In this episode, Maya Whalen-Kipp shares her experiences working on workforce development at the US Department of Energy and her work as a marine scientist. We explore how to make jobs in clean energy more accessible for students, climate activists, and climate enthusiasts. We discuss the challenges & opportunities of workforce development in clean energy and clean tech. Maya shares what brings her hope about the future of clean energy workforce development.
In this episode, Maya Whalen-Kipp shares her experiences working on workforce development at the US Department of Energy and her work as a marine scientist. We explore how to make jobs in clean energy more accessible for students, climate activists, and climate enthusiasts. We discuss the challenges & opportunities of workforce development in clean energy and clean tech. Maya shares what brings her hope about the future of clean energy workforce development.
Connect with Maya:
Decoding Climate Jobs - Resources
Decoding Climate Jobs - Podcast
Resources:
New York Bight | Bureau of Ocean Energy Management
Fact Sheet | Climate Jobs (2021) | White Papers | EESI
Job Function Action Guides | Project Drawdown
Global Green Skills Report 2023 | LinkedIn
Credits:
Hosted and produced by Kiana Michaan
Edited and co-produced by Lucy Little
Maya Whalen-Kipp: [00:00:00] Climate change is not a future concept. We are actively participating in a climate emergency. We have this opportunity to rebuild economies, which I have exponential, more faith in us actually being able to do where we could build up individuals. We can build up communities through clean energy investment, through minority found businesses.
How do we make people that have been previously victims of the climate crisis? To be the winners, quote, quote of the new decarbonized economy.
Kiana Michaan: Hello and welcome to Climate With Kiana, a podcast that explores topics of climate, energy, and sustainability through a framework of joy and justice. I'm your host, Kiana Michaan, a climate justice and clean energy.
This show brings you conversations with passionate people working in climate and together we explore the many exciting and intersectional solutions to one of the greatest challenges of our time. So if you've ever felt overwhelmed by the climate crisis, these conversations are for you. [00:01:00] Whether you're already a climate nerd or just climate curious, join me each week in an exploration of climate justice solutions.
Let's cultivate hope and joy and vision new possibilities together. Hello all and welcome back to Climate with Kiana. I'm excited to bring you today's conversation. We're going to be talking about workforce development in clean energy and clean tech. Climate solutions and the clean energy industry are projected to create millions of new jobs.
So a huge part of working together to solve the climate crisis is jobs and justice. Workforce development that makes job opportunities more equitably accessible to more people. And my guest today is working to bridge the gap between climate activists, clean energy, and the clean tech sectors. And so I couldn't be more excited to be talking about this issue with today's guests, marine scientist and renewable energy expert Maya Whalen Kipp.
She shared her [00:02:00] path in environmental work and highlighted some of the important issues in clean tech workforce development. Here's our conversation.
Maya Whalen-Kipp: So yeah, my name is Maya Whalen Kipp. My day job is that I work for the U. S. Department of Energy as the workforce development specialist for wind energy.
So I work primarily on offshore wind, Right now I'm kind of thinking about how to build out the workforce that we need in the United States for the growing offshore wind industry, um, and specifically thinking about how do we make sure that this new workforce is diverse and equitable and building up the people that are going to be closest and within the communities that are impacted and close by upcoming offshore wind farms.
So that can mean a lot of different things, but I, I started at the department of energy as a marine science fellow or canals fellow, which is a program funded through NOAA to get marine science, recent graduate [00:03:00] students to. Work in the federal government. So I started a little bit more as a marine policy advisor to the Department of Energy working in the water power office and the wind energy technologies office and then have kind of transformed into this role thinking a little bit more about workforce and people, which has has become kind of my passion in my space within the clean energy, clean energy world.
Kiana Michaan: Really exciting and important work you're doing. The clean energy industry is growing so rapidly and it's great to hear about your path and your passion for marine science and your work, helping the, the next generation of clean energy professionals. So I'd love to hear more about. your professional journey into the work you're doing now, because I know you've done many, many things. And what really inspired you to want to be in environmental and energy work?
Maya Whalen-Kipp: Yeah, well, that's a great question. So I didn't make the jump to energy [00:04:00] and climate tech until about five years ago. So I've, I've been working in the environmental space for like 15 years at this point, um, started initially in more climate activism spaces and, you know, just getting my footing in the youth climate activist world when I was a teenager and doing a lot of mobilizing and organizing in New York, which is where I'm from.
