I went to 11th and 12th grade in high school here, and then eventually college, and it is such a bizarre time in one's life anyways, and to add high school immigration and we came without much English so we had to learn kind of on the fly and that made everything more complicated and difficult and it's pretty much a typical immigrant journey story.

Victoria: 4:40

My family story isn't much different than most immigrants, but I think what I like to remember is when we came and 1997 was this was seven years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and so I was born in the Soviet Union. But when we left the countries were already kind of separated or became independent and there was a lot of uncertainty, a lot of unrest. That was happening in all of the countries, but especially in Azerbaijan, because the country was in conflict. And that's one of the primary reason my family decided to leave, because the conflict was starting to impact my family more and more. And, yeah, so my parents made that decision. Can only imagine what it's like to sell everything. And I think we came with $3,000 in our pockets and just kind of start over. We were lucky to have a lot of family living in Cleveland already, so we had a lot of support, especially in the beginning. That's essential in success of your life in a new country. And yeah, so when we came I was very focused on kind of survival, like how do I get by and learn the language? I wasn't thinking of what I want to become or what professions seem interesting to me. I was always into art. Art always been a part of who I am. I started drawing and painting very early and pretty much just loved art. I mean, I don't know until now. I will always love art. Art is part of me. And so I was thinking, well, I love art and that's what I'll do.

Victoria: 6:36

But it didn't really turn out in the way that a typical teenage kind of life unfolds that you go to college, you focus on a major, you graduate, you find a job. I didn't really have a lot of mentors at that time so I didn't really know how to navigate that path very well. But I did go to Lakeland Community College, which was the best decision I made, and even like how I went there was pretty funny. It was July after I graduated high school and I said, mom, should I go to college? And she's like sure, where do you want to go? And I said, well, my friend went to Lakeland Community College and it sounds interesting, will you drive me? And she drove me.

Victoria: 7:21

I took a placement test and I think like a week or two later I started. It was that simple and easy and my parents were receiving a lot of assistance, so I was getting a Pell Grant to pay for classes, which made things a lot easier. I also did not know that I needed to have an advisor. Nobody told me. So I basically, like I remember grabbing the catalog and highlighting all the classes that seemed really interesting to me and I just took those for two and a half years Every semester. Can you imagine that feeling? Like every semester, you only take what you want. It was the best feeling in the world.

Victoria: 7:57

Ignorance is bliss. It was it was, and you know, I, my interests were so wide. It wasn't just art, even though I took pretty much every single fine art class they offered and all the disciplines. But I was also very curious. I loved literature, so I took American literature, english literature, I took Spanish, I took calculus class because I was good at math. Like well, I'll just keep on taking math. And took a tennis class and modern dance. It was just this bizarre college.

Greg: 8:27

And everything. I'm bad at Calculus tennis art.

Victoria: 8:33

I remember it was a quick story English class and my friend classmate brought an essay that she printed on a piece of paper with a graphic that she designed in PageMaker.

Diane: 8:45

I was like why did you do that PageMaker? How did you do that? We're going back now. What's PageMaker?

Victoria: 8:50

It's an Adobe product, but anyways. I said, well, how did you make that? I said, oh, I took this class. I said show me in the catalog, when is?

Greg: 8:58

this class.

Victoria: 8:59

And I took the PageMaker class and the PageMaker professor said oh, you could also take Photoshop. So what is Photoshop? And I took a Photoshop class and the professor in my class was one of the highest skilled photography Photoshop professional in Cleveland. Get out, I forget his name, but he ran a studio in downtown Cleveland and he's like oh, you're kind of good at it. Are you curious to study graph design? And I said I don't know, show me. It was that divinely guided Diane. Whatever was interesting to me and I kind of hooked on to it.

Diane: 9:42

Yeah, so you felt your way there, and it sounds like that was also how you got your way to sustainability. Yeah, you kind of felt your way. Well, tell us about how you made that pivot from graphic design to environment.

