What brought you to this moment in your career where the Sustainability Excellence Associate (SEA) made sense for you?

I have long had an interest in sustainability but even more so quite recently when I noticed I could use this in my professional career.  This course was offered via my employer HPE Financial Services and it felt like a great way to align my personal interest with my career. 

How are you putting the knowledge, skills, and ability demonstrated in the SEA to work in your career (or work) today?

Since I have had a passion for sustainability and studied this in university, I already had a good grasp of its history and concept but what this course brought forth was how this all ties in with social corporate responsibility. I understood how I as a professional can apply my knowledge within my business field in IT and finance to deliver tangible results for our customers. My core role responsibilities are to nourish our relationships with customers and partners by bringing forth the smartest solutions they can get and with this the most sustainable ones. This will play a key part in my customer conversations whereas I can help them with reaching their sustainable development goals. 

For those starting out in the sustainability field, what advice do you have for them?

I would advise for every professional to start their journey towards becoming a Sustainable Excellence Associate because most importantly it's the right thing to do to sustain our planet. But research also shows that failure to have a culture of sustainability is becoming a source of competitive disadvantage. It is by no means an easy task but definitely a rewarding one. It needs a lot of time to be invested too fully understand which can get overwhelming. Therefore, there is a lot of patience required and willingness to learn but I ensure it will be the greatest investment to be made.