And then. Went to college and got my bachelor's in biology and environmental studies and kind of thought I was going to go on this like conservation track. So I did a lot of research and a lot of work around coastal conservation in mostly rural island communities or remote island communities. Did a lot of work in the Caribbean and the South Pacific Ocean thinking about the kind of like food climate nexus with communities that are dependent on the ocean and how how climate change is impacting that.
So I did that type of research for a good number of years and then in 2019 [00:05:00] I moved back. I was, I was living in Fiji doing this kind of research. I was, I was in Peace Corps also doing this work thinking about the really direct impacts of climate change on fishing communities. And then it came back in 2019 and really just needed a job because New York is expensive and I was like, all right, well, I got some skills.
I'm gonna look for like general environmental climate jobs and I got my first climate tech job, uh, as a kind of associate, like jack of all trades, really type of role at a ag tech startup. Um, that focused on getting hydroponics systems into luxury apartment buildings in New York as kind of a amenity.
So this idea was to bring sustainability into these big New York apartment complexes. And so I worked for them for like a year and like learned a bunch about just climate tech startup ecosystems and what that looks like. And then after [00:06:00] about a year, I got a job at a community solar company. At the very beginning of the pandemic.
So again, I had this whole vision that I was like, okay, I'm just going to do this climate tech thing for a moment. Can I go back to like my conservation world? But then the pandemic hit, you know, and a lot of career visions changed. And I started working for a company where I. Got the opportunity to think about workforce, because my main role in that company was to build up, uh, pathways for young folks to get involved within, uh, community solar.
And so I was the director of what functionally was the outreach and engagement program, as well as the policy program, and taught young folks about energy policy, along the way, teaching myself energy policy, and really just understood. On a much deeper level than I think I allowed myself to dive in before how clean energy really can play a role in [00:07:00] a climate action.
And of course, it's always been a narrative, but I don't think until having that role, I really saw, like, how. I, as a biologist, would play a role in that space and where my contributions could be.
Kiana Michaan: Maya's not alone in the feeling of being excited to work on climate, but unsure of what your role or contributions are to be most effective in the space.
Regardless of experience levels, there truly is a place for everyone in climate work. Every job can be a climate job, and it's never too late to pivot directions and try a new type of climate work.
Maya Whalen-Kipp: I was really kind of leaning on my... Organizing background and just kind of my general environmental policy knowledge, uh, being able to learn a new set of environmental policy, even though I have a master's degree and undergrad degree, we're focused on ocean policy and ocean conservation work, scratched all that, but like still had the basis of how to learn environmental policy and kind of took those skills [00:08:00] to the energy policy space.
I was, I think like the, Eighth or ninth employee of that company. So got really excited about thinking about how can we build up opportunity pathways for young folks specifically and. Young leaders and young leaders of color specifically in startups, because you have an opportunity to go from like an associate level at a startup to a director level to like being in a C suite rather quickly when the organization is just a couple people, you know, so you can learn a lot about organization structure.
You can learn a lot about strategic planning. You can learn a lot like just business development in general in the startup space. And I definitely recommend to anybody. Getting an opportunity to work in a startup, um, because I think you just, you have an opportunity to wear so many different hats. So yeah, so then I, I left, um, the Community Solar Company to take this post, basically this postdoc, um, with the Department of [00:09:00] Energy, as I was mentioning, to do this marine policy work.
And I really was like, okay, this is going to be my opportunity to kind of build my marine policy world and like my new clean energy interests together. Um, and I was really able to do that at the Department of Energy. Thinking about the implementations of tidal and wave power and offshore wind in kind of larger ocean technology and empowering ocean technologies at large.
And how do we make sure that renewable energy is part of the conversation for larger national ocean policy Because we don't want to be putting all of these climate and ocean observing and ocean monitoring technologies into our oceans that are diesel powered or something awful. Like, that does not make any sense.
So thinking about how we can Support the growth of these technologies is really exciting for me. And then I think kind of, I got this [00:10:00] opportunity to start working on a workforce, which was really how I started when I was working at the community solar company. Thinking about, okay, at this point in time, you know, maybe when 10 years ago, 15 years ago, when I started college, the conversation around clean energy and renewable energy was, oh, we don't necessarily have the technology figured out totally yet.
