Sustainability professionals - who are they?

As sustainability topic is getting hotter across the world, demand for sustainability professionals is growing fast. But do we really understand who those professionals are? Do we know what qualities they have to posses and which degree of specialization they need to have?

Rarely we do. There are still many discussions taking place online and offline about the need for sustainability folks to be more specialized or less specialized, if they have to have technical background or knowledge of business with understanding of basic concepts makes one well prepared.

Those are tough questions and there is no right or wrong answer for them. So here is something I put together to help us. In short, there are three classes of sustainability professionals:

– Generalist
– Specialist
– Technician

More importantly, we need to remember that:
– They are equally important
– They are complimentary to each other
– Each of them is irreplaceable
– They focus on different aspects and responsibilities

Now a provocative question (this one I’ve heard quite often) – do you think we need sustainability generalists?

Looking forward to your thoughts 😉