Every job is a climate job
Recorded at Climate Con 2021 on November 10, 2021
Every job is a climate job.
We can all leverage our current roles as employees or small business owners to contribute to solutions. This session will explore what that looks like in action, where to even start, and how others have embraced their influence as employees or small business owners.
A conversation with:
Jamie Beck Alexander (Drawdown Labs)
Cassie Divine (Intuit QuickBooks Platform)
Jennifer Allyn (ClimateVoice)
Hannah Davis (ClimateRaise)
Resources:
Full transcript.
Hannah Davis: But we are lucky to be here with some very special guests to talk about how every job is a climate job and really explore whether you're a team leader, employee, a small business owner, no matter what you're up to in the world, how you can integrate climate, whether it's starting from zero or you're already working in climate and you want to do more. So, very excited to be here and really excited about climate con and everything that the team has done to bring these great resources around the world.
So with that, I'd love to get intros from our wonderful panelists today. And, just kind of, I'd love to hear where you are in the world, what your role is and start, what your company does, to give us some context to then jump off into our conversation that we're going to have. So, Jamie, would you mind starting this?
Jamie Beck Alexander: Sure thanks for having me. So my name's Jamie Alexander. I am the director of Drawdown Labs at a non-profit called Project Drawdown. Project Drawdown exists to identify and communicate, the world's biggest solutions to climate change. And Drawdown Labs is our effort to work with the private sector. So companies and investors to help use their leverage and scope and scale to scale climate solutions in the world. And a big ethos of ours is that every job has a climate job and employees within companies have a huge role to play. And I am coming to you from Northern Minnesota. Great to be here.
Hannah Davis: Thanks Jamie. Yeah, you couldn't be a more perfect fit for this panel. Excited to tap into your knowledge. Jennifer, over to you.
Jennifer Allyn: Thanks so much, Hannah, thanks for having me. I'm the director of programs and campaigns at Climate Voice, and we're a brand new startup that's working to galvanize the workforce so current employees and students in their role as future employees, to push companies to advocate for bold and equitable climate policy. So we really believe that policy is the lever that we need to focus on to solve the climate crisis at scale. And that employees have an incredible voice that they're not using to sort of unlock that corporate influence.
Hannah Davis: Welcome. Thanks for being here, gentlemen.
Jennifer Allyn: I'm in Brooklyn
Hannah Davis: Awesome. Cassie, over to you.
Cassie Divine: Hi, I'm Cassie divine from Intuit. We make software, you might've heard of like TurboTax and SunMint and QuickBooks. Our mission is to power prosperity, for the consumers and self-employed and small businesses we serve. And I have the honor of leading the product organization that brings QuickBooks to more than 8 million small businesses around the world and am excited to be here because a lot of our focus is how we tip the odds in the favor of small businesses and really help them survive beyond, and thrive, beyond just the financial software we make. But, uh, increasingly see just a huge opportunity for our customers to play a big role in both, preventing climate change and also, you know, finding ways to do that while they achieve their operational missions and become even more successful.
So excited to be here. And I'm coming to you from San Francisco. California.
Hannah Davis: Awesome. Excited to have you. And I'm in Boulder, Colorado. I am technically unemployed. So even unemployment is a climate job. I do also run an organization on the side that connects women led climate tech companies to active investors called ClimateRaise.
And I used to be working at Techstars where I helped start the green team. So I have some experience myself as employee activism, and there will be time at the end for questions. So please start thinking of those that we can just put them into the chat or Q&A in the bottom of the webinar screen and we will get to those at the end, but really would love to hear. The goal of today is really to empower you all to leave, knowing how to make your job a climate job or your work in the world. And to hear stories from others who've been there and done that so we can learn from each other. So with that, I'd love to start off, and also to the panelists feel free to, we're all, it's great to be in a call with each other, so that's, if you want to ask each other questions or jump in or add to things, like, please do that. And there's a wealth of knowledge on this call and, I invite you to speak up if anything comes up. But I'd like to start with your own stories, how you came into this work and really how you think of yourselves as being able to shape culture in the workplace, whether it's in with your current companies, or companies that you influence outside of your sphere.
