What role do you think education plays in empowering women to take on leadership roles ? How can we improve access to that education ?
Nina Eisenman I encourage any people at any point in their career , regardless of where they ’ re coming from , to go back to school . You can come into sustainability from so many different places and so many different facets of sustainability are needed . We need everybody .
Christina Shim I think people do feel like they need to have a specific sustainability background to be in sustainability – that ’ s nonsense .
You don ’ t necessarily need whatever sustainability certificate – although they ’ re wonderful , and there ’ s actually a lot of free options now , which makes it more accessible . Because this is an ongoing and all pervasive issue across all industries it doesn ’ t matter where you ’ re coming from . If you have the intention and desire to do something , we need folk – and that includes folk very junior all the way to senior – that are passionate .
Kristen Siemen I think we talk a lot about green jobs . I always say we need to green all jobs .
We need to find a way that everyone has it as a core of their curriculum and in their everyday world .
Christina Shim Especially if we ’ re thinking about embedding it within businesses , then it ’ s got to be part of everyone ’ s job . The more that people are aware of how they can bring their skill sets the more powerful and impactful this will be . That ’ s how you scale .
Kristen Siemen It ’ s a journey . I think we ’ ve made great progress , but we ’ ve got a long way to go . We are thinking about it from the engineer at the very beginning to the materials they ’ re selecting and the equipment we ’ re selecting for our facilities .
Traditionally we ’ ve built or engineered a vehicle with design for manufacturing and serviceability . Now we need to design for recyclability and disassembly so that we can think about remanufacture and how we really bring in a full lifecycle and circularity into the whole vehicle development process .
We ’ re at stages along the way but there ’ s a long way to go . WATCH NOW
Women In Sustainability Panel at Sustainability Live Climate Week NYC
108 January 2025