Location: Oakland, CA
Do you want to be part of developing an innovative climate adaptation project? Are you curious what it takes to develop a climate action, resilience, and equity plan? Bring your energy and enthusiasm to Alameda County’s Sustainability Office.
The Climate Associate will develop resources that help the County’s 20 agencies and over 9,500 employees take action to prevent climate change -- and address its effects.
1) You will play a key role in carrying out several major climate action or resilience initiatives. We’ve been working on research on vulnerabilities of county services and communities, and will be building on this research to identify strategies for county agencies to prepare for the effects of climate change. A focus is vulnerable or frontline communities. You may research best practices, meet with stakeholders to understand their challenges, develop and share tools like maps and videos with partners, develop outreach presentations and events, support employee champions, and track participation. You may also prepare briefings for Climate Executive Committee meetings, where we get executive feedback.
2) You will conduct research and contribute to strategy development about how to proceed when the County’s operational Climate Action Plan ends in 2020. You may update Climate Action Plan metrics to highlight successes and areas that need further support. This may involve working with colleagues throughout the county to gather data, using Excel to develop charts and graphs, determining the key messages, and preparing infographics to highlight key findings. There may be opportunity to present the findings to an executive audience.
3) Depending on interest and program needs, you will support other climate implementation and outreach efforts. These could include equity-focused training and project planning, promoting sustainable investments, outreach to internal and external partners to share models and strategies, national and international climate leadership, worksite wellness, employee trainings, a sustainability summit, grant-writing, or website updates.
The position will provide significant opportunities to develop professionally, including:
• Gaining understanding of how to implement and evaluate projects with multiple goals, including resilience and equity;
• Learning multiple methods to encourage adoption of climate-friendly policies;
• Engaging champions to communicate a message;
• Encouraging employees in a large organization to make more sustainable daily choices;
• Visualizing data and identifying key lessons to draw from data; and
• Receiving exposure to executive decision-making criteria.