So just like how did you get to where you are and how do you think about influencing when it comes to climate in your work. And so Cassie, I'd love to start with you. I think it's so great to have you on this panel. As you know, Intuit is not explicitly a climate company, and I'd love to hear how you think about your role within that and your sphere of influence.
Cassie Divine: Yeah, it's fun to be here. You know, I'll say two things about this and first say that, you know, I'm good proof that every job is a climate job. I had a employee in product management that was interested in continuing to work in product management at the company, but he wanted to make a bigger difference.
And he had been thinking about things we might do inside of QuickBooks that would help small businesses understand their broader carbon footprint and was really interested. And, you know, the first thing I did was help support, in our organization, that he would move into our sustainability practice.
And that really was my first introduction to thinking about what were we doing? It had been something I'd been thinking about, you know, what keeps me up at night is what I worry about small businesses having to deal with. And increasingly carbon emissions are a cost that is going to create huge operational challenges, and so it had been on my mind, but it wasn't until someone on my team moved in to dedicate his focus to this work that I started getting more involved in, what were we doing and what could we do and how could I, in my role, help support what I think should be a broader mission across our company that would really help us empower small business owners to take a leap here.
What we hear from business owners is they want to make a difference. We have a lots of survey data that says they want to make a difference, they don't know where to get started. And at the same time, I hear a lot of business owners say to me, I can't handle one more thing, especially out of the year they came through. And so I've been spending a lot of time with our team thinking about how we talk about this subject in an approachable way so people realize there's a real win-win. It doesn't have to be a different thing that you're doing in terms of growing your company and attracting customers. Actually, as you think about your footprint, as you think about what will attract customers and employees to you, it actually can be a great way to approach what you're already trying to do. And so many of the things we recommend that are good for a small business to do for the environment are also great for business. They reduce costs, they bring more customers to them.
So, I'm here because of my passion, personal passion for it, to help our base of customers and small businesses around the world get more involved. I think small businesses, there's no one better to help take this on as a keystone species in so many ecosystems. So I'm excited to participate today.
Hannah Davis: Thank you. There's a lot I want to circle back to as the conversation continues, but. It sounds like there was one employee that influenced you and then you influence all of this organization. That's incredible. Wondering if you could add one more, you know, detail level of detail. What was it about this employee that really had you going from not thinking about this to all of a sudden, you know, finding him on the right team and kind of moving forward with this incredible work that you just talked about?
Cassie Divine: You know, I think I was perhaps struggling with what a lot of people struggle with is, where do you start? You can have a broad, you know, interest and passion in something. But I think one of the things that he inspired me was just, you know, understanding how we support his mobility was one simple thing I could do. And then that action begets action. And I think that, you know, that there's a big lesson for all of us of just deciding what one step you can take, because once you start taking those steps, I think it all gets a lot easier. So for me, it was just a place to start and such a powerful one.
Hannah Davis: Wow.
Thank you. That's a really powerful story and a good reminder just how much, how many ripples one person can have in their action. So, yeah, I'd love to, go over to you, Jennifer. The same question around, how did you get into your work and how do you think about shaping company culture? Whether it's your own or the companies that ClimateVoice works with?
Jennifer Allyn: So I actually started my career in diversity, equity and inclusion, and spent many years leading diversity at Pricewaterhouse Coopers. So I was a managing director there. And what I really saw was the same thing that Cassie talked about, which was that we, when our people came to us and they wanted us to take a stand on different issues it really pushed leadership and management to do that. So I take the example of, for instance, LGBT equality at PWC, we had amazing programs and policies for our own people who worked with us, but as marriage equality was heating up and there were all of these discriminatory, legislative pushes at the state level, our people came to us and said, you know, I'm really proud to work here, but if you move me from Massachusetts to Texas, my marriage won't be recognized and we need you to, as a company to use your influence to step up on the policy debate of our time. And it really shifted people's thinking. And I sort of saw that movement within diversity. And then I was really worried about climate. I mean, it was just keeping me up at night and I thought, you know, I need to work on this and we've got 10 years to turn it around.
