The urgent need for a shift to clean, sustainable technologies is the most important challenge of our time, probably the most crucial our species has ever faced. In this session some trailblazing women leaders in this domain share their projects, their thoughts on where we stand in the race to a clean and equitable transition, and the challenges they face in what has for far too long been a male-populated sector. Hosted by Sara Fuentes, President of Smart Waste, and Chairwoman of Women in Cleantech and Sustainability. With: Emily Teitsworth, Executive Director of the Honnold Foundation; Charlotte Michaluk, award-winning young scientist and engineer; Kellie Macpherson, Executive Vice President of Compliance & Risk at Radian Generation; Kirthika Padmanabhan, Co-Pilot at X, the moonshot factory.  (Hosted by Women in Cleantech and Sustainability)

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SARA: I would like to ask everybody on the panel: Please describe a major milestone that changed the trajectory of your career in clean tech. And I want to start off with you, Emily.

EMILY: Well, I’m probably the latest addition to the clean tech industry on the panel, so a little bit of an outlier. But I would say a milestone really is, for me, joining the industry. My background is in gender equity work, public health, and sustainability. As I started to look around and wanted to get more into work on energy and environment and climate, the opportunity with the Honnold Foundation came up, it was not something that I had envisioned as part of my future but was one of those moments where I saw the role and it looked like the job description was written for me. So, I decided to take a chance. I’m happy to say that I am part of the clean tech industry. 

To draw a kind of lesson from that, you don’t necessarily have to be an engineer or a scientist to be a part of this industry. There’s need for executive leadership and marketing and strategy and design, and all these other skill sets that you can bring to this work. I’ve been most happy in my career when I was able to take a left turn and try something totally new. Joining this industry and being welcomed by people who’ve been here a long time has been a huge milestone. And I’m really excited to stay. 

KELLIE: Similar to you, I joined the renewable space in 2013, coming from traditional generation and the utility space. I did a specialized type of compliance that, at one point, there was less than a hundred people in the U.S. that did it, and less than 10 women when I joined this space. I was really fortunate to come into the renewable space and see that the culture was different, and that gender parity was important. I’ve worked for some amazing people that always empowered me and wanted to see me be successful. That’s made such a difference for me. 

I worked for this amazing chief legal officer when I first came into the renewable space who told me how to write an email better, and nitpicked—you know, told me to dress better, and all of these things, and told me how to have presence in the room, and how to use my voice in the room, and just really mentored me there. Then from there, I’ve worked for amazing people who see the value that I bring to the table. That’s been really important to me. 

SARA: Thank you for those insights. I have to say that sometimes when we’re in our trajectory, when we get critical feedback, we get to apply it as a form of kindness.

CHARLOTTE: Yeah, I would say a really pivotal moment was when I first toured the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and got to see the submersibles. I was really amazed by how carefully designed technology can take us so far to better understand the natural world, and how to improve its conditions. But also, more particularly, how they dealt with those space constraints at such an intense level, really inspired me to consider more deeply the space constraints in my work with cargo ships, where space is of a high premium, and really was a fundamental moment for understanding the concept of leveraging density of functionality and being able to make sustainable technologies more desirable or more economically feasible by leveraging and leaning into the space constraint. 

SARA: Out of the mouth of babes, right? Kirthika?

KIRTHIKA: Hi everyone. For me, a big milestone was really moving after 10 years from a very comfortable job in Google. While it was a demanding job, it still provided me a lot of comfort, but I kept wanting to move into climate tech, but there was this voice that I didn’t know anything about climate tech. While I could describe many milestones here, the reason I’m talking about this is many people along the way said who cares, just join; you have some talent that will become useful once you’re in the job, and just take risks. So, I took the risk, left my comfort zone, and started working at a startup, knowing that I may not have a job at the end of six months, and that’s really the pivotal moment, taking myself out of the comfort zone and having people around who were encouraging that. 

SARA: When I think about milestones, I recently celebrated one—becoming chairwoman of this organization. I started off as a volunteer, not knowing absolutely anything about clean technology. I didn’t even know what it meant. I really was just curious about networking, and I was fond of Lisa Ann. So, I thought, wow, I can learn something from these people. 