Victoria: 9:59

Well. So yeah, he tells me, well, just transfer to Cleveland State and you can major in graphic design. And this is the number to call. I have my white pages or yellow pages. I call Cleveland State. So I transferred to more art classes, to graph design classes. It was a great department, jennifer. I think your grade was an incredible mentor to me during that time and after and. But I had a prerequisite requirement to graduate, which I had to take a science class. Well, if it's required to graduate, then I will do it.

Victoria: 10:33

It was a bio one on one, on two, and this story is important because that's the inspiration, the spark that changed the whole course of my professional life. Dr Julie Wallin was teaching the class and I remember where I sat in the classroom. That's how, like visceral, I felt the inspiration and the book was covering. The book that we were using was covering everything from biodiversity loss to chemical imbalances to a climate change, and I've never heard of climate change before and I, even to this day, remember the graphic that kind of showed the how the gases get trapped in, what happens, and I remember like looking around like, oh my God, this is a huge deal, why is no one talking about this. It felt so global and so like our survival depends on us understanding this. And yet no one really was talking about this and my tendency is, if I don't know something and if I'm curious about it, I want to learn more.

Victoria: 11:41

I will go get a book, I will get a podcast, I will get a video. I will go ask where did you get that? And so I said I can you to go back to school to learn to understand this better, to learn more about this? Because I have a graph design degree and it seems like a kind of a big leap right from art degree to environmentalism. And yeah, so I went to school right after. I applied at Cleveland State at the Levins School, got in in the Masters of Environmental Studies program, yeah, and that's kind of started. I learned a lot. It was a very good program, was kind of like we covered a little, a little bit about everything and that was a perfect amount for me wasn't too heavy on the policy, wasn't too heavy on science, was just a great mix. I got to know a lot of great people. A lot of my classmates still do environmental and sustainability work to this day in Cleveland.

Diane: 12:41

Several, who have been on this podcast Amy.

Victoria: 12:43

Ross Kelly, amy and John and many others. So, and then I remember John the governor was telling me hey, there's this organization that you should check out. They're having this incredible event at the Natural History Museum. Ray Anderson is speaking. And I went. It was a, for us it was that. I don't know if you. I was there, you remember how it was, just like it blew you away. You listen to Ray talk about his path.

Diane: 13:17

Ray Anderson is the CEO of interface floor. Yes, thank you. One of the first to kind of design a company around sustainability, right?

Victoria: 13:25

Yeah, he was inspired to change the course of his company in 1994 after he read ecology of commerce by Paul Hawken and but when you listen to, you know a person who is leading a very petroleum heavy business they make carpet tiles and is able to make these incredible changes based on this inspiration. And it's an incredible feat to change the course of company, to change how they view resources, to change how they view themselves in the community or in the world Really difficult and imagine doing that in the 90s and 2000s, right.

Diane: 14:08

Nobody was talking about it back then.

Victoria: 14:11

But also I think Ray also had this genius in him. When you listen to him, you really heard him right. He told a story in a way that you could understand and it related to what you were understanding about sustainability. So it wasn't just about business, it was. It was just a nice mixture and I was just like I said that's it, this is what I'm, this is what I want to do. That intersection of understanding environmental kind of aspects of things, understanding business aspects of things, understanding community and how everything intersects and how we actually create change from that.

Diane: 14:46

That's the definition of sustainability, right there.

Victoria: 14:48

Yeah.

Diane: 14:49

So and then. So E4S was putting on some of those speaker series, right, and that's how you learned about entrepreneurs for sustainability, and you kind of nudged your way in saying I'm going to volunteer and I'm going to stick around till you hire me, right.

Victoria: 15:05

Yeah. So I don't know if it's my immigrant quality, just that very persistent and very resilient. But I remember coming to Stephanie Corbett at that time and I say I would love to volunteer, Can I volunteer for your organization? And eventually I think I wore her down.

Greg: 15:26

Yes.

Victoria: 15:28

And I started volunteering and I met a lot of incredible people. I remember meeting you and Rebecca Reynolds and Tori Mills and many, many others who have done such unique work in Cleveland.