So I left PWC in January of 2020, which seemed like genius until March changing careers in a global pandemic. But luckily in that time of my short networking, when life was normal, I met Bill Weihl and he was the former sustainability leader at Facebook. And before that had done all the green energy work at Google and Bill had this vision that employees could really raise their voice in a meaningful way to get companies off the sidelines. That's how we sort of talk about it. That companies were risk averse when it came to policy, which we know is messy and partisan. And while many pro climate companies were doing great things in their operations, it wasn't enough. And, you know, we tell people to take individual actions in their own lives, in terms of, you know, you can eat less meat and you can ride your bike to work and you can make all of these choices of your own.
But as an employee, you can unlock this huge influence if you can push your employer to lobby for climate. So that's sort of where we're focused on that policy angle on a new action to ask employees to do. And I think Cassie's absolutely right in terms of, you know, everybody wants to know where to start.
We have groups of employees and lots of different companies who are really active. And there's a lot of green groups and affinity groups where people find like-minded individuals and often their focus is on operations. So we're trying to educate them about the lobbying piece, the climate advocacy piece, and the fact that their companies have a whole legislative affairs team, you know, especially at these big companies who are pushing for action, but they're too quiet on climate, or they're not being bold enough for the sort of bold and equitable climate policy we need.
Hannah Davis: Oh, thank you. Yeah. I think policy personally can be a little overwhelming if you're not familiar with what's going on or how to work in it. So having that support, and better understand that I can imagine just opens up tons of doors for folks to engage. So love that. And Jamie, over to you, you know, how did you get into the work you're doing and how do you think about shaping culture and I know you've been in Drawdown for a while, but I think the new, at least I just recently saw the, every job as a climate job kind of stuff come new. So maybe how did that even emerge recently?
Jamie Beck Alexander: Yeah. Well, I mean, really my passion for this topic comes from the fact that it was so hard for me to find a job working in climate. I mean, I had been, you know, working for international development. I worked for the federal government and I felt like I had, you know, what I thought were pretty easily translatable skills from, you know, from working in places like Bangladesh and doing health-related work. It was just so clear to me that climate was sort of this underpinning issue for all of the other things that we cared about, but it was so hard to find a job.
I mean, it was the most, you know, it was the issue most that I was most passionate about and yet try as I might, you know, I couldn't find a way to like get into a sustainability job. And there were like 1200 applicants for the sustainability role at this company and 1500 applicants for this one role at this company.
And it was just bonkers to me that there's this issue that's so many people care about, there's so many different things that we need to do, and yet there was this like gatekeeping of who gets to work on it and who doesn't. And so that's where my passion for this started. It was just like frustration that I so desperately wanted to contribute and it felt like, in my day job, I wasn't able to. And I think a lot of people are feeling that way now. And so when I finally was able to get into, a job in my last role, I ended up working closely with the Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, who organized inside Amazon and who ultimately, you know, were very successful in moving the company to set, to make the climate pledge and, you know, to set some ambitious emissions reductions targets there. And I just saw the power of employees who are passionate, who are courageous. And then on the other side of things, like, you know, through my job at Project Drawdown, I work closely with several companies including into it and I've just seen time and again, that it's employees even outside of sustainability function who are coming up with these incredible ideas, like a fleet manager at one of the companies that I work with, who has nothing to do with sustainability, it doesn't have ESG or sustainability in their job title is manages the company's fleet of cars and came up with this calculation. Like, wow, if we converted to an all electric fleet, we would save X amount of money over, you know, X amount of time, over Y amount of time. And it was like this massive change for the company. And so I just think there's such power in bringing more people in and seeing the value of just all of the skillsets that all of the things that are needed to address this all encompassing crisis
Hannah Davis: I love that. And I love that you touched upon how sometimes it can feel really hard to get a job in climate. And just how hopefully today folks will leave knowing that every job can be a climate job. So even if you don't have that role yet that you're hoping to get maybe one day or you love the job you're at, you can engage in this work.
