Although I didn’t know it at the time, my journey to become a sustainability leader started over twenty years ago. Earning a Masters degree has been on my bucket list since my undergraduate graduation back in 1992 and I still wanted to pursue it. But my undergraduate grades are less than stellar, therefore I shelved the idea until recently. After 20+ years of work experience and newly employed for a company that offers to pay for continuing education, the time was right to go back to school. This time I will approach my studies with passion. My one word theme = passion.

One of the driving force for me to return to school is my daughter. As I helped her with homework, studying for quizzes and tests, I noticed how much passion she had about what she was learning. She would approach every assignment with gusto and would not go to bed until she felt she was thoroughly prepared for a test. It was and still is admirable and I feel she understands the secret to excelling is being passionate about what you are doing. I was my daughters direct opposite at her age. I didn’t have a clear vision of what I wanted beyond high school and college, just going through the motion of what was expected of me. Although I was lucky enough to fall into a career I am passionate about, I started think beyond what I am doing now and what I would want to do next in my career.

I plan to stay with my current employer until my daughter graduates from high school in 2020. The corporate education reimbursement policy requires employees to remain with the company two years after graduation. Doing the math, I would need to start a program by the fall of 2016 at the latest. Although I work for a great company, the opportunity for upward mobility is minimal and staying in the same position for another four years will become monotonous. A degree in sustainability will give me new options and career opportunities with my current employer and future employers.

The MSL program was not the first time I filled out an application for graduate school. I had made attempts to apply for several MBA programs. I would start applications but each time it came to finalizing my application the initial excitement would fizzle, turn into anxiety and I would start questioning if a MBA was what I really wanted to pursue - it felt like what I should do but not what I wanted to do. Until one day, during a talent management review meeting we were discussing one employee and her passion for sustainability - this caught my attention. I had recently read a book about harmful chemicals used in personal care products and was in pursuit of switching my cosmetics to ‘clean’ products and passionate about saving others from toxic filled products. I realized I was already on the path to sustainability and started searching for online programs to study sustainability and stumbled upon the MSL program at ASU. The moment I read the course description I knew this is what I wanted to do and immediately applied to the program.

As classes started, I realized online learning is focused on reading and writing. This was not my strength and I worried if I would make it beyond my first semester. If I was going to succeed in the MSL program, I needed to find a way to overcome insecurity of reading and writing. I was my own nemesis and needed to find a way to believe in myself rather than beating myself up.

I was full of anxiety throughout my first classes in the program. I would stay up late reading, re-reading then writing and re-writing assignments to over compensate for the negative voice in my head. I was exhausted and didn’t think I could do this for another 20 months until graduation. The first writing assignment I turned in was a disaster. Luckily the Professor gave me feedback on how to improve my paper and an opportunity to resubmit the assignment. I really took the feedback to heart and took all of the feedback I received and rewrote my paper. When I got a 15 out of 15 on my assignment, I felt relieved and realized if I approach the program with passion I can get through it and succeed. I soaked up any and all of the feedback the professors would provide and applied it to my course work. Slowly I started to gain confidence in myself and I noticed a change in my attitude at work as well. I feel I am a leader, and just not playing a part of a leader.

One aspect I didn’t anticipate is how much we would be exposing our strengths and weaknesses. I know my weaknesses but make it a point to not share them at work because I have had them used against me in the past. My motto was ‘if I know what my weaknesses are and making an effort to manage them, that is what matters most’. However, upon receiving our TriMetrix evaluation, we were forced to talk about our strengths and weaknesses through our weekly discussion questions. I cringed waiting to hear what the other cohorts would say about my weaknesses. To my surprise, some had similar weaknesses, others had weakness where I had strength. This exercise made me realize leaning on others for feedback allows me to see blind spots in myself I didn’t realize I had and I should be viewing this as an opportunity to improve and not a threat.

The turning point from “I can do this” to “I AM doing this” was when one of the professors used part of my writing as an example of how to write an And But Therefore statement in 300 words. It made me realize the voices in my head telling me ‘writing is not your strength’ are manufactured by me and can also be removed by me. I decided to remove the voice from my head and stop being my own nemesis.

Looking back on how I decided what my undergraduate major was going to be, I lead with ‘I need to do something to earn a good living’. This thought process landed me into an accounting major. The further I got into the degree, the more disconnected I was to what I was learning until it got to the point where I was failing my classes. In order to keep my graduation date somewhat in-line within 4 years of my start date, I changed my major within the business college to Marketing - some what of a cop out instead of taking the time to dig deep and figuring out what I truly wanted. I always look back at my college years and tell my daughter if I could go back and do it again, I would study something I am passionate about and everything else, career/financial stability will follow. As Steve Jobs stated in his Stanford commencement speech, ‘you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever’. I find this to be true. What I didn’t know during my under graduate years is if I followed what I was truly passionate about, somehow it would have connected in my future. Had I followed my gut, I may have already been in the sustainability field but I am not going to dwell on that now. Now is a good time as any to start.

As I continue my journey through the MSL program and start to explore options within the sustainability field, I will make sure I am only doing what I am passionate about.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else's life.
-Steve Jobs