Greg: 15:44

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Diane: 16:17

So from E4S you worked in nonprofit and then you took your next leap and I just love how your career is, just all these leaps of faith to becoming a professor at Cleveland State.

Victoria: 16:32

I just want to note. While I was volunteering at E4S, I worked at LinkedIn Electric as a graphic designer, and that's where I fell in love with the manufacturing environment.

Diane: 16:42

Oh OK.

Victoria: 16:43

I learned how to weld too, which was really fun, but anyways, of course you did. Right, you had to. Well, somebody said you should be like part of the sales team and they've gone through all these trainings so I just joined them, but anywho, yeah, so E4S I think a lot of the foundation of what I do today and what I know about sustainability I got at E4S. It was very, very much foundational knowledge and work for me Corporate coaching and things like that.

Victoria: 17:13

Yeah, just process. I worked with Holly Harlan, stephanie Corbett, courtney Diorio and we were a few other folks that we were able to shape kind of the mission in the way that felt doable and tangible and having a network of 10,000 people behind you that the organization was able to build over those years was incredible and I think that piece is going to come back, that network piece, that how do we do this together, how do we unite people around this and figure out a way to move forward? So we'll come back to it. But yeah, so after E4S I took a teaching job. I was an adjunct faculty member at Cleveland State in the business school and I taught sustainable business practices, sustainable supply chain management and innovation management. I think those are the courses and I never taught in my life. I didn't know that was a thing for me. It just, you know, a call came and I said yes, I said why not? Let's try this?

Greg: 18:18

I was curious.

Victoria: 18:20

And I think one of the best ways to learn is to teach, and of course, I love learning, so I'm like I'll take this opportunity to learn more.

Diane: 18:30

What was your first class like?

Victoria: 18:31

Oh my.

Diane: 18:33

Not nervous at all right.

Victoria: 18:35

You know I was so prepared, I was over prepared for that class. It was a Wednesday night six to 10pm once a week course with nine or 10 students Because these are mostly professionals taking class and I talked for three and a half hours and then I came out. It was still in August. I remember calling my mom in the park. I was in the parking lot calling my mom. I said mom, it went great. I told them everything I know. I don't know how I'm going to do this for 15 more weeks.

Victoria: 19:10

And I meant it. I did not know how it was going to do it for 15 more weeks, but I had good support and, yeah, I think teaching was a really interesting lens for me to understand sustainability, because it is basically like how do you share this information with other business professionals? Wherever they end up, they can use this in some way. How do you inspire enough people to say, hey, I would like to try this? So I saw it from that perspective. But also, by the end of my, I taught for eight years and by the end of that time, I felt like I was running out of stories. I was telling the same stories over and over again, a lot of kind of tangible real world examples of how companies implemented sustainability, and I needed to get more stories. I said I think it's time for me to go back and kind of, and yeah, to get more stories. So that was one. So there's that parallel, and so I stopped teaching in 2018. And in 2018, I also started a company with Daniel Doza.

Diane: 20:15

So it's happening. Venture forward strategies. Right Venture forward strategies Another leap going into owning your own consulting company.

Victoria: 20:23

Yeah, that was a crazy idea. How's?

Diane: 20:27

it going? Tell us a little bit about your company and the type of work and who you work with and how it's going.

Victoria: 20:34

Yeah, you know the company. We decided to start the company because we wanted to do this work and when we looked around, the weren't really companies hiring to do this work, right, you know, in house or as consultants. And so we said, well, let's start it and maybe we can be just a short five years ago.

Diane: 20:53

Things have changed a lot since then.

Victoria: 20:55

They have. Yeah, and I also have gone through a couple of kind of entrepreneurship related projects through Cleveland State and then through Case Western, so I had a better understanding of how to start a business, how to do custom validation process, so I had more information around that. And Danielle and I also went through a program at the University of Pennsylvania and I went through it in 2017 and she went through in 2018. And it was a Center for Social Impact Strategy program and that allowed us to kind of say how can we put what we learned in this program to practice and what does that look like in Cleveland? And that's why there's venture in the name. Initially, when we started venture for strategies, we really wanted to look at how do we support sustainability entrepreneurs? Well, it's a very different market. We realized we shifted. We pivoted after doing customer validation process and said, okay, maybe we focus on serving businesses and mid-market manufacturing, consumer packaged goods type of companies.