So now I'd love to, yeah, I'd actually love to go back to you, Jennifer and here at an example, if you can think of one, of the collaboration with ClimateVoice on a company that really ended up pushing policy or pushing a company and kind of what changed did that company make and what do you think it was about the culture and the employees that really held them accountable. So how should employees think about accountability when it comes to their leader?
Jennifer Allyn: Well, I think accountability is the key issue, which you absolutely are right about. So I, let me see. I want to put in the chat a scorecard that we just did. So one of the things that's really hard is holding companies accountable because these issues are complicated and so it's hard to know sort of where they stand. And with Build Back Better, which was the vehicle for, you know, climate policy in the US right now, we were very disappointed along with many of the employees that we work with, that companies were not fully endorsing this legislation. So we decided to do a scorecard and we called it 'it's go time for climate'. We were like the urgency, the time is now. And we picked 20 large pro climate companies. So we worked with the InfluenceMap, who is this think tank and they collected the evidence of, you know, Forbes 300 climate companies that had already advocated for climate policy. So they'd done something to this point to say that they cared about climate.
And then we ranked, where did they stand on, Build Back Better? And we basically had three criteria: did you support the climate provisions in the bill? Did you support revenue provisions to actually pay for the climate policies? And did you distance yourself from the negative lobbying of your trade associations that are trying to kill the bill?
And basically then we gave them a score of what they were, red if they were obstructing, yellow if they were offering cautious support and green was leading if they hit all three of those criteria. So what we found was of those 20 companies, none of them were leading. And when you look at the scorecard, gotimeforclimate.com what you can see is if you click on top of each company, you see their public statements. So we collected all the evidence of what have they said for Build Back Better, which trade associations are they part of. And we share that with employees to say, this is your accountability tool to ask your leadership teams. Why, why are you not fully supporting this bill? If we are making public statements all the time that we care about climate and this is the vehicle for climate policy right now. And we all know that it's not going to come around again. And again, legislation is messy, reconciliation is messy. There's a lot of things in the budget reconciliation bill that companies didn't like, but on the climate policy front, they didn't use their influence to advocate for it in a big way.
So we were trying to point out the gap between their rhetoric And then their actual lobbying actions and then trying to educate employees, why lobbying was so important because particularly the trade associations, the business round table, and the US Chamber of Commerce really spent millions and millions of dollars trying to kill this bill.
And they still are obviously the fight isn't over. So when you go on the scorecard, you can also see that for each company, you can tweet directly at the executives. So we basically have put the executive handles in there with pre-populated tweets. We would love everyone on this call. We have 89 people on this call right now to share this.
If you know anyone who works at any of these companies, we think employees have unique standing to ask their companies to do more. However, the general public can do this as well. And we've seen a lot of traction that if we have a particular action that we can point to companies can, employees can take it and run with it. So we know of at least two town hall meetings and these companies who are yellow on the scorecard, where employees linked had a question to our scorecard and said, how come we're not supporting this legislation? And, you know, CEOs were at that meeting. So it was a way to elevate it internally to use it and to help educate them.
I will say another really important accountability measure, we had two, articles about the scorecard and grist and fast company, and both reporters called all 20 companies and asked them to go on the record for their positions. And that really got their attention. So we're trying to use a lot of levers, sort of like an inside game and an outside game.
And I just think employees, the more they're educated about these issues and about what is at stake, when it comes to climate policy, the more effective advocates they can be. I'm sorry. I see. There's a lot going on in the chat. I have not been monitoring.
Hannah Davis: No, you don't have to. We got that, but I will say I'm just checking out the scorecard where are going to have some action happening.
Someone saw 3M didn't do well, and they're going to reach out to employees and have them reach out to their leadership. So thank you, Alex, for taking action right away. Love it. And, what do you find, you know, in terms of the employees you work with, is it typically setting up meetings with their leaderships, emailing them?
I'm thinking of, you know, even smaller companies that maybe aren't on the scorecard. If someone wants their company to engage and support, Build Back Better. You know, what would your advice be?