Think about how oftentimes you start something just out of curiosity, and then it leads you to a path that is going to be impactful. It takes us to this other concept and this idea around women and the absence of women. So, what is the ladies’ advice for maintaining a presence, an executive presence, in this type of conflict? Because it is something for us to share about. I would like to start with you, Kirthika. 

CONFLICT

KIRTHIKA: Sure. When it comes to conflict, one easy way to handle it is play to your strength and know what you can give. What value can you add to the situation, as opposed to trying to figure out why is the other person not agreeing. Right? So, I would say stand tall with your credibility, and stand your ground to elevate that executive presence. It’s hard but be open to the fact that all of us have some talent that can bring that credibility to where we are. Standing the ground will really help in those situations. 

SARA: What do you have to add to that, Kellie?

KELLIE: Well, I think it’s really important, the work you do before the conflict and after the conflict. Right? It’s the relationships; it’s the getting to know the executive team, the leaders on your team, being close to your people. Right? Having those relationships, so then when you get to those moments of conflict, you don’t want to shut down, you don’t want to be quiet, you don’t feel overwhelmed by the situation. Right? But you’re in this place where you’ve made partners, and you have relationships with people. I think that helps charging through conflict when it’s very uncomfortable. You know, there’s a lot of us that don’t enjoy conflict. Right? And so, if we put in the work ahead of time in those relationships it’s so important.

Then after the conflict—conflict isn’t just a moment. Right? There’s follow-up, and then there’s the mending the relationship, and there’s the figuring out how to move forward, and what’s best for your business, your nonprofit, your company. What is best there and how do we all fit together there? So, looking at it holistically and not just a moment in time is going to serve you so much better in the long run.

SARA: That’s well said. Thank you for sharing.

EMILY: Yeah, I would say I think both of your answers touched on what I was thinking, and that’s really about bringing emotional intelligence into leadership, and I think that’s something that’s not unique to women, but I see it as more women come into positions of leadership, that becomes more part of this. 

And thinking about leadership more as horizontal. So could you have a co-CEO or co-executive director, and share decision-making in a way that—our vision of what a leader is really outdated at this point, the sole, older, white man who’s leading the charge and making all the decisions—it never really worked, but it certainly doesn’t work now. And so, we all have the opportunity to redefine what leadership could look like. 

A lot of my work as a funder of local community-based organizations is building the pipeline for solar and clean tech, and helping people who maybe wouldn’t see themselves in those roles take on those leadership positions. So, I think it’s like redefining what leadership is and then helping ensure that there are a lot of different voices in the room when it comes to making those leadership decisions. 

SARA: Definitely shifting the mindset.

CHARLOTTE: One thing that has been helpful for me to remember is keeping in the front of the mind the goal, which is often a bigger goal than oneself when we’re talking about things like sustainability. And it can make any insecurities or self-doubts, or interpersonal conflicts seem a lot less significant when putting it in that larger scale. 

SELF DOUBT

SARA: You bring up the point to my next question. Minimizing self-doubt and calming that internal and external negativity—this moment where you look at another woman in the eyes and you know that they understand that sense of fear that you may feel, or the sense of anxiety from some masculine energy that was unexpected. Sometimes we can understand this, and it’s unspoken.

Share with us in the room, how we minimize this self-doubt, and how we calm ourselves. I often ground myself and I ask for my ancestors to support me, and that’s something that I do in private. At the same time, I also solicit support from some of the ladies that are in the room. It’s critical to solicit support and it took some time for me to allow myself to do that.

CHARLOTTE: One thing that I was thinking about when it comes to self-doubt is how there is a spectrum of a healthy amount of self-doubt. Encouraging more authentic connections and being able to open up and share some doubt that could be helpful, for example, in a research process. Thinking about the credibility of data could be valuable. But also recognizing the difference between the results versus doubt of the inner person and the inner person’s capability. 

