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What I do... What I do...


Simon Abrams works for Ernst & Young in sustainability – a career choice that emerged relatively recently. Here he tells us what his job entails and why he is so passionate about it


I


have worked at Ernst & Young for six years; I am now a senior manager in the sustainability and cleantech services team. I lead great projects


with global companies in the oil & gas, mining, telecommunications and fi nancial services sectors. I was born in London and my family


moved back to the Caribbean when I was nine, so I went to secondary school in Trinidad and Barbados. Growing up in an environment where the majority of the faces on TV were black and where there were successful black people in every walk of life was a signifi cant infl uence on me. I came back to London to do my A-levels and, apart from eight years studying and working around the UK, I have been based in south- east London ever since. Like most people, I didn’t know what I


wanted to do when I leſt school. But then the career I am in now did not exist when I was at school, so careers advisers would not have been able to help me anyway. I always made sure that I did well at school, which was really important because it kept my options open. I studied mechanical engineering at


Bristol University and then achieved a place on Unilever’s graduate training scheme. Aſt er getting a great grounding there, I realised that my strengths and interests lay in sustainability. So I moved to a job at the T ames Barrier as the environment engineer, while working for a Master’s degree at Imperial College in Environmental Technology. T is opened more doors to career opportunities in sustainability. I’m fascinated by sustainability. T ere are


7bn people on the planet – which is predicted to grow to 9bn by 2050 – the majority of whom live in cities. T e requirements to support the building of cities and the energy, water, waste disposal and fresh-food needs of the people living there will stretch scarce global supplies of natural resources. T ere is general agreement that the Earth’s


climate is changing and, while the argument about whether this is because of man- made causes is still being debated in some areas, there is increasing agreement among scientists and policy makers that it makes sense to take precautionary action now. T is


presents signifi cant risks and opportunities for business. A key challenge is to understand the impact that these global challenges and trends have on business performance and to identify how, by changing to more sustainable business models, we will benefi t both business and society.


Part of my role,internally and externally,


is to infl uence the corporate strategic agenda. What I love about my role is that I am constantly solving new problems. T is is a new area for everyone and the


boundaries are constantly being pushed, which means there are plenty of issues to be resolved and problems to solve, and as an engineer, solving problems is one of my strengths. For example, I worked with a global company to establish the fi nancial benefi t from achieving certain aspects of


its sustainability targets. We were able to demonstrate that achieving those targets delivered signifi cant cost savings to the business. I recently held discussions with two global CEOs in the telecoms and oil & gas sectors as they grappled with how sustainability should infl uence their business. T ey were both focused on


understanding how to address the risks posed by sustainability and identifying potential business opportunities.


A global CEO recently highlighted that


80% of respondents to a salary survey of those working in sustainability consider themselves satisfi ed with their jobs, ‘which goes to show that people who are working with social purpose get satisfaction beyond their salary’. T ese are exciting times to be in sustainability.


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