Jennifer Allyn: Yeah, I, so I think the first question is to ask what's our stance on climate policy, right? So, what is our public stance? What do we do? Who in the organization is in charge of this? So sometimes it's the legislative affairs team. When we talk about the lobbying questions and how we want them to lobby for climate, sometimes there are energy experts or policy experts, a sustainability leader, different organizations, depending on their size, have different structures for this work.
So find out who's in charge. Right? Try to connect with the other colleagues who are interested in climate. I think it's much more powerful to have a group of people come together. We've been working with a lot of affinity groups, so green groups who come together to, you know, sometimes it's a slack channel, sometimes it's a webinar series where they bring in speakers to come speak. Bill Weihl would love to come speak at any of your companies. So call me afterwards. We would love to do that. That's a really important way that we've gotten our message in front of employees. Because it's not that simple, right? We need to connect the dots a little bit about. why policy is so important and how companies use their influence when it comes to lobbying already, they all lobby a lot. They're just not lobbying for climate. We looked at the five biggest US tech companies and last year, basically of their total overall lobbying, they only spend about 6% of that activity on climate compared to the five biggest US oil companies that spent 50% of their lobbying on climate. And that asymmetry in the business community is why we're losing the climate war. You know, that's what we're really trying to point out. If the dominant business voice is the fossil fuel companies and their allies, which are the trade associations. We're not going to get the policy we need
Hannah Davis: Thank you. Yeah, really powerful lovers. And so that, Jennifer kind of talked about the accountability of employees, keeping businesses accountable. Jamie, I know you do a lot of work on the pros of like engaging employees and how that can be beneficial to companies and, more of kind of the coming from the leadership and encouraging employees to get involved.
Can you share a little bit more about, you know, what employee engagement looks like when it comes to climate and the work that you put together at Drawdown?
Jamie Beck Alexander: Yeah, well, so we recently published an employee guide that we call Climate Solutions at Work. That's really intended to be a playbook for employees across the business to be able to identify ways that they can kind of both, you know, look at our Project Drawdown into 100 climate solutions and see, oh! I'm a marketer, I can look at scaling XYZ climate solutions or, oh, I work in sales or product or government affairs. and so within this guide we published something called the Drawdown Aligned Business Framework, which is really intended to broaden and sort of help everyone understand what corporate climate commitments really mean and be a better kind of more astute judges of the you know, the authenticity of and you know, what leadership truly looks like. Which goes way beyond just simply reducing emissions to include, as Jennifer talked about climate policy lobbying, but also investments where companies are investing their money, where your 401K, you know, what all of our 401Ks are financing in the world.
That's a huge lever that we don't talk about nearly enough. There's, you know, the partnerships that a lot of companies have continue to have with fossil fuel industry, that essentially keep them in business. That's another big one, you know, kind of looking at how we reimagine, know this short-termism of needing companies needing to provide, you know, returns every quarter that prevent them from being able to see the longer view. So we wanted to sort of like provide like, what does it actually look like for a company to be fully aligned on climate from all parts of their business? Not just sustainability, not even just policy, but like, everything, bringing in finance, bringing in the government affairs team, bringing in, what are your marketers, you know, showcasing, what kind of partnerships do you have, bringing in the board, what is the, you know, is executive compensation tied to environmental outcomes? And when we sort of like charted all of that out, it brings in like every single part of the business, product, sales, marketing, storytelling, you know, It really does bring all of it together.
And so being able to connect the dots so there's not this misalignment where the sustainability team is saying something over here and then other parts of the business are actively contradicting it in massive ways that really enabled us to say, wow, look at all of these job functions that have a role to play in this. And if we can just like broadcast that and have a shared understanding of all of these ways that companies are positively and negatively influencing the climate crisis. Like so many more people can find their inroad and can contribute to that. So that's sort of where we come from, like looking at all of the climate solutions, not just electric vehicles and, you know, solar panels, but like a hugh, you know, covering agriculture and indigenous rights and, you know, a huge a plethora of climate solutions that bring in so many more people and skillsets. And then and then a huge array of leverage points, policy, you know, investments, marketing, like all of these other leverage points that companies have that bring in so many more people too.
