Interview with Megan McFarlane: Sustainability Consultant and Ecolint Alumna

Photo 1: https://www.consultdss.com/about/careers/a-day-in-the-life-of-megan-mcfarlane/

(Note: This would typically be a Nations Voice Career Podcast episode. However, due to technical difficulties, we are providing a condensed, edited transcript for this episode instead of the audio.)

Charlotte: Welcome back to the Nations Voice Career Podcast. Today, we have Megan McFarlane to tell us about her exciting career. Thank you so much for joining us.

Megan: Thanks for having me.

Charlotte: Can you give the listeners an idea of what your job is?

Megan: Yes. So, my job role is a sustainability consultant. And what that means in practice is I help companies improve their sustainability, whether it's from a circular economy perspective – so how they can better align with the circular economy and be sustainable in their production – or whether it's just helping companies reach a specific target or helping them with their greenhouse gas emissions and reporting, things like that. So, within sustainability, there is a big range of things that we do.

Charlotte: Wow, super interesting and very topical with climate change and rising emissions. Did you always know that you wanted to work in sustainability?

Megan: Not always, but a little bit. At school, I loved geography, and I loved the environmental geography part more than the social part. No offense to any social geographers! It just spoke to me more, and I think I got into it because growing up in Switzerland, obviously, it's beautiful and mostly super clean. That also led me to be a bit outdoorsy, and I loved spending time in nature. I think that combined with loving geography and seeing what things you could learn and what you could go into, I think I knew from then that I  wanted to go down that route. So that's what actually led me to my university degree and then now this. So, it started at school and growing up.

Charlotte: That's great. That actually perfectly leads on to my next question, which was how did you get into this career, and how did your education help prepare you for this?

Megan: Geography was the passion, and then I took that and went to university for environmental science. At the time, it was still quite a specific subject to study at uni. Sustainability is still a new topic in the grand scheme of things, even though it shouldn’t be. So it's very exciting. So once I did a bachelor's in environmental science, it was more science-based. But through doing that, I learned that there were other routes. 

I was on a course with environmental geographers, which was technically just a bit different. I took some modules from those as well.

Actually, after finishing university, I didn't even know what consultancy was or what it was about. And I actually went straight into volunteering programs. So I volunteered in Greece for a while at a sea turtle conservation organization. It was super cool. That was very much like, “I'm in it, I'm working for an NGO. I'm actively protecting an endangered species.” But then very quickly realized that with NGOs in that way, it's only ever going to be voluntary, and I needed a real job. So, I came back, and it was right during COVID that I finished that. I was looking for something more permanent, like constant work, which was difficult because of COVID. And I actually fell into it just through some contact. I found this company, and I got in touch with the guy who owned it, and he invited me for a meeting. And then, slowly, slowly, I was passed up to different people for meetings. And then eventually,y they offered me this job once they explained what consultancy was all about. So that's how I got there.

Charlotte: Oh, wow. And consultancy is the main aspect of your job. What does that entail?

Megan: Yeah, so consultancy is weird, and a lot of people tell you now, because this is what they told me, that you basically become an expert in many things. Whereas in a normal internal job, you're just the expert of what your job is. Whereas consultancy is, you have to go into someone else's job, figure out what their challenges are, what they need, and then quickly become an expert on it yourself and then guide them. So that's what we do. It's very much like you're not just an expert on one particular thing. You've got quite a lot of different projects and different things going on, and you are balancing them and trying to figure them out and trying to create the most impact for the clients.

Charlotte: It was mentioned that you are a consultant at DSS+. How does this work? Do they help you find clients?

Megan: So, DSS+ is the consultancy. I just work in the sustainability practice. They also have practices in safety and operational excellence. We as the consultancy will contact other businesses or other companies and get in touch and say like, "Hi, we're here. This is what we do. Do you have any issues in any of these topics? Can we help you?" And either they say yes or no, or sometimes the clients will come directly to us if they already know of us, saying, "We've got this specific problem. Please, can you help us?" That’s a lot of the work that I do. For example, once we had a client come to us, and they wanted to know about a new legal regulation out about packaging waste and how companies are responsible for dealing with their own packaging waste. And they weren't sure what the specific requirements were because they had operations in different countries. They didn't have enough people on their team to figure it out, which is why they hired us. So we were like, "Okay, what countries are you in? What are the legal regulations in each of these countries? What do you need to do? Is there any way we can have one solution for all and then just make little tweaks depending on what the different country differences are?" And so it's about them being compliant with legal regulations so they don't get in trouble, but also about being efficient.

Charlotte: That makes sense. It sounds like you have to use a lot of quick problem-solving and critical thinking in your job. What would you say are the other skills that you use most in your job?

Megan: Definitely people skills, because we are a global company. We have clients all over the world. Being aware and able to speak to anyone from any country, knowing the different social nuances, knowing cultural specifications, I think that's really important and it's really helpful because at the end of the day, the client is a person doing their job and needs help. There are a lot of times in the corporate world when you can get caught up on being super professional and the way things should be done, but at the end of the day, you're just a person helping another person. So you need to have a level of building trust with someone and being able to talk to them openly and honestly, and vice versa, because it also makes for a better relationship if you were just reaching them on a personal level rather than a professional company level.

Charlotte: That makes sense. Okay, we're taking a bit of a turn now. This is one of my favorite questions. What does a typical day in your work life look like?

