5 Skills for Success in Corporate Sustainability | Sustainability Consultant Analyst

hi everyone welcome to my channel for those who don't know me my name is tiana bowie and welcome so for today's video a lot of you guys have been asking about the different types of skill sets that are necessary to be successful as a sustainability analyst and for those of you who don't know i'm a sustainability analyst at a consulting agency and a lot of the roles and projects that i do mainly focus with helping to build greenhouse gas inventories for corporate clients um helping out with sustainability reporting and then also helping to design and gather data to build some data interactive dashboards and so from my experience i mean i mainly do work in consulting and you know as an analyst if you were to work at different companies there's really a lot of different technical skills that you can develop but not to focus so much on technical skills right now these are the top skills that i found to be successful while navigating through this career [Music] so the first one probably doesn't come to a surprise but being able to research really well is crucial to being a really great analyst in the industry and that's because a lot of the issues that we're facing right now don't necessarily have the best practices or best standards or best protocols to you know go about this issue i mean there are some things out there that we can utilize but it's really interesting because if you notice not one company is the same all them have different business models different business operations are in different industries are big or small have supplies from different parts of the world are giving their products to other different parts of the world and so it's really good to be able to understand a company and being able to answer their questions through the research that you're doing so what does it take to be a good researcher pretty much if a client or if you have a question within yourself about for example should i use paper bags or should i use um the hard plastic bags that we've been seeing a lot um being able to look at scientific articles and credible information that's out there to then come up with the conclusion um that's pretty much what you need to do in order to be able to research and so really there are different types of research methods that i feel like are pretty important especially when it comes to the corporate world so what i've been seeing besides being able to look at really lengthy articles is to be able to talk to high-level people and organizations so i know i'm still working on this and my professionalism and speaking is not there yet but a lot of the time we have some projects where we're trying to find out what's the gap knowledge in esg in the company and to be able to do that and answer that question you need to speak to all the higher-ups having those separate interviews and workshops to figure out more about what they know and what they don't know and so being able to interview and really get the types of answers that you're looking for in order to help answer a certain question i would say that's another important skill set i'm so sorry i need to just yeah everything um so that's another type of research that i definitely recommend you guys refine your skills on if you want to do more of a corporate role so for the second skill set being able to analyze data is just so important and i didn't realize that that was going to be a big part of what i do until i started working really and you know in undergrad i was required to take a data analysis class and for that we utilized matlab which is a statistical platform and then in grad school i was supposed to take a data analysis class as well and for that um we did utilize r and that's also a statistical platform but that one is free and so if you're wanting to learn it go use r versus matlab and you know it makes sense when you're working at a company right you're trying to understand its impacts or for me working in consulting i'm trying to help a company understand their impacts and with a company that has i don't know like hundreds and hundreds of stores it's gonna make sense that the types of sheets that you're gonna end up getting are humongous and you're gonna have to figure out oh my gosh okay within this data sheet what is it that i need so then i can make the assessment and my calculations but then how else can i use this information to tell the story that we need for the client i know i name dropped matlab and r but really everyone uses excel even apple users use excel you know because numbers they're they're getting there but they're not at the level that excel can work and function [Music] so for number three being able to juggle and manage multiple projects at once is so important and the reason why i say that is because usually in companies a sustainability team is really small and so if it's small that means there's a lot more projects that need to be expanded with this small team for me in consulting you will most likely have a lot of projects occurring at the same time i know right now i'm managing about eight to ten different projects and that sounds so overwhelming and trust me there are some days where i'm just so overwhelmed but you have to remember that project management skill you know being able to look at all the projects that you have understanding which deadlines are coming understanding how much energy it will take to do certain tasks and just being able to prioritize really well i would say is something that will make you really successful in this type of role i know for me i'm a huge fan of utilizing notion and the past while i was in school i used asana and i know some people use monday but really utilize those online platforms man they're much better than trying to project manage everything through a spreadsheet trust me even if it's like a free version for you to personally organize your own tasks i feel like it's been really really helpful in my career [Music] number four so being a great communicator is definitely key to your success as an analyst and that's solely because what's the point of doing all this research if you're not able to tell the story to who it needs to go to and so if you're unfamiliar with what communications is it's mainly just being able to know who your audience is know what you're trying to say and trying to translate and dilute distill all this information that you know so that it's relatable to the audience of whom you're trying to speak to and the two different types of skill sets that i feel like are most important to this industry is one of being able to be a really great writer and then second being able to communicate information verbally and in terms of the audiences that we typically are writing to for me it really is more for the corporate leaders and having that really short and concise language but in the past when i was working with non-profit a lot of the time we were talking to community members and so speaking more on why this might be important for your loved ones your health your community and having that whole dialogue be a little more lighthearted than it would be for corporate right [Music] so before the sun goes down lastly passion is really important in this role in this work that we do sometimes you're not getting paid a lot sometimes you're working a lot and you might think oh my gosh like why am i doing this and a lot of the time the people on the team that you're going to be working with are going to be some of the most passionate people out there who want to make a difference in this world and it's really up to you to decide if you want to and put all that energy into trying to making a difference as well just understanding why it is that you want to be in this industry i know for me sometimes i'm working so late and it can seem like it's draining me a lot but i also think about how because of this work that i'm doing it's going to get us one step closer to a world that i want us to be in and i know that can be very cliche like a world where our grandchildren can be in but it's like you know having that big picture goal having that motivate you every day and um wanting to make a difference in this world and so yeah i hope you guys find a passion um happy to talk more about it with you guys sometime but with that i hope you guys got something out of this video the top skills i thought to be important in this analyst role in the sustainability industry and what's great about these types of skill sets is that they're not necessarily just taught in sustainability school or major you know a lot of my colleagues they came from not majoring in sustainability or environmental science and they've been able to pass along and translate all of these other skill sets i'm sorry guys wait ah like what i was saying a lot of my colleagues they came from outside of this industry but if they displayed some type of passion number one and then had was able to communicate well research well um had some data technical skills and then being able to manage everything that's honestly enough for you to translate into being successful in this type of role so i'm gonna call my friend back but i hope you guys like this video if you did please give it a thumbs up um and if you want to see more of me please subscribe and the button below and i'll see you guys next time [Music] you

Channel: Tyanna Bui

Views: 21,648

Keywords: sustainability analyst skills, sustainability analyst top skills, sustainability consultant, sustainability careers, sustainability skills for entry level, skills in corporate sustainability, Skills for Success in Corporate Sustainability

Id: c9lakuXQWlY

Length: 10min 41sec (641 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 11 2022