And then by the time I graduated college, like 2016, I think, or 2017 was the first time in history that, um, solar PVs, like, cost per kilowatt hour was cheap, was the cheapest form of electricity. And we hit that mark. In either 2016 or 2017.
Kiana Michaan: In the last 10 years or so, solar PV has increasingly reached grid parity in many countries across the globe, meaning that the cost to generate a kilowatt hour of electricity from solar is equal to or less than the cost of conventional grid generation in a given region.
This reflects [00:11:00] the rapid and growing cost competitiveness of solar in the last few years. Having worked in solar, I've experienced the optimism of the expanding opportunities and projections of growth in the coming years. After so many advancements, cost wise and technology wise, we are fully equipped for a global transition to renewables, with the challenges now being primarily policy hurdles.
Maya Whalen-Kipp: We can't say we don't have the tech and then people's like, okay, well, it's trying to figure out. We don't have the policies. We don't have the political infrastructure or we don't have the will of the people. And I think over the past couple of years, that has really, I mean, that has definitely really changed.
We have a lot of. political interests, like state policies, national policies, local policies, where we're creating the structures and they're happening. And we've gotten to this point where truly one of the biggest bottlenecks for the clean energy transition is people to actually do the work that is needed to transition our electrical grid, all of our technologies over.
[00:12:00] And that's kind of has been my, my niche moving in the past couple of years. And it's really exciting because it's very intersectional and I started thinking about how all these other people from other disciplines and all these different skill sets can contribute to clean energy and decarbonization of our nation in different ways.
Kiana Michaan: Yeah, I wanted to talk a little bit more about a few things you touched on. The huge learning experience of working in In a startup, the differences between working in non profit government and, and private sectors and research, just the number of hats you've worn. Because I think particularly coming out of school, I think there can be limited ideas of what environmental jobs are available, but there's really so, so many diverse types of jobs across many sectors.
And I know we've talked about creating more visibility for. Jobs that are not in the nonprofit sector because oftentimes those get more visibility
Maya Whalen-Kipp: and yes a hundred [00:13:00] percent. Where do I even begin? I have so many feelings about this very specific topic So I went to Union College for undergrad which is a top school in upstate New York.
It's a private liberal arts school real bougie and I felt like At least in my college and anyone I would talk to, the kind of direction that myself as well as other women of color were kind of being scooted towards, regardless of major academic success, whatever, was like teaching and the nonprofit space, like going into service such as like AmeriCorps or Peace Corps.
Or just staying in school and going to graduate school, which, again, this is no dissing or bashing any of those options, I was in Peace Corps, so my good friends are teachers, you know, I love all of those spaces and they're super important, but it is really problematic when We are encouraging certain demographics to go into these sectors that are proven to not have financial growth opportunities, [00:14:00] and that is not equally distributed across, across students.
So the amount of our young women that are in school that are interested in climate work are often Don't know where else to look besides the non profit space. And then really, really struggling, one, to get a job in the first place, because the big greens will post one associate level position and 500 people will apply.
Like, I think I applied for something at the, at WWF. I was like, oh, to be a ag tech researcher. And I was like, how could I, they not pick me? I have a master's degree and experience. I didn't get the role. I've had people from the startup space, find me on LinkedIn, find me at conferences and like immediately be like, you want a job?
You want a job? Like we need people so desperately. And they just don't have the infrastructure to do large scale outreach and engagement. And like their organizations that they're not household names, like everybody knows [00:15:00] the green pieces, the big greens of the world. So diving in and understanding what are some smaller companies that.
Are doing really important and really exciting work and building networks in those spaces, I think, is really important.
Kiana Michaan: While a few larger environmental organizations are household names, there are thousands of environmental organizations and companies in the U. S. working on a plethora of issues. A small percentage of these organizations are focused on environmental justice.
The amount of cleantech startups is rapidly expanding, and there are so many growing opportunities to work on climate across sectors.
Maya Whalen-Kipp: As someone who's working in the federal government right now and the IRA and the bill are the largest climate tech or climate investments that this nation has ever seen and probably will ever see.
Kiana Michaan: The Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, is the largest government spending on clean energy in the U. S. Past in 2022, the IRA allocates hundreds of billions of dollars to clean energy [00:16:00] and climate solutions and will be instrumental in the acceleration of clean energy development.
Maya Whalen-Kipp: Like, this is an insane and beautiful amount of money that we're pouring into the economy specifically to uplift decarbonization of our nation.
And we will need to make sure that that money is blowing into the pockets of people that have always been in the climate movement. Especially when I was in school, I hated seeing guys be keynote speakers in climate spaces and talk about how, oh, I used to be a Wall Street guy and I used to be like in oil, but now I saw the light.
Now I get to tell you all about it. Some of us have always been in this space and like, should be able to be uplifted without having previously. But in a more problematic career,
Kiana Michaan: but that said, I think it is great that we want people to transition from all sorts of industries and sectors. So we don't want to exclude anyone from this work.
And also like historically about who has been facing, you know, the [00:17:00] brunt of, of pollution and who is benefiting environmentally from policy and industry activities like you. Brings a whole other layer to how are we intentionally creating a more like equitable and inclusive movement and workforce moving forward?
Maya Whalen-Kipp: Oh, a hundred percent. And climate tech and decarbonization work needs to be, have everyone from all different sectors transition. It's just the idea of whose voice is uplifted as the kind of spokespeople for the movement. So I think kind of going back to the idea that I was talking about in terms of.
People of color and women being kind of pushed more into the nonprofit and teaching and education space, which is perfect and amazing and really important for our entire society. But if we kept that same energy, um, into how can we invest in these young folks careers into the tech space and into the innovation space, because.
Policies like the IRA are [00:18:00] putting a ton of money, an unprecedented amount of money, into the climate tech space. And we need to have leaders that are able to pick that up, and take those contracts, and sign these checks, and do the work. Or you're going to end up with the same... Engineering and construction companies that have perpetuated the same issues of carbonized economies financially succeeding in these spaces.
Kiana Michaan: Decarbonization is urgent work, which is why it's important that we continue to provide opportunities and invest in diverse leaders to take on this work for decades to come.
Maya Whalen-Kipp: Climate change is not a future concept. We are actively participating in a climate emergency. And I don't see necessarily a pathway to end or stop climate change.
We can adapt and build our infrastructure to work with it. And you know, all those things take time, of course. And then the other part of it is I think that we have this opportunity to rebuild economies, [00:19:00] which I have exponential more faith in us actually being able to do where we could. Build up individuals, we can build up communities through clean energy investment, through women found businesses, through minority found businesses.
How do we make people that have been previously victims of the climate crisis to be the... Winners, quote, quote, of the new decarbonized economy. Um, and so that's why I think strategically a lot about when I'm encouraging young folks to go into the tech and startup space. And I hope it goes without saying tech and startup does not necessarily mean you need to be an engineer.
Again, I was a biologist and didn't even use any of my biology skills in my work in climate tech. I did more program management and people management. And organizational stuff. So there's space for everybody, um, regardless of your, your academic training coming into that. But, you know, it's, it's figuring out where those, [00:20:00] those opportunities even are.
Kiana Michaan: Yes, I agree. And to your point of there's space for everyone, I believe it's like 57 percent of people working in environment, energy climate area don't have a degree in that space. Um, so I think a lot of skills are. extremely transferable. And also, you know, there hasn't historically been, I think, the level of degrees available with the nuances of the kinds of jobs that are becoming available, right?
Like, the kinds of climate tech jobs we're seeing, like, just didn't exist, say, 20 years ago. So we're definitely in a new age of the clean energy transition and climate tech opportunities in the last five years. Renewable energy and environmental jobs. The amount available has gone up by like over 230 percent and the workforce that's available and has the skills and is ready to take those jobs is not on pace with the [00:21:00] growth in job opportunities.
So it's like, how do we Manage some of those gaps and equip people who are excited and interested to work in these areas with the tools and knowledge to get these jobs and succeed, particularly supporting women and people of color who have been less represented. So I think with that said, um, I'd love to talk about those gaps between the climate activist space and those who are like, generally passionate about climate and sustainability, but are maybe looking to move into the climate tech and clean energy space and are facing some challenges.
What are those gaps? How do we bridge the technical gaps in even language to allow those who... feel excited and passionate about getting involved, but don't know how to get started or where to look for some of these opportunities.
Maya Whalen-Kipp: Yeah. That's such a great question. So I think there's a couple main obstacles that we're talking about.
So as you mentioned, [00:22:00] language, when it comes to language that is written in job descriptions that would resonate both with folks that are coming from the climate activist space and you know, startups or clean energy developers or anything like that, any, any kind of climate tech adjacent organizations.
And the vocabulary that they're using. So I think there's an opportunity for. The youth climate activist world to learn this vocabulary, to learn more about what are the different technologies that are most popular right now, or what are the things that we're thinking about? So I'm seeing a huge, huge movement towards shipping decarbonization, which is not a, like a super sexy, I think topic for general folks, but the more you think about it, everything.
Is dependent on an international shipping supply chain and all of our renewable energy [00:23:00] resources are also dependent on that. So when it comes to offshore wind, we're thinking a lot about how do we prepare our ports and the boats and vessels. That could get out to offshore wind turbines, as well as ship components across our oceans.
And how do we make sure that those are decarbonized ships? So, okay, shipping could potentially, or is probably most likely going to be, um, a hydrogen fuel. Of the decarbonization for a decarbonization pathway. So then you start thinking about how do we decarbonize our ports and create hydrogen fuel infrastructure and pipelines to refuel ships at ports.
So that's just one example of a technology that I see becoming a huge, huge, huge industry that I don't think is on enough like climate activists radar as an industry to get into.
Kiana Michaan: Decarbonizing the shipping industry is a big topic. Traditional fuels can be [00:24:00] changed for a mix of biofuels or green hydrogen.
Hydrogen shows a lot of promise for the shipping industry and it's going to take many years to build the infrastructure to be able to support that transition of fuels. Meanwhile, the offshore wind industry, while more mature in certain parts of the globe, is seeing rapid developments in the U. S. It is a project for the Department of Energy and the Department of Science with significant projections for project development in the coming years.
Maya Whalen-Kipp: Of course, I want to talk about offshore wind. Biden's 30 by 30 goal, meaning 30 gigawatts of offshore wind to be installed in the United States by 2030. So just right here in New York, we're going to have the first ever grid connected offshore wind farm that I believe is just starting construction between South Brooklyn, Staten Island and New Jersey, which is called the New York Byte, and there's.
At least five other call areas out across the country. Um, you can go on BOEM's website, uh, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and find out more information about that. So kind of on a high level [00:25:00] thinking about what are the new technologies? What are the sectors of decarbonization that interest me?
And. what sectors are potentially going to be thriving in my area. So obviously we're very privileged being in New York. We're kind of the center of a lot of things, but Environment technology is very, uh, location specific, so thinking about that. Like, if you live in Texas, land based wind is a huge thing.
Or, you know, in the southwest, solar is going to be the major decarbonization technology that people are talking about.
Kiana Michaan: Maya shared that one of the main challenges for job seekers is actually finding energy and cleantech job opportunities. And the barrier comes from knowing where to look for them.
Maya Whalen-Kipp: My office actually, we funded a report from NREL, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
They found that one of the biggest discrepancies is where students or young folks in general are looking for the jobs and where folks are posting the jobs. They are not at all the same, which is [00:26:00] really hard. And I think it's a lot to even ask a young person to be like, okay, now learn all of these new spaces.
A lot of times I've seen companies are more likely to post jobs on their own websites or on like very specific clean energy type of job boards at most. And like, you know, they'll do LinkedIn maybe, but you know, students are thinking a lot more creatively on how they're doing their job searches.
Kiana Michaan: In addition to knowing where to find these job opportunities, Maya shared this advice for climate job seekers.
Maya Whalen-Kipp: Okay, so three things. Knowledge of what technology, knowledge of where to look for the jobs, and then three, confidence to do things you got no business doing. Things that you're like, I do not have actual experience in that. But, I can tell you a good story about how I learned something completely different and how my experience of learning will be useful here because I will learn this new [00:27:00] thing.
Nobody has been in this industry very long because this industry has not been around very long. So you can't be like, Oh, I've worked in climate tech for 25 years. There's no way. It didn't exist 25 years ago. Everybody is new. Uh, back in March, I was at IPF, which is the International Offshore Wind Business Network Conference, and I was in a workforce panel, and during the panel, they had everybody do like a little survey on their phone, and that asked like, how long they've been working in offshore wind, and like, how 60 or 70 percent of people said that they were working in offshore wind less than a year, which is crazy.
Everyone has kind of this feeling of, Oh, I don't know what I'm doing because there's no way to, you just got to keep going. And like when you're telling your story of, okay, I'm interested in climate and I'm really good at marketing or [00:28:00] I'm really analytical person and I've done all this data analysis stuff, but I just did analysis stuff.
When I was, I don't know, an intern at Google or Target headquarters or something. Okay, but just tell the story of how you got the skill, you're really good at whatever X skill is. My skill is environmental policy, understanding kind of complex policies in general. Because that's all people are really looking for at this point.
Nobody's looking for you to be a technology expert in their niche technology. So like some conference exercises.
Kiana Michaan: As you were telling that story about being at the conference, it definitely. It brings up for me the, the fact that I think we all have to be. Constantly open to learning and growing, but as I kind of mentioned before, a lot of the skills you need for clean energy, climate tech jobs aren't necessarily taught in school, you need to learn on the job, plus just the general industry and political and technical landscape is changing really rapidly.
Policy comes out all the [00:29:00] time that changes the way that you're able to work, you know, clean energy is very much at the whim of policy and, and government funding. So as you said, coming into it for the first time, just having that ability to learn as you go. And then a lot of other skills are. I would say transferable from a variety of, of other experience and industry.
But yeah, and I think you mentioned before as well, technically we are very ready to move forward in this energy transition. And a lot of the barriers very much are political, financial, and not, not technological. Not to say that there aren't technical challenges, certainly when it comes to like upgrading the grid and interconnection, like there are huge challenges, but we have the tools to address them and move forward.
So it's just like a very exciting time, as you mentioned, with the IRA, and it seems like the most political will we've had in this country to move forward to see those advances happening. And that's, I think, It's exciting to [00:30:00] me as well, as you mentioned, how deeply intersectional this work is.
Maya Whalen-Kipp: Yeah, definitely.
And I'll also make a plug for, like, we're talking a lot about kind of pathways for folks that came from kind of college climate activists, but there is a huge investment in apprenticeship programs and technical programs through technical training schools, specifically in offshore wind. that are, you know, we're, we're not talking about like minimum wage type of jobs.
Like you can be making like 160, 150, well over six figures at doing some of these more technical, either electric, electrical, underwater welding, um, union level jobs. And that is something that we at the Department of Energy are having a lot of conversations about, um, and working with a
technical training programs. So really thinking outside of the box and how [00:31:00] you want to contribute and that there is, is, there is no right or wrong way. You're not like more of a climate tech or environmental professional in any one direction unless you are actively blowing up mountaintops to, you know, to mine for oil.
Just don't get into mountaintop removal and like, we good, we gonna figure it out. I think there's opportunities for you. So. I think really just thinking outside the box on what that actually means because when you're, when you're really just starting to get into it, forcing yourself to be in a space that is not, doesn't fit for you and how you work is just, is going to burn you out and then you're not going to want to move forward.
Kiana Michaan: That's a really important point that regardless of your educational background, there is space for you in, there's many pathways and I really do. I appreciate the thing like every job is a climate job in the sense that climate touches everything. Yeah, regardless of what you [00:32:00] do or what you enjoy doing, ways to find, to integrate climate work into perhaps a current role you hold or to find roles that speak to your, you know, unique skill sets and interests.
So given everything Maya shared, I was curious to know what are the skills that she's seeing as the most needed and in demand in the clean energy and climate tech space?
Maya Whalen-Kipp: So in addition, in addition to my day job at the Department of Energy, I'm also doing this fellowship called Hotel One, um, with the National Resource Defense Council's E2 branch.
The fellowship was designed to support young people thinking about environmental entrepreneurship and building up that ecosystem. So I have developed a Online database, which is just a Google Drive and some Google sheets that kind of decode the climate tech space. So thinking about how do we decode the vocabulary?
How do we decode where some of these job [00:33:00] boards are? And once I get to the job board, what do I do? What are the things that I should be looking for? What are the words that I should be searching? I wish it was as easy as, I would like a climate job, Google, and then Google would just show you all of the right applications that you need to fill out.
That's not how it works. As we were mentioning, there's a huge, I think, movement towards more and more job boards, and more and more, Entities that are helping, but kind of just tracking it all and figuring out where all this stuff even is and how to navigate it is really intimidating. So that's kind of what I'm getting at with, with my work with E2 is creating this database, um, as well as creating a podcast specifically talking about.
How people get into the climate tech space in various different subsectors. Um, so I actually did one of my first episodes with Climate [00:34:00] People, um, and the founder of that org, uh, which is a recruiting company specifically focused on recruiting for high level roles at climate tech startups. And then I'm also going to be doing one next week on the blue economy.