Diane: 22:11

So you're helping them with their waste reduction and your climate strategies and their reporting.

Victoria: 22:17

Yeah, if a company has a question, how do we do sustainability? What does sustainability mean to us? We can help, we can provide a process, we can provide a system for them, kind of set them up for success. You know there's as many companies as there are out there. There are that many sustainability questions because it doesn't fit all. So how do you make sustainability fit for your culture and for your operations? And so we can provide that support for companies? So yeah, that's kind of how it evolved into, into that, you know.

Victoria: 22:55

There's one more thing I want to mention. I didn't I Didn't mention earlier. I was born in Baku, which is a capital of Azerbaijan, and Baku has been in the oil mining kind of environment since late 1800s, so one of the first areas around the globe that started to get mined kind of industrially at a high volume, and so I grew up seeing Oil rigs around me, around us, which it was just part of where we were living. One thing I, you know, I read some a poem about this and it reminded me that it's true and when, when I was living there this was obviously a long time ago you could smell the smell of crude oil in the air Consistently, because it's it's not a big of a. I mean it's a big city, but it's still the areas that are Mind. I mean there's a lot of kind of legacy mines there that are just left alone and not really remediated.

Victoria: 24:01

It's just like scorched earth and rigs, because a lot of mining now happens in the sea, in the Caspian sea, and on a still day you could actually see the oil rigs from the coast.

Victoria: 24:14

I think that had to impact me in some way because now, knowing what I know about climate change with greenhouse gases, a lot of you know a lot of reasons why climate is changing, because how much Fossil fuel we're burning, so that's directly connected to the production and then you move here and our legacy with our steel mills and and standard oil and and all that right, just couldn't get away from that.

Victoria: 24:44

There's a lot of history and prosperity in cities like that, right, because you just kind of people congregate, because there are jobs, because you know they're kind of positioned in a way that's Good for business. So I think that that kind of colored also who I am as a person and why I do this work. And another kind of thread that want to pull back in is this community piece. You mentioned in the introduction that we run a A group. It's a Northeast Ohio women in sustainability. It's an informal group of women that Over time kind of joined to connect and to learn from each other and to Support each other.

Victoria: 25:32

We started it and it was Daniel and I In November or December of 2020, when we were seeing all these articles, seeing how women are struggling to keep up at working at home and and had to do everything. And we just kind of checked in with people and said how are you doing? What support do you need? And we just started these zoom calls, eventually had hikes and Happy hours and whatever would not.

Victoria: 26:00

But this piece is so important it's like more important than anything, because we cannot do this work alone. We have to do this together. There's a lot of anxiety, equal anxiety and anxiety in general for the living, and one of the best ways that I have found for myself to alleviate that is to be in community. When I'm shown up to a group of women, shown up to a group and saying, oh my god, I'm feeling so much it feels impossible. How will we ever change the course when, well, companies are increasing production, when we're trying to, you know, like, put band-aids on things and things are just Not going in the right direction. Chills, you feel powerless.

Diane: 26:48

You tap into something that we're all feeling. You start this group. It has over 260 members. You've organized a lot of fun events. I've enjoyed a lot of them myself. Maybe Greg could start the Northeast Ohio sustainability guys. I don't know.

Greg: 27:06

But but you can't really do mentally. Yeah, organizations, he says.

Diane: 27:13

But finding your people and connecting Is important in any career Networking and stuff like that. But it's just so darn fun in this community With sustainability, because everyone is just so great. Can you just describe some of the places we're gathering and so for people who are looking to connect with this community Throughout some, some places that they can tap into?

Victoria: 27:41

I'd say, find your group.

Diane: 27:43

There's so many you can be interested or make your group.

Victoria: 27:46

Or make your group exactly the well EcoMeet CLE please come February 21st.

Diane: 27:55

I think it's the 20th, 20th. It's the 30th day in February.