And that's really our motivation is just to create a more expansive set of people who will, who are able to contribute.
Jennifer Allyn: And I just want to pick up on that for one second, Hannah too. So I put in the chat and I realized I wasn't sending it to everyone. So thank you for forwarding that for me. But, we also published a policy guide to Jamie's point. There's a mindset shift, I think sometimes with companies where they really need to think more strategically about how they engage with climate. So we've heard companies say, you know, we don't talk about transportation policy because we're not a transportation company. But of course their employees use transportation, they use transportation for their products. Like we need to have this bigger, broader sense of what is advocacy, what is engagement? And I think what's powerful for employees to raise continually with their managers and with leadership is that climate is a material risk to everyone's business. So we can't keep being small about how we think about like, this is our silo or this is our lane, right?
We need to get beyond that and to think about advocacy in a bigger way. And I think all companies have standing to raise their voice on climate policy. And I think it's really important what Project Drawdown has done in terms of we have the solutions, we've got so many solutions. We are not deploying them because we don't have the political will. And that's why the debate right now has to be in that political advocacyarena.
Hannah Davis: Thanks for adding that and thanks for this links. I really recommend everyone to check those out, bookmark them. I'm sure they will go in the Workboard that Climate Con is creating as well. And that was a great segue back over to you, Cassie. You know, you talked a bit about, how climate really can impact and hurt the small businesses that you work with and how into it, you know, touches I think it was 8 million small businesses around the world. And so can you tell us a little bit more about how these business owners, you know, how they can either use your product, or you've seen them outside of the work at QuickBooks, take actions for climate impact. If you have a story of a small business in particular that you admire their leadership in this work, I'd love to hear.
Cassie Divine: Awesome. Well, first let me come at, pick up on one thing Jamie said, which, I've seen so much power in, which is, declaring what's important. One of the things we've done as a company, we have a true north dashboard and historically it was always employees delivering for customers, delivering for shareholders and sort of high-level metrics short-term, long-term on all of those.
And we've added communities as a fourth pillar and looking at sort of things you might've seen in the past, buried on a corporate social responsibility type dashboard, sort of front and center. And just the mere sharing of intention and metrics of things we aspire to I think it generates that engagement that Jamie mentioned across all of these different functions, because you put something up on the scoreboard and said, this is important and you know, people are inherently, so creative, employees are creative. They have lots of ideas and they're able to connect to something. So I just want to echo that is just one way that you could start.
For us, as we think about our small businesses, the thing we were hearing was sort of where do I start? And that this is hard. And so one of the first things we did is we recently launched, a Climate Action Marketplace and it has a number of solutions. Nine I think out of the 12 are small businesses themselves and it gives small business owners something to start. So for example, for a small manufacturer, one of the solutions providers Rheaply helps you identify if you've got a piece of equipment that you could be leasing or sharing to others, what they call the circular economy, or if there was a piece of equipment you needed to, you know, how could you rent it from someone rather than making that expenditure for yourself, which is you know, better because there's less of that equipment being produced. And it's great for you because you save a lot of money. A lot of the businesses on that marketplace, I think are great examples of just the ingenuity you see of, you know, how do you diagnose in your business if you have refrigerators, for example, you know, that is a dangerous contribution to greenhouse gases.
If you think about, you know, food. I think one of the things we've learned is every businesses corporate social responsibility sustainability sort of strategy, you know, that's not the way businesses are thinking about it. They don't have a sustainability person. I think they're the living breathing example of what we're talking about. That every job in a small, is a climate job. And it's going to look different for your business. But what we've encouraged is putting out tools that help you diagnose what could be a place to start. So if you produce food, how can you work with one of the organizations on the marketplace to get that food waste into your community and benefiting nonprofits that will distribute it to people in need?
How do you think about, you know, using your equipment differently? And so really it's just geared to what might it look like to start? But as I said, action begets action. And now in our own company, we're talking a lot about what are all the things that we could do inside of QuickBooks to help you understand what your carbon profile is.