KELLIE: I spent a lot of time being the only woman in the room working in the utility space and the energy space, especially on the regulator side, not on the renewable energy side. Something I’ve had to really learn is that my voice is important, and my voice sounds different. Even just truly my voice, I’ve had people say, How old are you, you sound like you’re 18 on the phone. You know? And okay, I’m going to find my voice. But my voice sounds different, and that’s important. I build teams differently as a woman, and that’s important. We’re successful because of the different ways that I see things. 

But I think most important is to really understand that as we’re looking to achieve gender parity, and we’re looking at this energy transformation on the grid, and what the world’s going to look like in 2030, the world needs every single one of your voices. Right? Whoever you are, your voice is so important. I think you have to find a place inside of you to have confidence to speak from that place and to know I may not fit in in this moment, but the world needs that voice, and the world needs who you are. We’re not going to get there without everybody. So, I think you’ve got to come from that place, and you’ve got to know that you are so important to where we’re headed.

SARA: Yes, everyone’s voice. Kirthika?

KIRTHIKA: When I’m in doubt, I usually ask my mom over there. That’s the same as listening to another voice. When your voice is shaky, it’s good to listen to others—so my mom, coaches, friends, allies—it’s always good to listen to others and digest it and see where you want to be. I think that’s step one. 

Step two is to be ready to fail. Open yourself up to fail because the lack of trying is really the failure. Be okay to fail, and then over time you get used to this squashing the self-doubt.

EMILY: I could co-sign all of those. But coming back to what you said, Charlotte, courage is not the absence of fear. Right? It’s acting, even though you do feel fear. A micro example of how that shows up in my work, I work with a very young workforce and a young team, and so one of the areas that women especially get tripped up and feel a lot of fear around is salary negotiation and promotion and that kind of thing. I’m pretty easygoing when it comes to people I work with, and I also know that people – especially early career people that work with me – are not necessarily always going to be in this same role, and so I make them practice asking for a raise, and providing comps, and coach them through that process so they have an opportunity of learning how to do that in a friendly environment. They might feel fear, but then when they actually go into an environment where they have a boss who’s not so receptive, you can push through that fear and make the ask and move up in that way.

SARA: I love role playing, especially around money. So, when we think about women and issues related to environmental and social injustices, there’s this modern feminist thought process around reframing leadership. We’re in a patriarchal thought process, and our society’s been built upon this thought process. My thought is to not to dismantle, but to introduce a matriarchal thought process. America’s built on a capitalistic, patriarchal society. But the climate crisis is something that affects us as humans, and it’s because of some of the ways that we think. We have tragically created our own problem, but it is not our fate. How do we maintain the interest around this concept of the matriarchal is different?

ECONOMICS

KIRTHIKA: I want to start with some facts, because everyone in the world, in a capitalistic world, cares about the bottom line. Let’s talk about how women can impact the bottom line. 

In developing markets—take Africa, India, many such developing countries—half of the agricultural population or people who do agriculture are women. When provided with the same resources as men, U.N. has showed that the yield from these women increases by at least 20 to 30%. So, for those who are capitalistic and bottom-line minded, which is also needed, let’s talk about these facts to them. For those who are a little more philosophical, let’s talk about the other side of this, which is if women were given the same opportunity and they increased the yield by 20 to 30%, this would reduce world hunger by maybe 27%? For those of us who care about the world, let’s talk about these facts. So, I think this is one way I would approach the problem. 

CHARLOTTE: I think it’s really important you brought up the economic angle, because I was thinking in terms of maintaining interest in a topic like this, it’s really important to keep approaching it from different angles. Some might appeal to different demographics more than others, but finding new and creative ways to pull insight just to show how broad of an impact there is when there isn’t this gender equity.

KELLIE: I think it’s interesting, we were talking about some facts the other day in our mentorship group women in clean tech, and talking about how a lot of the most effective nonprofits were bringing solar and water to places across the world, and that the most successful ones are run by women. I think so much of that has to do with this different perspective. Right? 

