While completing the WorkforClimate Academy, Salesforce employee Loreto Gutierrez decided to make a change. She’d been leading the launch of Salesforce’s carbon accounting product, Net Zero Cloud, but her goal was to do this full time.
To achieve this, the Academy helped her channel the expertise she already had: technical knowledge, experience, passion, and a valuable professional skill set.
“The catalyst was that moment when you kind of click and say, ‘Oh, I can actually use the skills that I have today!’” she says. “You don't need to go back to university and do a climate science degree, then a master's, and then try to get a graduate role somewhere. You just take the skills that you have right now, and you apply them to climate.”
For Loreto, those skills were communication and persuasion. With more than 10 years’ experience in technology, she’d always been good at motivating people. “My role is to connect with people and help other individuals make sustainability part of their day jobs,” she said.
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“In my role, I help influence teams to go and have executive-level conversations about sustainability, about our values, and how those companies can incorporate climate thinking into their tech.”
Loreto says the WorkforClimate Academy was a huge motivator in making the switch to a full-time sustainability role. The course provided a good level of context and technical detail, but it also focused on things you wouldn’t usually associate with climate action. Like storytelling.
“The quality of the speakers they got was amazing,” Loreto says. “One of the experts, Claire Scobie, works in strategic storytelling. She did two sessions, and they were incredibly helpful”.
“Changing people's minds and influencing the way they work is rarely about the facts, because we all know the facts. It's about telling a compelling story. Engaging people and having that emotional connection – that was the key takeaway for me.”
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The other benefit was diversity of thought. Loreto works for a global corporation that employs over 70,000 people, so sweeping institutional change can take some time. There are clearly defined internal processes. But in the Academy, she found professionals from all walks of life: big organisations, small businesses, freelancers, sole traders, sustainability experts and other tech professionals. It was a refreshing change from her nine-to-five corporate world.
“I really loved the cross-industry discussion,” Loreto says. “It’s one of the most valuable things about the course. Because I have one view of the world. I’m someone that works in tech and provides a climate-related service, but through the Academy I got to meet people from completely different industries, doing completely different roles. This really helped broaden my perspective”
As a WorkforClimate Academy graduate, Loreto says her new goal is to amplify her impact and spread the climate message as far as possible.
“That’s one of the big outcomes, for me,” she says. “When you give people those tools, or you empower people with the right information, your impact really starts to multiply.”
Do you want to arm yourself with the skills and tools needed to transition into a climate role at work? Enrol in the WorkforClimate Academy and learn how to turn your passion for the planet into a paycheck.
