Roles in STEM — The unconventional journey (pt. 1)
We talk to Executive Director of the US Coalition on Sustainability, Joanna Hall, about her unconventional path into STEM and her role as a technologist.
From October 11th and until October 15th, we are highlighting women in STEM in our week-long celebration of Ada Lovelace Day.
Ada Lovelace week always brings thoughts about the challenges of women and diversity in STEM to the surface for me. As a woman in tech, these challenges are always underlying and something we all grapple with regularly, but thinking about how to tackle it or advise others on the path — well, sadly, that’s not as frequent. Did you know that, over your lifetime, you’re likely to change careers between 5 and 7 times? There are many routes for women to get into STEM careers, some more unconventional than others, and understanding your transferable skills is invaluable and will undoubtedly assist you in any transition from a non STEM career to one in STEM.
A generalist myself without formal education in a STEM field, I had the pleasure of interviewing a fellow generalist and STEM transfer, Joanna Hall, Executive Director of the US Coalition on Sustainability, about her path into STEM and her role as a technologist.
Joanna has spent 18 years in digital innovation and strategy, and is currently operating as Head of Product for SustainChain. Prior to joining the US Coalition on Sustainability (USCS), she ran a software innovation studio in SoHo bringing well funded new products to market and working with enterprise innovation studios. She helped co-found an ad-tech start-up called BrightLineTV. Joanna’s deeply committed to unleashing the power of technology and human energy for good.
Diving into the interview, Jo tells us about her latest venture (SustainChain), her path into tech and advice for other women.
Hey, Jo! Can you tell me a bit about what you are building, why and what inspired you to start building it?
We’re building a technology platform called SustainChain which is a free digital utility that connects people on a mission to achieve Sustainable Development Goals. We’re building it because we genuinely believe we have the tools, technology and data to achieve incredible things in this next decade as a humanity but we need to coordinate our efforts in a far more INTELLIGENT and accelerated fashion. That’s the only way we’ll go FAST enough to make the dent required.
Why are you excited about building SustainChain?
We’re in a very special reckoning moment as a species. A really scary but also incredibly hopeful moment…one of tremendous awareness and clarity around the problems, heightened intention and energy around solving them…and a moment in time where technology has advanced so dramatically that we have this brilliant tool set we can and must direct towards solving our existential crisis! We have more than enough human ingenuity to solve these problems…but will we coordinate and collaborate fast enough is the question.
“And that is what keeps me up at night, it’s not that we don’t have the ability or potential intention or desire. It’s a coordination problem.”
How do you see SustainChain changing how we increase the speed that we solve the climate crisis?
There is so much tremendous work and innovation underway to solve our climate and social crisis, but it is all so incredibly siloed. And so many are just now joining the fight and starting from scratch. Just think about the number of brands and organisations that are just starting out now and figuring out how to be more ‘sustainable’ and what that looks like for them. Most businesses don’t have the budget to have a Head of Sustainability, they have groups or people within their organisation with barely any bandwidth but the passion to get going. They are starting at the zero yard line, often with little staff or expertise. We want to plug them into a collective intelligence…where they can start much farther along the path.
I see our product becoming the central and trusted utility platform that helps rapidly guide folks to known solutions they can adopt and/or other players working on solving similar problems. It’s all about scaling solutions and accelerating the pace of breaking down silos and working together.
What’s next for SustainChain?
There’s a lot to come and a lot of work to do! But our focus is on rapid expansion of the community of change-makers and rapid refinement of the intelligence of the system and engine itself.
Join the chain at SustainChain.
Huge thank you to Jo for taking the time to speak to us!
In pt. 2, we continue our conversation with Jo where she explains her experience and journey into STEM. Read it here.
We hope you can join us for Ada Lovelace Week — use #AdaLovelace and #WomenInTech on socials to shout your support and celebrate the women you respect. You can follow the content we’re publishing this week via the #AdaLovelace tag here on Medium.
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