When you look at successful Fortune 500 companies, which ones are led by women, and which of those women are turning around and pulling women out behind them and lending that voice to it, because there is a different perspective that’s important. I really like what you said about how we’re not trying to create opposition, either. That’s the thing, those women who built those clean water nonprofits and are doing great work across the world, they’re doing that hand-in-hand with great CEOs and great business leaders that are funding them and coming alongside them. Opposition doesn’t do us any favors, and we’re not going to be successful there. We’ve got to find a way to work hand-in-hand with women as we accomplish big, huge things. 

EMILY: I have a little bit of a hot take. I fully agree, and especially, Kirthika, what you said, you have to speak the language of the current paradigm, right, and that is economics. That’s numbers. But also, I have an in-house Gen Z stepdaughter, 16. One of the things I love about the current generation is that there’s a lot of conversation about abolishing the gender binary and moving beyond that. So, I think it’s not necessarily moving from patriarchy to matriarchy. Right? It’s being comfortable being in the space of like we don’t know what’s coming next and we’re going to build it together. 

For me, that’s something I draw a lot of inspiration from. Yes, we have to speak the language of who’s in power, unfortunately, and at the same time, some nugget that I got at a conference years ago was efficiency is not the friend of equity. It’s something that’s really stuck with me because patriarchy and the conversation about, let’s say, the transition to renewables is about efficiency and how fast we can do it. But really, what’s going to serve us is taking the time to make sure everybody is served by that transition. I think in some ways it is more of a matriarchal value, but I also think that we’re in a space where we have the opportunity to even go beyond that and create something totally new.

SARA: Sometimes when we talk about things like this, it might seem a little doom and gloom, and so my intention is always to be a beacon of hope and to have a way of looking forward. What keeps us motivated and optimistic about the clean technology and the green technology industry? I want to state the obvious for me—I’m optimistic that someone like myself gets to be in a position that I’m in because I get to give a perspective for not only all of our corporate members and individual members internationally, but also the women that I’m able to set an example for. That’s something I’m grateful for, and that I get to look forward to in the clean tech space. I want to kick it off with you, Charlotte. What do you look forward to?

OPPORTUNITIES

CHARLOTTE: One thing that keeps me optimistic and hopeful about clean tech is when I look around and see the technology that we’ve already developed. We’ve been to the bottom of the ocean. We’ve been beyond the Earth. It really shows that when we concentrate our resources and our focus onto something, we can achieve what was previously seen as unimaginable or unachievable. 

An example of that is in the 1960s, during the Apollo program, we were able to reach the moon, but that took around 4% of U.S. spending, and I think that shows that when we can really focus on how we use our resources, how we use our brain power and our technology, we can really achieve something that was unimaginable.

SARA: Big, big impact, big thinking. Right? What about you, Emily?

EMILY: I’m lucky that my role in the industry is to find and fund early-stage solutions using solar energy. I get to bask in positivity and forward thinking all the time. I don’t take that for granted because I’m aware that there’s a lot of doom and gloom in this space. 

The thing I’m really excited about right now is we are working with a network of Indigenous-led organizations in the U.S. using solar and doing workforce development with young people in their communities. There is one organization called Native Renewables. It’s in the Navajo and Hopi Nations. They are a women-led organization, locally founded, and they have incredible workforce development training for young people who’ve never had a pathway into the renewable energy or clean tech industry. And so, for me, looking ahead and seeing them as the next generation of leaders in this is always super motivating and inspiring. 

SARA: I love hearing that. We need more of that. What about you, Kellie?

KELLIE: At Radian, we spend every day trying to fulfill the promise or renewables. Right? We’re making sure these assets we’re building, that we’re making this promise to the world that we’re going to have grid transformation that can actually be reliable. We’re working on these assets every day to fulfill that promise. 

I can’t wait to turn around in 10 years and say all of the naysayers about renewable energy, and folks saying that the grid can’t be 100% renewable, that it can’t be clean—I can’t wait to show them and prove them wrong. That motivates me every single day, because I know that we can be a reliable grid with that transformation. I know we will get there, and we will figure it out, to your point, Charlotte, about all the amazing things that we’ve done. Right? This is easy-peasy compared to some of the things you mentioned, but that makes me really excited. You know? Challenge accepted, world; let’s go figure it out.

