Jim Cassio - Green Careers: Choosing Work for a Sustainable Future

Table of Contents

Green Careers fills a long-standing gap in what we know about green careers. Cassio and Rush have created a detailed, accessible, and easy-to-read compendium of green careers that covers a wide spectrum of jobs from highly technical positions to trade jobs to business-related opportunities. The engaging interviews with green job holders give readers a rich, hands-on introduction to a wide variety of interesting green positions. I already know this book will have a prominent place on my bookshelf.

CAROL MCCLELLAND, PhD, Founder and Executive
Director of Green Career Central and author
of Your Dream Career For Dummies

This is a valuable resource for people looking to find a career in sustainability. It pulls together information that would be otherwise hard to find: salaries, employment prospects and advice from those in the field.

DARCY HITCHCOCK is co-author of the award-winning book,
The Business Guide to Sustainability, and co-founder of the
International Society of Sustainability Professionals.

Green Careers is a marvelous career guide for the 21st century. It outlines the career possibilities, defines the roles of various occupations, provides examples of each, and outlines for the reader the ways and means of entering or even transferring into these new pathways. It should be in all career collections.

MARGARET RILEY DIKEL,
author, Rileyguide.com

Cassio and Rush inspire readers to consider sustainability issues and perspectives when choosing a career. They provide helpful advice and resources for career decision-makers at all levels a must-read for current career service professionals, students in high school through graduate school, and mid-career job seekers. This book encourages all of us to find ways to go green on the job!

MELISSA VENABLE, PhD, Member, National Career
Development Association, College of Education,
University of Hawaii at Manoa

Alice would like to thank her husband Dave and kids Rebecca and Robert, for their support while writing this book, and her mother, Nonette Hanko, as her first green role model and environmentalist. Others she wishes to thank are California Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi, Bobette Parsons, Val Hanko, DeAnne Musolf and all those we interviewed for this book in generously donating their time and expert advice.

Alice would also like to thank Al Gore for personally inspiring her to help write this book. If through our book we can provide knowledge and empower our youth and adults of all ages with direction on how to work and prosper in green careers while helping to save the planet with their gifts, strengths and aptitudes then weve done our job right. The economy and our Mother Earth can both thrive!

Jim would like to thank his family, friends and colleagues for their support and assistance in the development of this book, specifically, his daughters, Marina and Isabelle Cassio, and his wife, Deborah Moreno Cassio. Also a warm thanks to all those generous individuals who allowed us to interview them and to learn from them.

Congratulations on choosing this book and embarking on a journey toward pursuing your lifes work! We wrote this book because we know many people of all ages and backgrounds want to work in career fields that help save the planet in some way. And yet few people seem to know what and where these careers are. What green careers are available? What kind of salary can I expect? What demand is there for these kinds of jobs? What degree or certificate do I need? How do I get my first job? How do I change to a green career? What resources can help me?

This book grew out of a free resource guide on green careers that Jim developed for career development professionals. During his research, it became apparent that there were no current books specifically focused on green careers. So Alice and Jim teamed up to develop this book, which includes comprehensive career profiles that cover approximately 90 different occupations, plus over 65 profiles of real people who work in those career fields, including green entrepreneurs. We selected the occupations profiled in this book not because thats how many green occupations exist, but because those selected reflect a variety of career and job opportunities that represent almost every area of career interest and aptitude. Note, however, that most of these career fields can also lead to jobs that are not green. In fact, there are probably only a handful of occupations that are exclusively green in terms of real jobs. But every day, more green jobs are created and more non-green jobs are becoming greener. This is happening because, increasingly, employers are going green. Some are transitioning slowly, while others are reinventing themselves almost overnight. Some are doing it out of responsibility for the environment, while others are doing it because it makes financial sense.

In brief, our goal in writing this book is to help people of all ages and backgrounds learn about their green career choices and become inspired. We know that aptitudes, values, interests, personality and skills vary from individual to individual; so we did not want to focus solely on green careers that require aptitudes in math and science as some environmental career books have done. Rather, we wanted a new book that would meet the needs of a wide variety of individuals interested in preserving and protecting the environment through their careers. We wanted to help people with an interest in construction work learn how they can specialize in green building as a niche career area. We wanted to help people who have an interest or aptitude for business or sales learn about alternative energy and entrepreneurial careers. We wanted to help people who are strong with communication skills learn about green public relations, marketing and journalism. We wanted to help people who love to travel and explore other cultures learn about careers in ecotourism. We wanted to help teens and young adults explore tomorrows green career choices.

We hope as you read this book that you will be inspired to pursue your green career dreams with confidence and direction. We want you to find a career you feel passionate about and to prosper doing what you love. Enjoy this next chapter of your life. You will make a difference!

Before we get into a discussion of green industries, jobs and careers, it might be good to discuss the principal values that help to define a person who has gone green. However, its not a checklist. There is no absolute list of green values or agreement on how to define them. But together these and other green values reflect an approach to life including home, family, community and work that centers on an awareness of our impact on the planet and its people: