Twelve brings together team members from many backgrounds in our shared mission of tackling the climate crisis through carbon transformation. As a part of our Be the Element of Change series, we asked Elena Forbes-Allen (she/her), Program Coordinator at Twelve, about her experiences in the cleantech industry and what led her to build a climate-positive career at Twelve.
What is your current title? What do you do at Twelve?
As a program coordinator on the technology development program management team, I support multiple programs that work to improve our carbon transformation technology. My main goal is to provide resources, planning, and organization to our technicians and scientists so that our projects can move forward quickly and effectively. This includes collaborating with our procurement team to ensure that our scientists have all necessary raw materials, facilitating intercommunication between teams and departments, ensuring proper project prioritization, and managing miscellaneous administrative needs.
What’s your one-minute career story? How did yoƒu come to work at Twelve from a career in education?
Before working at Twelve, I spent eight years as an ESL high school math teacher in San Francisco. All my students had arrived in the U.S. within the last 3 years and were emerging bilinguals or multilinguals, often from underserved communities. I loved working in education because it was so inspiring to help build a world of critical thinkers who can evaluate and solve the complex problems that our world faces.
The most wide-reaching of these problems is climate change. When teaching, I often considered how to set up our future world for success. As I thought of the physical climate my students and those after them would live in, the desire grew in me to address climate change directly; the need is so urgent to create a world where future generations can thrive. So transitioning into climate tech was an easy decision for me.
From the moment I discovered Twelve, I found myself immediately hooked and needed to learn more. I never would have imagined that you could use carbon dioxide to help eliminate the need for fossil fuels. I became eager to contribute to the work being done to use CO2 to create fossil-free alternatives, such as E-Jet and E-Marine fuel. I applied and am grateful that they took a chance on someone with no prior experience in the tech industry — in fact, someone who’d just discovered the world of climate tech exists!
What skills from your teaching experience have helped you in your new role at Twelve?
Being an educator is a huge part of my identity, and it’s not something that’s lost by transitioning into a technology career path. I now think of myself as a learning facilitator: as many of my teaching skills have seamlessly translated into my work involving planning, organizing, and communicating between teams. Both jobs involve ensuring that individuals are working on the right thing at the right time towards the right goal.
I think the cleantech field is an especially good industry for teachers because a good educator is a lifelong learner who seeks purpose in their work. Discovering the many brilliant solutions to addressing, adapting to, and mitigating climate change gets me excited every day.
What about Twelve’s work is important or meaningful to you?
I’m continually amazed and inspired by the curiosity and creativity that go into Twelve’s technological innovations. Twelve gives me the opportunity to see how creative people apply their curiosity to developing scientific hypotheses and experiments. Twelve encourages everyone to share their ideas and then figure out which one to run with. It’s fun to see our teams collaborate, get to the root of an issue, and move forward with the solution.
The ultimate goal of this creativity is to improve our carbon transformation technology and replace the need for fossil fuels in major industries. While tackling the huge issue of global warming can feel overwhelming, Twelve values creativity and curiosity, aiding in the development of a brilliant solution to part of that problem.
What’s your favorite part about working at Twelve?
The people at Twelve, and our office culture, are incredibly collaborative, diverse, and engaging. I was worried when I left education that I would go from interacting with 180+ people daily to a few slack messages, replacing the sense of collaboration that I loved. Fortunately, I couldn’t have been more wrong — Twelve has a very enthusiastic, welcoming workplace where it just feels good to be there. It changes your whole vibe when the people around you are passionate about the work that they’re doing.
Part of that inclusive feeling stems from Twelve’s diversity. I’ve never seen a workplace in my area that has folks from so many different backgrounds, including a large community of people of color, focusing on a very specific type of technology. It creates a sense of belonging for everybody, and I think the coming together of diverse perspectives is a major part of Twelve’s success.
What would you tell people, especially current educators, who are considering a career in climate tech?
Do it! Many educators are highly organized, efficient planners with great communication skills who value curiosity and creativity and want to help bring about a better future for everyone in our society. All these skills are valued by the cleantech industry. The work that Twelve and other cleantech companies are doing provides an opportunity for us to continue thriving in this world by addressing the existential threat that climate change poses. It’s a really great opportunity to create a world in which we and future generations can thrive.
In my experience, the opportunity to make that positive change makes it easy to go to work every day, especially with people who share those values. I feel fortunate to have found this position with Twelve and discovered the world of cleantech.
Our team is growing. If you want to join us in our mission of creating a world run on air, browse our job openings.
