Rosie Helson, In-House Sustainability Practitioner, UK
In early September, I caught up with Rosie Helson, who works for a tech company in London and is embedded in a sustainability and society team of over 30 people. I asked Rosie to reflect on her career in sustainability and tell us the most important lessons she’s learned over the last 16 years, and what advice she’d give to those early in their sustainability career. Here’s what she told me.
Many of us enter sustainability roles and immediately feel the pressure to start preaching the importance of it, what it is, how it’s relevant. But speaking with Rosie, it dawned on me that maybe sometimes we are too busy trying to win people over to our side, when we should be making time to really get to know them and the business. How does the product or service get made? Which roles are involved in that and what do they do on a daily basis? What are their biggest problems?
Understanding the business
“I’m non-technical, but I’ve recently been meeting with more than 60 people in the Product function – including developers and architects – to interview them or host workshops and really get under the hood of the processes that they work with every day, and see where the moments are to weave sustainability into decision making.”
Sixty people sounds like a lot, especially when you already feel too busy. But imagine the value you’d get from those insights, and how they might entirely change your view.
The importance of people
I asked Rosie what her biggest challenge has been in sustainability.
“I think working in a corporate that is large and has multiple functions, it’s sometimes challenging to know who to speak to to get things done. Stakeholder engagement and mapping takes longer than you think when you’ve got a large number of people and a complex structure, and planning that into projects that you’re running is hard.”
Whatever we’re trying to achieve, in the end businesses are made up of people, Rosie says, and it’s people we need to work with and influence.
“Even though we’re using AI and technology a lot, who are going to be the champions for this project? Who’s the budget holder? Who’s the person that can say yes to this?”
Rosie’s advice is to get to know colleagues in all functions, and figure out who are the people who may work with lots of others and can make introductions, be supportive, and help you have more conversations and open more doors.
“Change isn’t easy nor quick. But internally, you might be surprised to find door openers and champions. And they might be embedded in strange places that you didn’t expect.”
Personal impact
One of my favorite questions to ask practitioners is – what did you originally expect your sustainability career to be like, way way back then, and what does it actually feel like now? Have our idealistic career choices delivered on their promise? And if not, should we do anything about it?
Rosie says: “I had this vision that once I’m there, it’s going to be amazing. I would have achieved my dream job, and I will be happy forever. I will be feeling every day that I’m saving the world. I’m making a difference.”
The reality turned out to be different.
“The reality,” Rosie says, “is you quickly learn that change happens a bit more slowly, and sometimes you can feel like you’re pushing papers around while the world is burning. I am making a difference, but it would be a big stretch to say I am saving the world.”
She doesn’t think she’s alone in feeling that.
“I’ve thought about this a lot because I think a lot of people that work in sustainability are very passionate about the subject. They’re doing this because they love it. They care. And it can be frustrating to not see direct impact from what you’re doing.”
“I thought early on in my career – I’m going to enter a job, and I’m going to be so knowledgeable and skilled that I’m going to just create new programmes that are going to result in massive, impactful projects, that reduce massive amounts of emissions and support biodiversity and all of those things that I actually care about. I haven’t yet done that on the scale I’d envisioned.”
Rosie says depending on what role you’re in, you have to tune your expectations about impact appropriately. Maybe it will be more incremental, slower than you thought, maybe your role will be to be one of many contributors. It’s about balancing bold ambition with the reality of complex systems with many actors. But she still feels satisfaction when she gets a company or project to do something differently, or gets the green light to run with an exciting idea she had.
Advice for those early in their career
After 16 years, Rosie has plenty of notes. “I’ve got a lot of advice!”, Rosie says.
“If you really are in year one, do what I did and run around as a sponge absorbing information and growing your network. I think that’s really valuable to develop your own picture of what the sustainability landscape looks like.”
Rosie says she built her understanding early on of how sustainability “gets done” between companies, consultancies, non-profits, governments and communities, and she chose where she wanted to be. However, she says, she is most impressed not by people who look at this system and think about where they can slot in, like she did, but “by people who think – what’s missing in this system? Where are the connections not working? And then create something new.” She says “I think it’s important to look at it in terms of problems to be solved.”
“If you choose to be in a company, link sustainability to commercial outcomes; find ways of creating sustainability products or services. But first, listen. To embed sustainability into processes you need to seek to understand the processes.”
“And finally, I think you might feel you can’t change much as an individual, but over time, you will find your superpowers. Two of mine, for example, is that I’m a natural cheerleader and a natural connector. So, I help other people across the business celebrate the small wins to keep momentum going, keep morale up, encourage enthusiasm.
“And I’m a connector, so whoever I speak to across the business and external to the business about what they’re working on or the challenges they’re facing, my brain instantly starts thinking: I’ve got to link this person up with this person because they’re facing a similar challenge, or I’ve read something last week that’s going to help this person, or, this person might be interested to learn about a project that I’m working on that’s similar to that.”
Rosie’s course pick
Finally on a more practical side, I asked Rosie if there were any courses or trainings she’d recommend. It was a while back, but in 2021 Rosie did the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership’s “Communicating for Influence and Impact” course.
“They obviously know how people learn, so there are no lengthy things to read through. It’s bit by bit, and they break it up with infographics, interactive elements and talking heads videos of real people working in sustainability roles.
It was a really interesting and exciting learning experience, with good homework and forums where you were part of a cohort and could meet other people working in the space. It was brilliant.”