SARA: We definitely have a lot of challenges ahead of us, and one thing I’m fascinated about around women in clean tech and sustainability is one of our objectives around being a thought leader and giving that thought leadership and voice access to the community. What are your thoughts?

KIRTHIKA: The passion towards the mission is the easy sell when it comes to climate tech. Whether you want to bring more people into climate tech, whether you want to encourage women to get into climate tech, talk about the mission. It’s very easy for people to get passionate about it. I also think about it as small acts are done by billions of people in the world, you can transform the world. So, challenge accepted.

SARA: We have a big challenge ahead of us. Now, in terms of encouragement and direction, something stuck with me: women are hired for what they have done, and men are hired for what they can become. Women must have a proven record, but men do not. When we think about encouragement, I want to be able to avoid the biases. And so, in terms of lack of affirmation and encouragement for us to go forward and having women in these roles, I want to ask how important is diversity at these positions that we are in?

DIVERSITY

EMILY: Very, very important. Going back to the last question and who is in positions of leadership and who’s making decisions, we don’t know what it looks like to have equitable decision making or diversity and representation in leadership. Somebody else broke the glass ceiling for me, and so I think it’s our responsibility, when we attain these leadership positions, to open that up more broadly and to do the same for others. 

We’re just now starting to see the potential for that, and this idea of different models of leadership, and ways of making decisions are the key piece of that. Part of that is also just making our organizations and our companies friendly to women, to parents, to people who are facing other challenges in life. 

One tangible thing we do that I really encourage, and I think has helped retain and grow our pipeline of leadership and diverse leadership, is last year we shifted to a four-day work week. The fifth day is flexible. And it was a pretty tough thing to convince like my board of directors to go for it. There’s a lot of evidence, but we had to fight for it a little bit, and it’s been hugely successful, and it enables me, as a mom, to be able to stay in my position of leadership and to make that manageable. It is something that allows other people to feel like they have a pathway and a future in leadership in the role. 

I always try to think up here around leadership and representation, but often it’s very tangible steps and operationalizing equity that makes the difference when it comes to diversity in leadership.

SARA: Yes. Operationalizing equity is something I wish we had courses on, that they had already outlined pathways on, and so definitely much needed insights and lessons learned from companies that are doing these things. Once again, this is why we’re having these types of conversations, and knowing that there’s hope out there, knowing there are people that are doing and thinking about these things, that are making it a reality. Share with me a little bit about your idea around diversity, Charlotte, and within these roles.

CHARLOTTE: From an engineering perspective, we’re thinking about criteria and constraints throughout the design process. When there is a limited supply of like diversity, it adds another constraint who people can collaborate with and what type of information or perspectives we can pull into the design process. So that stands out to me. 

With my own work, I love to pull inspiration from nature and incorporate biomimicry into my designs. That’s even going a step further with the diversity making it into a species. If we see how effective biomimicry is, and how that diversity of sources of knowledge – bring biology into the engineering – we could definitely see that even just on a human-to-human level how important and influential that could be.

SARA: The thoughts of how simple nature brings healing, how you let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food; how we find so many solutions that are right in front of us oftentimes. I appreciate you reminding of these things, Charlotte. Kirthika?

KIRTHIKA: First of all, Emily, are you hiring? I wish more companies did that. Most of us at some point have done some sort of bias training, but how many of us actually remember every sort of bias, right? If we bring accountability in action to your point of operationalizing equity, that is some hope here, because let’s say your organization or your team or your community has a decision-making meeting, a very simple actionable thing is to have a round-robin appointment of one person as the bias buster. This way, everybody gets to experience the hot seat, gets to learn by doing, and also we get the most important thing, which is equity, done. So hopefully, if you take away a small little action from today is find bias busters in each of your group and rotate it; make them do it. 

SARA: We like bias busters, and we will definitely try to find some. I’ve had to admit things such as being biased, and walking into a room, feeling alone and often not knowing how I’m going to be accepted. It’s important that we be gracious with ourselves, as well. I think sometimes we get into this combative world where we forget that it’s okay to be gracious, and with other humans, to have a level of grace. We understand that we like healthy boundaries as well, so I’m not telling you not to have healthy boundaries, because we like those too. 