Victoria: 27:59

We're still nailing down the topic, but it's a great way to kind of see who's in the room. It's a very laid back environment and we've invited many people to come around. 100 people show up, so that's a big group of people. The Northeast Ohio Women Insistibility Group is a Google group. It's very low tech, I'd say so. I'll share an email with you. You can email and join the group. Anyone can join the group.

Diane: 28:32

Everyone is welcome and could throw out great culture events or a good way to connect. I've been to some of their. Who runs that.

Victoria: 28:45

Thomas Fox Okay.

Diane: 28:47

And those are kind of tech related, tech focus.

Victoria: 28:49

Tech and art and a lot of creativity, which is my love. Right, I love art and creativity, so that's a perfect intersection for me and I also lately I've been learning about mutual aid organizations and sustainability how those two intersect.

Diane: 29:13

Medwish International, which we just dropped, that podcast yeah.

Victoria: 29:17

I think the more I'm seeing kind of where sustainability is heading or where the world is heading, the more I think will we need to design redundancies in support. But imagine if we asked the question how might we support each other with food? Like what if food wasn't accessible to our region? Like how does that change? I think, what if-.

Greg: 29:42

Think about that a lot.

Victoria: 29:43

Right. And what about energy? What if we there was a disaster and we were cut off from the grid? How do we support each other in providing energy? So I'm starting to think in those terms like almost unfortunately, like a disaster. Maybe it's my immigrant brain that's always ready for that.

Greg: 30:05

Yeah, you know, I think a lot of people are like concerned about that. I mean, that's where the doom and gloom thing of climate research and attentiveness comes from is because there are like a lot of really bad scenarios that have happened and will continue to happen.

Victoria: 30:19

Right.

Greg: 30:20

So I think a lot of people think about, like, what their plan might be, or should be probably thinking about what their plan might be. I mean, fema runs those ads. It's like have a plan the next natural disaster, and I think a lot of those are gonna be driven by climate change.

Victoria: 30:36

But how many of those ads are so like individual, Individual? I was thinking the same thing.

Diane: 30:40

They're like how are you gonna prepare? Where you're asking how might we all prepare and help each other through?

Greg: 30:48

Well, I think it takes people like coming to the realization themselves before engaging in the larger community. So I mean, that's sort of kind of ties the whole thing back together, right when we need to be Aware. We need to become aware individually in order to like seek out the knowledge and the resources to get more involved.

Victoria: 31:08

What if it's the opposite? What if we reach out first and gain awareness from the group and I know this is just-.

Diane: 31:16

I think that's what a lot of these networking groups are about just kind of creating space. Like the Northeast Ohio Conscious Capitalism Group, that's just another organization where they just bring in a speaker, open their doors and invite anyone who is interested to come learn more on whatever topic. I think you once told me about the lone wolf quote.

Victoria: 31:41

The quote is the age of lone wolf is over, I said now we have to kind of tackle challenges together. Now it's all about collaboration and cooperation, and when I looked it up, it was a prophecy told by Hopi elders in 2000. So the prophecy was that the time has come where the challenges are so wicked, so complicated and complex that no one person can solve them. So it's kind of like realizing the strength in connection, in collaboration. It's the only way we can solve these really complicated problems. And so that was the prophecy that resurfaced in 2020 during the pandemic, kind of looking at those really huge global challenges and saying, okay, it's a reminder again, let's come together.

Victoria: 32:40

There's this, you know, polyvagal theory. It's this big nerve that kind of goes through a body that does a lot of things. But mostly it's like how do we respond to stress and how do we process this information? And oftentimes our nervous systems are dysregulated. So when we feel eco-anxiety, we feel a high uncertainty for the future, and when we feel high uncertainty for the future or even for the present, our system gets dysregulated. And that's like I mean. That's it. I'm not gonna.

Victoria: 33:13

I feel like I'm diving deep into this Well, physical manifestation, yeah but it's important to be in community because that's how you co-regulate your nervous system. If you are, if I'm. When I expressed my anxiety in a group of women who had a great day and were feeling strong, and I said I'm feeling weak, I don't know how I'm gonna do this work, and they say we can do this together, hang on, and that was co-regulation right, and obviously there's more to it. But we can't do this alone.