So lots of things, but the first thing we've started with is where could we give you resources to take action specific to your unique business? Oftentimes that also helps you save money. And so that's really where we've started. We're also encouraging our small business owners and all small businesses. You know, our, focus here is not just, if you use our products, is to talk about this with their employees and a good place to start as just setting this intention.
And also talk about it with their customers. You know, what we hear from and see in a lot of consumer shopping data is customers want to spend their money with a company that aligns with their values. And so I will say as much as we talk about the feedback that you could give your employer, give you that feedback to a business that you talk to. You know, one of the businesses in my neighborhood has entertained every question I've asked about, you know, how you think about your supplier relationships and what are some of the things that you're doing and now he is sharing more in his store information behind the products because in his store, everything is locally sourced and there's so much that, you know, is important to us as we think about where we spend our money.
So I think just one simple thing we can all do in our companies and the businesses we shop in is have that dialogue because it inspires so much action.
Hannah Davis: I love that. In fact, this morning I was volunteering with Climate Changemakers and we were emailing our local companies to sign policy for the Build Back Better act and supporting that. And so, yeah, and this combo combination of what Jennifer was talking about, what you just mentioned, Kasey. And we are open to questions if folks have one. There is one from Judy asking, and this is a great question. Are universities different to deal with than companies, as you understand that in this conversation, we have talked about small businesses and large tech companies, but what, what does it look like at universities? Uh, Jennifer, do you have something to add there?
Jennifer Allyn: Yeah, I think students are incredibly powerful voice when it comes to climate action and students have done tremendous organizing, holding their own universities to account, particularly around divestment and some other issues. At ClimateVoice we're trying to work with students to say you also have a voice as future employees.
So when you're going to career fairs and talking to companies ask them, what is their stance on climate policy? Like, ask them really tough questions about where they stand, because that kind of feedback is very important to companies and they are constantly evaluating the trends of the talent pool. And I can tell you that when I was in my days of diversity, the recruiters were calling me all the time this is, you know, all these questions were asked on this campus about our diversity policies and, you know, students wanted to know about X, Y, and Z. And that really drove change in terms of the change agents internally who want to make a case for action. So I do think students, the more, you know, about lobbying and corporate influence and the more you can ask about that, the better.
Jamie Beck Alexander: Yeah and I'll just add to that, I mean, I think in addition to students, we also, so we work with Stanford University in addition to a group of companies that are members of Drawdown Labs and they're really exploring you know, how universities through their curriculum can include more climate solutions content, how, you know, cafeterias can serve, you know, less meat in their cafeterias and address food waist.
They're transportation, there's a lot of work that is happening and, you know, I think leading universities are really setting a new standard for embedding more climate solutions into how they operate.
Hannah Davis: Yeah, that's a really great point.
Jennifer Allyn: And adding climate to the curriculum you know, and sort of, how are they being more educated about climate and how is that part of their academic mandate as well?
Hannah Davis: Definitely. And I think that that probably applies to, lower education to any teacher. You know, how can you add climate work to your curriculum? Any educator of different types, I imagine working at, from anywhere from a daycare to preschool, you know, they're just added in. And that does bring me to another question.
You know how do you think about roles that are just a little harder to, you know, I guess what comes to mind. Say you work at a coffee shop or you're a caretaker of someone elderly, like how might folks in the service industry think about incorporating climate into their work?
Cassie Divine: It's a great question. I think one of the things that I've realized, so the coffee shop is a great example of, I heard from a small business owner last week, that one of the things I saw on the action marketplaces, they weren't thinking about leftover food. They were sort of, you know, organically in the business, thinking about where to get things going, but they weren't necessarily thinking about that.
They weren't necessarily thinking about areas where there could be equipment that you're buying. I mean, I think one of the things that we've got on the marketplaces is ability for a small business owner to help calculate where some of their contribution to carbon emissions is coming from. And that's just a great place to start to then start identifying things that might not be, that might not be immediately available.
