Virginia is a member of the Sustainability Mentors core team.
As well as running Green Gorilla Consultants and authoring various books, including SustainABLE: How to Find Success as a Sustainability Professional in a Rapidly Changing World, Virginia is a member of the Sustainability Mentors core team. Here she shares why she believes that mentoring in sustainability is so important and why it should become a no-brainer for everyone in the drive for a more equitable and sustainable world.
Tell us a bit about you and what you do
I'm the director and founder of Green Gorilla Consultants Ltd, a training and coaching business focused on empowering sustainability professionals to make a difference. I founded Green Gorilla because I could see how sustainability professionals struggled to get their voices heard and were often frustrated by the lack of progress in sustainability.
In my previous corporate career, I trained thousands of sustainability professionals in the technical skills to become sustainability consultants in the built environment. I realised that they didn't need yet another technical qualification, but rather to learn how to speak to clients so that the sustainability message got across. So, in 2018 Green Gorilla was born, and I transitioned from technical training and consultancy to coaching and mentoring people on how to sell sustainability, how to become more self-assured, how to present and how to influence others.
My ultimate aim is for sustainability to become a no-brainer for everyone.
How did you get involved with Sustainability Mentors and why?
I saw Daniel's post on Linkedin and signed up on the platform to become a mentor.
I am at a stage of my career where I can help others avoid the mistakes that I made in order to accelerate their personal success in the sustainability field and to accelerate the uptake of sustainability in the world. I'm convinced anyone that has a passion for sustainability has also the moral responsibility to do what they can to spread the word and help the cause. I then got the opportunity to become part of the core team to help move this amazing initiative to another level and help even more people progress their sustainability careers.
Why do you think mentoring is so important?
Mentoring has a key role in every profession, although it's a lost art that I'm hoping will be revalued. In the past, no young blacksmith would have built their career without learning from an experienced blacksmith. We think theoretical learning, universities, and professional qualifications can teach us everything we need to know, but academic and professional studies have the limitation of being fixed in time, theoretical, and divorced from real life.
Mentors can help bridge that gap and avoid less experienced professionals some serious struggles and painful mistakes that can cost them precious time.
We haven't got the luxury of time in the current climate crisis, so mentorship is a powerful tool to accelerate success.
Why would you recommend being a mentor?
As we move through life and career stages, we shift our focus from ourselves and building our own success, to a more outwards attitude in search of meaning. Becoming a mentor provides the satisfaction of knowing that you are helping others, that your own success can help build others' successes, and that you are actively helping the spread of the sustainability message. It fulfils that need for meaning that experienced professionals seek eagerly.
Do you have any examples of what you have helped your mentees to achieve?
One of my mentees, a sustainability graduate, felt lost and didn't know where to start. His degree fuelled his passion for sustainability but didn't provide any practical advice on how to become a sustainability professional. As a consequence, he didn't know what career path to undertake, what he was really passionate about, and he felt just one of the thousands of other sustainability graduates out there, fighting for the same few sustainability graduate positions.
After our mentoring programme, he has found a specific passion for renewable energy sources, and wind in particular, and the confidence to become more visible on LinkedIn, to share news and his own views about his passion. Instead of sending dozens of job applications that never got even acknowledged, he now gets approached by recruiters and he's currently in the process of choosing which job to go for among a number of offers.
What advice would you give other mentors who are about to start working with a mentee?
Being not only a mentor but also a coach, I'd suggest asking as many open questions as possible to your mentee, to really understand what their issues are. It's easy to dish out advice when you are eager to help, but it is more important to first understand who you have in front of you, what keeps them up at night, what are their barriers to success, and to help them get to their own solutions with your expert help.
What one piece of advice do you have for someone interested in a career in sustainability industry?
Understand yourself first. What are your passions, strengths and values? Sustainability is a vast field, and every single human being on this planet can help sustainability to become "business as usual". It's important to understand where you can contribute the most, and how you can use your strengths to make the most out of this experience while enjoying the ride!
What is it that motivates and drives you?
I'm in awe of the beautiful planet that supports our life. I think it's just fair to respect it and give back as much as we take, for our children to enjoy it as much as we did. And I believe in the ripple effect each one of us can have towards that goal. This is what makes me get up in the morning.
What would you say are the key elements for starting and running a successful and sustainable business?
For me, success is the simple Japanese ikigai formula: what you love doing, plus what you are good at, plus what the world needs, plus what it can pay. If you manage to combine these four elements in your business, you have a successful business.
Clarity around your WHY is key to running a successful business. So, if what you love is sustainability, and you aim at putting that at the heart of everything you do - which is often just common sense - then you have a sustainable business.
Who inspires you?
People that work hard to live in line with their values. That are not always perfect in what they do, but that strive to do their best.
We need everyone to push in the same direction for a more equitable and sustainable world, so consistency and progress are more important than perfection right now.
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