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I used to be science teacher but started working for Microsoft when pandemic hit. Hard to even get job interview for internal positions I was interested in. What is your advice for women who want to get into the industry?

KIRTHIKA: I’m an example of someone who’s an engineer, went onto the business side with no experience in sales or marketing or anything, and tried convincing interviewers in every interview I ever had that I cannot do this job, but someone took a chance. I think it’s a good thing to not take the jobs that are not even giving you a chance and take the ones who are ready to give you a chance because every one of us brings something to the picture, and in fact, that diverse perspective will help teams. You can have a neurosurgeon in climate tech—honestly, they might bring a very different perspective to a problem you’re trying to solve. So first, don’t worry about the fact that you don’t have experience.

Second, there are a lot of climate tech startups that need people. So, if you’re ready to roll up your sleeves and learn something completely new that you have no idea whether it’s going to succeed or not, I think there are opportunities on that front.

And the last thing I would say is be okay with the fact that you’re going to struggle a little bit, initially, putting yourself in an uncomfortable zone. I think you’ve already done that by going from high school teaching to Microsoft, so you know how to do it. 

KELLIE: Well, first of all, we have this awesome job board at Women in Clean Tech and Sustainability, so plug into this community. I know for myself and a lot of the other women in clean tech, members here in the room, we didn’t have the renewable experience, but we had a network of people. We had that person that opened the door for us. We’re all happy to open a door for you. Maybe they’re not seeing or appreciating the things that you bring to the table, and it sounds like it’s time for the next evolution in your career. There’s a community here, and we’d love to have you join us. 

SARA: I’ll say one thing too, for you, around pivoting into a career. I majored in early childhood development, and I worked with at-risk youth and special needs children. Then I transitioned into financial services and became a broker. Then I got into environmental services, and then in a global pandemic started my business. So sometimes all the things that you do will lead you up to where you’re supposed to be, if that makes sense.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Has working with Gen Z people changed your perspective in clean tech?

EMILY: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great question. Like Sara, I’ve had like several different careers. I was a wrangler on a horse ranch. I worked in public health. Worked doing outdoor education. I would say I’ve been lucky to always work with young people in various roles. When I joined the clean tech world a few years ago, a lack of diversity in representation across all different like axes, and especially youth in leadership was very apparent coming from these other roles and different experiences that I’ve had.

My role – because we’re a funder of other organizations – is finding organizations that are youth serving and youth led, and helping them develop solutions using solar energy. My team is a millennial/Gen Z split of people that I actually work with, but a lot of the organizations that we work with are really focused on young people’s needs. 

To add to the complexity, a lot of those organizations are outside the U.S. So what young people are saying and what they need here versus in rural South India or in the Amazon in Brazil is really different. I think the principle is really about listening and respecting that leadership and that voice, and not just saying, okay, you’ll eventually get to a position of leadership, but finding opportunities for them to actually be leaders. 

I don’t know if that answers your question, but, yeah, I think age is clearly just a number, and the more we listen—a lot of my responses are very focused on very tangible operational things, but that’s where my mind always goes. One example in my organization, for example, we have a weekly staff meeting, and every month, who facilitates that and who takes notes rotates. So, I’m the executive director, but this month I’m the notetaker. I think that kind of like equity and humility in leadership is very micro, but a lot of those micro practices can elevate young people in their positions. Our youngest staff member is the facilitator this month, and that is not clean tech specific, but I think that’s one thing that values leadership across age groups. 

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I struggle with trying to prove myself to male leaders and leading like men. How to lead as a woman who leads differently from a man, and how do you find courage to do that?

SARA: First and foremost, let’s not be fooled by appearances. I say that because I’ve got a big personality, I’ve got a big body, so I’m not afraid. Right? So there’s this perception of Sara, that Sara’s not afraid. But there’s also a little Sara. There’s this little Sara inside, and she’s a little girl, and she’s afraid of unsolved mysteries. So I look at every person as a person. They don’t have any more power over me unless I give it to them, and the human approach is the respectable approach. 