One of the biggest pieces of feedback we've heard is, thinking about commuter benefits for employees as a means to be both offering a benefit they weren't necessarily offering and also having a great solution. So I think, you know, it really can depend on the business. And I wouldn't say one of, you know, obviously any small business owner can go and investigate all of these things, but the number one thing I've heard is most powerful is saying to employees we want to take a stand here, we want to make a difference, we want to share this intention and enlist ideas, and then the ideas just start flowing. And so it's such a powerful place to start to just say that it matters to you. And then, you know, there's a lot of ideas. But, there are so many ideas that are just hidden, oftentimes hidden costs from a carbon emission and from a financial standpoint that businesses can identify.
Jamie Beck Alexander: And then just quickly add to that, just such a great point that, I think businesses and smaller businesses and service workers have such a deep connection to local communities and like have a pulse on what's going on locally, that large corporations just don't. And so they can really engage in local issues like here in Duluth, you know, local businesses are super engaged, you know, have been super engaged online through and speaking out against that. And so you can really dig in on the local issues in a way that you really can't as easily when you're a large or kind of global operation.
Jennifer Allyn: Yeah. And just the final point to that, I would say that, you know, for large companies they've been focused very much on sort of scope 1 and 2 emissions, right? So it's our direct admissions, the energy that we buy. And then the field has been trying to get them to focus on the supply chain and sort of all of the emissions that are, you know, there and how do you help people set targets and reduce it. And for lobbying climate lobbying, we're trying to call that scope 4.
So to extend that, you know, sense, even more InfluenceMap calls it scope 4 impact. So getting involved in those local issues, wherever you operate. There's battles on climate everywhere, utility battles and solar battles and you know, all sorts of stuff happening.
Hannah Davis: Thank you. Unfortunately, a few more questions, but only three minutes left and I was really hoping to end, from just a roundup from each of you on one key actionable takeaway for the audience. And I would have really encouraged the audience to look at the links. I haven't even had a chance to go through all of them, but I have looked at the Drawdown PDF and it is just, there's a lot there that I think will help answer some of the questions that I see in the chat.
And I and I know that, both QuickBooks and ClimateVoice have a lot of resources, but it can be a little overwhelming cause it's a lot. And then we're not trying to create a long task list for you. But from what I heard is, you know, there's a lot of whatever you're passionate about there's many ways to take actions, so follow your passion and engage there.
So if you could each just end with a, you know, something you want to leave the audience with around every job as a climate job, whoever's ready. Jennifer you're un-muted.
Okay.
Jennifer Allyn: Well, I just want everyone to know that they have a voice and that we need more voices, really urgently elevating climate as an important social issue. And so think of your identity as an employee, wherever you are, as a place where you can raise your voice with that identity. And I just feel like we've talked to a lot of people about, you know, you should vote for climate, you should protest for climate. But as an employee, you should push your employer to use their influence to solve this crisis.
Jamie Beck Alexander: Love that. I'll just add, I think so much of what's happening in corporate sustainability work is really like playing around the edges of what, of the transformative change that's necessary. So I think like a gut check is just like sitting back and thinking about, okay, the world in 10 years, given what's happening in the world right now, what in the world should business look like? I think we so rarely actually try it, like take ourselves out of this current structure or system that we live in and think, what do we actually need to achieve in the world? And what, you know, what is the big change that's necessary? And once in a while, allowing yourself to think about that, and then maybe even thinking about like charting a path toward that I think is a necessary, thinking big that we don't often make time for ourselves to do.
Cassie Divine: I love that. And I'll share from thinking big to thinking small. I mean, I think one thing I am reminded of in this discussion is just taking a step. And so I'd love to hear from anyone who has ideas or resources for small businesses. I'd love to hear if you think there's a partner we should have on our Climate Action Marketplace. If you've got an idea, I'm cassie@intuit.com and I'd love to get an email from you and hear ideas that would inspire me and I'll make sure it gets to the right person.
Hannah Davis: Well, thank you all. I'm certainly inspired by the work that you do individually and as your companies do and would encourage everyone to check out the websites and all the wonderful resources.
And just thank you for your work in the world. And it was a pleasure having the conversation today.
Jennifer Allyn: Thank you, Hannah, for moderating. Thank you ladies. It's great to talk to you all
Hannah Davis: You too.
