Summary

The Director of Sustainability and Climate is a strategic and innovative leader who is passionate about the environment, net zero carbon goals, green energy innovation, and how her/his/their work can drive positive change. The Director will work within the Sustainability group to drive comprehensive strategies to advance our clients' net-zero goals and enable to progress toward our ESG initiatives. She/he/they will support several cross-department efforts, including writing sustainability-focused materials, grant applications, reports, white papers, and technical documents to ensure that our sustainability message is incorporated in all internal and external communications.

The Director will help to lead stakeholder collaboration with strategic non-governmental organizations as well participate in key industry events, conduct research into new developments, and help to contribute forward-thinking, thought-leadership content to help keep at the forefront of green energy innovations. As a public face for the company, the Director will also speak on behalf of through presentations at company and industry events.

The Director will be contributing to a growing team that believes in curiosity, experimentation, continuous learning, respectful collaboration, inclusion, empathy, resiliency, and fun. Sustainability at is central to the products we sell, and this position will create and deliver tangible data and information that will connect and enhance our ability to sell our products and services on the commercial side of the business. The two key areas that the Director will manage are the supply chain tracking system for products and GHG performance. In addition, the Director will help shape an innovative effort to implement real time carbon emissions performance monitoring for the entire company.

This role reports to the VP of Sustainability and ESG and is a full-time position ideally based in either Boston, MA, Boulder, CO. or in (Southern California). The Director will be required to be onsite for key meetings, activities, and events and approximately 10 percent travel annually.

Responsibilities

• Management
• Oversee a new materiality assessment that will shape sustainability focus areas based on internal and external feedback.
• Help to design and develop ESG strategies for business operations and partnerships that align with international goals like the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
• Identify, propose, and implement Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and manage them within core business strategies.
• Oversee Sustainability related teams at the facility level.
• Supervise contractor projects in sustainability related areas with the strong potential to supervise internal junior staff.
• Sustainability performance
• Responsible for managing and maintaining GHG performance. Components include:
• Inventory and track emissions reduction targets and strategies.
• Help to build the customer facing system to provide emissions performance associated with our products' carbon intensity to external users.
• Evaluate corporate responsibility (CR) initiatives against industry standards and internal metrics; analyze results and develop action plans to ensure the company has a best-in-class sustainability program that includes water conservation, waste reduction and other key strategies.
• Lead long-term execution of sustainability vision, mission, and operating principles, and lead the development of a high-level strategy and plan to support them.
• Manage the execution directly and indirectly for all items in the sustainability strategy and plan, including Environmental, Social and Governance, as well as corporate responsibility and philanthropy.
• Maintain sustainability KPIs and other statistics for company reports, presentations, and proposals relevant to ESG reporting.
• Thought Leadership
• Gain and maintain knowledge of relevant, new and emerging regulations and industry standards. Participate in expert forums, consortia, associations to gain insights on benchmarking and best practices.
• Advance sustainability pilot projects which include managing the high priority project to improve life cycle assessments (LCAs) that will drive down operational carbon intensity.
• Partner with the Government Affairs function to develop policy and lobbying approaches at the Federal and State-level regarding net zero energy for the hardest-to-abate sectors.
• Cultivate relationships within the sustainability community by engaging and running stakeholder working groups on a range of clean energy priority topics to facilitate broader involvement.
• Make recommendations on and provide assistance to build and execute strategies targeted to enhance the business' approach towards sustainability issues.
• Collaborate with marketing, branding, communications, and sales teams to provide support:
• Communication strategies publicizing the company's sustainability efforts and promote broad awareness of sustainability initiatives, both internally and externally.
• Sustainability-focused content including research papers, blogs, vlogs, podcasts, byline articles, presentations, social media content, and abstracts.
• Internal communications programs to educate the team on sustainability and ESG initiatives.
• Community relations support (regional events, activities, sponsorships).
• The customer experience/journey, including sustainability content and resources to support the sales functions

Qualifications/education/ experience

• Advanced (graduate) Degree in Business, Sustainability, Corporate Responsibility, Environmental Sciences, or related degree preferred.
• Eight (8) + years relevant work experience developing sustainability programs including managing teams on climate related projects and Corporate Responsibility. Ideally, the candidate has worked on sustainability for both internal operations and in an external consulting role.
• Self-motivated and highly organized and thrives in a dynamic environment.
• Experience working on Clean Energy projects that could include bioenergy, wind, solar, geothermal, or wave energy.
• Background conducting greenhouse gas inventories and reporting results (e.g., Science Based Targets initiative and CDP).
• Familiarity with life cycle assessments for products and technologies
• Strong knowledge of social and environmental trends, key NGO coordination and outreach, internal and external best practice tracking.
• Exposure to and relevant work experience with the policy, politics, and lawmaking processes around clean energy.
• Flexibility to pivot and respond quickly to a dynamic and evolving company culture and broader sustainability landscape
• Proven analytical, critical, and creative thinker.
• Strong experience with project management and budget oversight.
• Experience with grant writing with successful proposal wins.
• Exceptional communication and presentation skills.
• Experience developing or supervising software projects is a plus.
• Highly analytical, can synthesize information, and offer recommendations/solutions.
• Strong interpersonal skills with the ability to work with cross-functional business teams within our global network and with external parties. Includes an ability to create teams and followership among groups of people that do not have a reporting relationship.
• Proven record of accomplishment, collaboration, authenticity and building an environment of trust.