One thing I was taught to do was to demand respect. There are times where us, we, they will have to. And we will find ourselves in a position where we have allyship in those moments, and you won’t know who that person is in that moment, but you will be thankful because I find my in a position like that in this room, and you will find out who that is in that moment. And I’m going to pray that for you, that will happen.

KELLIE: I think you’ve got to think about what’s coming into your head. Right? And what you’re feeding yourself, and what you’re feeding your mindset, because that’s important. You don’t want to take your mindset from these random people in the room. You want to find the mentors and the people that have things that are going to impact you, and that are going to give you the strength and the perspective you need to stand in that room and say, hey, you know what, I’m a little loud; I’m fun; I want to be kind to people; I want to laugh. I want to be authentic to who I am. You know? I don’t want to change just because I’m in a room of engineers. You know? 

I was in a room yesterday with some top regulators in the U.S., and I brought bagels because that’s who I am. I was like, I’m going to show up with the bagels, and I’m going to be nice, and I’m going to ask you about your kids, and I’m going to want to know about you as a person, because that’s my value to contribute to people. I put good things in my mind that help me to continue to show up as myself every day. And I think that’s important.

KIRTHIKA: I don’t know how many of you believe in this concept or its reality, but for many it’s a concept, that each of us have a masculine energy and a feminine energy. And I’m trying to bring us back to clean tech here. I think feminine energy is good for clean tech because we’re trying to care for the planet, we’re trying to nurture, we’re trying to solve, we’re trying to really show up in that energy, and it doesn’t matter what our gender definition is, we all can lean into that energy. So, to your question, I think leaning into that part of the energy that is needed for the situation is totally okay. I think leaning into your masculine energy for a certain situation is also totally okay.

KELLIE: It’s funny, too, I am curious if you find this. I find you have to lean into the masculine energy when you have other executive women in the room versus men, which is always a really unique dynamic we really didn’t talk about. But that’s really true. You know? And I think that goes back to being confident in who you are and what your voice sounds like, and being okay with operating at a different energy, because that’s what’s needed in the room. So, yeah, super interesting. 

AUDIENCE QUESTION: What other things besides clean tech are you engaged in?

EMILY: My answer ties back to the four-day work week. Just going to put in more plugs for that. [LAUGHTER] I’m a writer. I have a full-time job, and I have three kids and step-kids who are 3, 10 and 16. I do not get a lot of time to myself. Having a four-day work week and a flexible schedule allowed me to finish writing a book of poetry this year. [APPLAUSE] So, completely unrelated to my job and it’s unbelievably fulfilling to be able to do that. And I think nurturing those other sides of you that are not your professional self, that’s what I love doing. 

KELLIE: I got a new hobby two years ago when my 11-year-old daughter—she was 9 at the time—decided that she wanted to quit competitive gymnastics and ride horses. I own four horses and two dogs, and I spend a lot of time rodeoing. I’m going to skedaddle out of here, and I’ll be at the high school rodeo all weekend with my daughters, so that’s kind of fun. I really enjoy cooking, and I really enjoy hanging out with friends.

SARA: I absolutely love flowers. My favorite flower is a lily. And I like to grow them. I also absolutely love to eat. [LAUGHTER] I am also a caregiver. I take care of my uncle, who’s special needs. I spend a lot of time with my family, we’re really close. I live around the corner from my grandma. She’s 85 years old. So when I have problems, I call her. I’m like, “Abuelita,” and I’ll say something to her and she’s like, okay, and then she’ll give me some coaching and I’ll be on my merry way. 

KIRTHIKA: I like volunteering. I also like to watch Netflix.

SARA: HBO. Charlotte?

CHARLOTTE: I’m so enchanted by fiber arts, and what’s really exciting is when a lot of the hobbies can come together, and you can synthesize a whole new activity or new perspective out of all the different activities you do. That can be really fulfilling. I would also recommend pursuing interests independently, but also seeing how you can combine them and create something that feels more even personalized and impactful in a different way. 

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