So thinking about ocean jobs, ocean technology, everything from aquaculture to ocean observing, ocean monitoring to, of course, offshore wind and renewable energies and fishery management. All these different things that have so many jobs associated with them. And so thinking about how do we just decode a lot of this work that's already happening out there.
Kiana Michaan: As we near the end of our conversation, I asked Maya, what gives you hope for the future of the clean energy workforce and the accessibility of professional opportunities? And where do you see there being the most growth and opportunities for those looking to move into the climate tech space?
Maya Whalen-Kipp: Yeah, I think one, the reason I have the most faith is because people are having conversations [00:35:00] like this.
And I say people, it's not just you and me as friends, it's the Biden administration. You know, like we're talking about people with real power being like, Hey, we actually need to think really critically about the workforce of the new economy. And who are these people going to be? These are big conversations that were not happening at such depths five, ten years ago.
Um, and now have become the talking point of some of the biggest policies that are happening right now in the federal government. So that's really exciting to see. Also, just the huge investment from the private sector. So yes, the federal government is putting a lot of money behind these ideas. But also.
Venture capital is just looking for the next great opportunity. Climate tech is one of the fastest growing investment spaces and that means that there's a lot of money being thrown around and that means a lot of opportunities for people to work on novel ideas that are [00:36:00] excited and passionate and driven to just get their hands dirty and do the work.
I'm a little, I'm a little hesitant to say any one professional skill is more desirable. Of course, you can say... Mechanical engineering or ocean engineering or software engineering are important, but lawyers are important. Oh my gosh, lawyers are so important. People that are in finance are important.
People that understand material science, chemists, physicists, political scientists, everyone in between, logistics people, analytical people, designers, everything. And The biggest thing everybody is saying every amount of leadership is just we need more people. We need more talented and excited people.
Kiana Michaan: I'll ask you one more, one final question, which is what continues to inspire you in your work and what brings you joy?
Maya Whalen-Kipp: It's definitely the people that I get to work with. The [00:37:00] community around climate tech and the environmental movement is really unmatched. And I feel like this is what's gonna always bring us up. I get to talk to a lot of young people. I get to talk to a lot of people that are really frustrated and scared about the climate crisis, but being able to see people go Oh, this is something that's bringing me a lot of anxiety to, Oh, I'm doing something active about this.
And that's empowering. Cause I definitely think that marries my own journey. Like back when I was doing coastal research, my, my master's thesis on sea cucumbers, which are really important for coral reef ecosystems. And I've spent a lot of time in coral reef ecosystems and just saw really firsthand the impacts of
a climate change on coral bleaching, you know, talking to community elders that would say, Oh yeah, 15, 20 years ago, the ocean, the low tide was all the way out there. And now low tide is all the way over here and we've had to move our house. That's [00:38:00] really hard as a biologist. Like we're in love with nature and in love with the community and just.
Being bombarded on how terrible everything is all the time. Working in the solution space is so much more empowering and like, I think it's for me personally, better for my mental health. We have enough science that says how bad things are. We've proven, proven it, but. I think it's really empowering to get out of that mindset of spending your whole day just looking at climate data and how bad it is.
Kiana Michaan: Yes, I, I mean, those sea cucumbers sound fascinating. Love to hear more about that another time. But, um, we have so many solutions and they are slowly but surely being put into, into action. Um, and I think already a lot of time and effort has been put into strategizing and, and making things. technically viable, and we're very much in a moment of implementation for so many of these solutions.
So yes, I'm glad that [00:39:00] continues to inspire you in your work because it does for me as well. And yeah, grateful to have to be in conversation with you today. Thank you so much, Maya.
Maya Whalen-Kipp: Yeah, thank you.
Kiana Michaan: Thank you all for listening to today's episode with Maya Whalen Kipp. If you are interested in working in climate, clean energy, or climate tech, or if you know someone who is, please explore the resources in the show notes. See you next week for another episode, and until then, be well and be joyous.
Climate with Kiana is hosted and produced by me, Kiana Michaan. This episode was co produced, edited, and sound designed by Lucy Little. Theme music by Colette Michaan. This podcast is recorded and produced in New York City on unceded Munsee Lenape land.
If you enjoyed the episode, please share it with a friend, leave a comment, and subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts. For more information about the guests and topics discussed, please visit climatewithkiana. com.[00:40:00]