Diane: 33:42

No, well, this podcast interview kind of went off in a different direction than I thought, but I love everything you said. You're so thoughtful and so eloquent and I can't believe your native language is not English. That's amazing. So some parting advice for aspiring sustainability leaders of tomorrow. Whether it's just there's so many people out there that wanna do this work or want to transition to doing something for the greater good, you know they're stuck in their career or whatever what advice would you have?

Victoria: 34:25

I think it's an important question, diane, because we need more people to understand this and implement sustainability wherever they are at work. It can't just be people with sustainability in their titles anymore. It's just not enough. If you look at even at the job market, like there's an influx of jobs with sustainability in title and there's not enough people that could actually do that work, and so how do we catch up?

Diane: 34:53

That's changed. That's not slept since 10 years ago.

Victoria: 34:57

And you could say that that's driven by a lot of regulation. Companies are starting to feel the pressure, whether they're public or private. There's all kinds of changes has happened in the last couple of years and will be happening in the near future. So they're responding to that and the response like let me find a person who can figure this out. Most likely they already have a person in their organization that understand this better than most people they can hire, because they are living it right, because they understand the process, they understand how they make things, why they make things, who is doing, who can bring them the data, so that all these kind of aspects of our kind of role as sustainability professionals within organizations most I would say a lot of people already have those skills. It's just a matter of kind of maybe repackaging them or reframing them in a way and say, okay, I might be in compliance or might be in marketing or might be in legal, but I see the dots and I can connect them. I think sustainability is all about connecting those dots.

Diane: 36:04

And what if someone was a humanities major or a history major or a journalist? I think there's so many ways that anyone, depending on their skill set, can contribute.

Victoria: 36:15

Yeah, the humanities, majors, the people who can be translators, who can understand information in a way that is accessible to people. Those are important things to do with accessibility. A lot of times, I think companies start with someone is asking me for this information, for this data. I need to pull it, I need to calculate it, I need to understand what it means. So it very much starts with data for a lot of companies and then a year. First year, second year, it's fine, but third year you better know what to do with that data. What does that mean?

Diane: 36:55

Okay, so you've collected all this, or they might have focused on the low hanging fruit. Then you got it. Then the real work starts.

Victoria: 37:00

Exactly. And I think when you're starting to ask questions like, well, what does this mean for us, how do we make this differently, how do we relate to our community differently, when those questions start to pop up, when they kind of evolve into that stage of sustainability, the humanities majors can really shine right, because you understand these complexities in a way that maybe a technical person might not have skills. So that's how I see, and so you need everyone. If you look at sustainability professionals within companies now they touch pretty much every department Because it's operations, it's marketing, it's compliance, so it's already touching a lot of different areas and disciplines. It's how do we kind of bring all of those disciplines on board? As far as, like young professionals that are curious to enter the field, my very first advice to everyone is, like find your community, because that's where you can learn. Yeah, through a volunteer experience.

Diane: 38:07

It could be at an nature center, it could be anywhere, it could be just whatever interests you.

Victoria: 38:14

And then professionally. Now is a good time to enter the field because there is a lot of opportunity, the learning is happening really quickly, the field is evolving really quickly, there's new information available, new regulation. Pretty much every year things change. So on one hand that's good right, because you're kind of. If you're fresh out of school, you might be well aware of all these little changes or new things that come up. But I think that's a characteristic of the field for sure it's fast changing and new stuff comes up all the time.

Diane: 38:50

What gives you hope what gives you hope.

Victoria: 38:57

That's a great question and I think it's the same answer when I ask myself why do I still do this work? I would say because of the community. I don't know if any other field is as collaborative as sustainability is. I don't know, Because we all instinctively know if we don't share and build upon each other's ideas, we're not gonna solve it. So I've been to so many tables around talking about sustainability, acting on sustainability, and I always witnessed this incredible sharing and incredible collaboration.

Greg: 39:38

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