Megan: It depends. Requests come in from all over the place on any given week. So sometimes it can be crazy, and sometimes it is more chilled. So there's a bit of a roller coaster effect. But, for example, a normal day-to-day at the moment would be me helping one client with their packaging regulations, as I mentioned. Also, there's a big focus on e-waste and batteries and how to dispose of e-waste batteries properly because they're tricky things to recycle. So, working on something like that for a client and then maybe moving to another client project where I'm looking at ESG – environmental, social, and governance. For example, if the client's an investor, before they invest in the company, they want to know if the company has a good ESG score. So, we would do a little research into the company, check if they have a sustainability report, for example, if they measure their greenhouse gas emissions, if they have a diverse workplace, if they have things set up for their employees' well-being. All these kinds of things before going back to the client. Then, the other side of consultancy is more building the business, so writing proposals for clients. For example, “These are the challenges you told us about. This is what we can help you with through X, Y, Z procedures that we have." It could look like anything, but that's a normal day for me now.

Charlotte: Oh, wow. Sounds busy. What would you say are some of the biggest challenges that companies or your clients face when trying to become more sustainable?

Megan: The biggest challenge I've recently realized is number one: cost. So, being sustainable is a cost. And although these regulations are coming in and making it mandatory, companies still have to pay, well, either us to advise them or they have to pay someone to do their sustainability report. In terms of, for example, working with companies on e-waste, if the law isn't in place, it's like, "Well, it's not required by law, but it's the right thing to do." And that's even harder because if it's costly, it's difficult for companies to get the buy-in from their management that, "Oh, we should do this. It costs this." And we need to make a profit, and this is a cost, and it's not technically required, so why are we doing it? 

So the biggest challenge for me is proving to people why they should do something that isn't legally required and why they should pay to do that. The answer is in the long term because, you know, climate risk will be averted. But it's difficult for companies to think longer term. That's one of the challenges between our consultancy itself being a sustainability practice and the other practices in health and safety. If someone has an accident in the workplace, the response is immediate. That shouldn't have happened. What should we have done? What should have been in place to prevent the accident? How should we improve this in the future? It's a super quick response. Sustainability issues are like, "Oh, you know, in 10 years, this river will flood our office." That's one of the personal challenges that I'm still grappling with – that it's actually important, and it'll actually come around to get you in the end.

Charlotte: Linking onto that, with the rise of leaders that don't necessarily believe in the full effects of climate change, are you worried about the impact of policies like anti-climate action policies on the work you do?

Megan: Yeah, definitely. It's something we've had to highlight. I mean, just today, I had to change a document I was writing about a company's ESG goals because it operates in the EU, where environmental laws are absolutely coming into effect. So, I had to remove a sentence stating that it was required in all locations because, in one of their other countries of operation, the opposite is true. It's likely that those legal requirements will be removed.

Charlotte: Oh, I understand. It's hard. What's the best and worst part of your job, would you say?

Megan: Ooh, the best part is the ability to be on a lot of varying different projects and learn a lot from each of them. So as projects come in, you can say the projects that you are most interested in doing, but at the end of the day, if certain projects come in that are on different topics and they need the people to do that, then you just have to do it. But it means that you become knowledgeable about all these different expertise that you are providing. So I think that's definitely the best part.

The worst part, I think, would be timesheets! Because we work on lots of projects with lots of different clients, we have to note down how much time we spend on each. At the end of the week, we have to submit that in a timesheet, which is however many hours on each project. And we're now supposed to do it weekly. Some people still do it monthly, but they get told off, and we have to do it weekly. When you're super busy and you're doing the work, you don't have a timer next to you tracking hours. So it's difficult. It's just one of those annoying tasks that you'd rather not do.

Charlotte: Okay. I have two more questions because I'm conscious of time. Where do you see the field of sustainability consulting in the next 10 years with the increasing severity of the consequences of climate change?

Megan: I think it's definitely still needed because laws and regulations will still be coming in, and companies will need help to keep up with them. But then, on the other hand, honestly, everything could change. Countries could scrap things like that, like we're seeing at the moment anyway. And it's just such an evolving landscape and such like a weird place to be in that I obviously don't know for sure, but I do still think it will be needed because I think some companies know it's the right thing to do even if the law is not there, and they'll do it so we'll be there for them.

Charlotte: And then lastly, what are the next steps for you personally in your career? Where can you see yourself in the future?

Megan: I'd like to become more of an expert on a particular topic within consulting. For me, e-waste management and policy monitoring are big, so I'd like to be a bit more knowledgeable in that area. And then potentially either moving consultancy, so moving to something more specific, like maybe biodiversity, is a route I'd like to go down. So, helping companies with their biodiversity goals because that's something that's even newer than sustainability but still coming up. And then maybe if I ever am done with consultancy, I'll try and get a job as a sustainability manager or something at a cool company. I don’t know!

Charlotte: Ooh, I like that. That sounds exciting. Anyways, thank you so much for being on the podcast. It was so insightful to hear everything about your career, how you got there, the best parts, the worst parts. Before we go, do you have anything else to say to the listeners? Any advice for students wanting to go into a career like yours?

Megan: Yeah. First of all, don't worry. You'll find what you're meant to do eventually, no matter how long it takes. If you want to go into sustainability, geography was the route I went down. However, there are lots more specific courses at university now. There are also other things you could do that aren't necessarily through university. There are other schemes and courses you could do to get licenses. If you want to go down the ecology route, become an ecologist. Just use the people around you, use your connections, and you'll find something. Also, shout out to Ms. Mart and Mr. Allaway!

Charlotte: Yes! We love them. Thank you so much. Make sure you tune in for the next episode, which will also be exciting. Bye!