At Fosters, we are Toitū enviromarked diamond and Toitū carbon zero certified, and those are some key certifications in New Zealand to show you have environmental controls in place and you’re measuring the environmental impact of your organisation to a certain level.

With carbon zero it is all about measuring carbon emissions and how we can reduce and offset them, so that is why I’m part of the process. The rest of my role is around site recycling, using products that are better for the environment, how can we help clients understand that building sustainably doesn’t mean you’re going to build more expensively. There are health and well-being outcomes and from an operations cost side of things there’s really good savings there. It’s an awareness, education and implementation type of role.

That I get to make a positive impact everyday. It is something that will contribute to a better future, which is quite cool!

I think you need to be patient, passionate and resilient to understand that a core part of the role is around changing habits of people who have been around for longer than you’ve been born! So you cannot expect change to happen overnight! It’s important to not let that frustrate you.

A lot of it has been learning on the job, because this is such a growing and new role in general. I can’t just go and get a specific degree and then feel that I’ve learnt everything. It’s constant learning.

A lot about construction and how people operate. It is such a different industry in terms of even how you interact with people and it’s always daunting going on site for the first time. You’re like, “oh my gosh there’s so much happening and I know nothing!”, but eventually you find your way.

That you don’t need everything figured out, and you won’t actually have everything figured out. You just need to take your time.

It’s such an approachable business. In how many other businesses are you able to chat with a director as they’re walking past? Our CEO knows everyone’s name which is over 200 people, and he doesn’t just know their name but he actually knows about them. So, when you work with a company where the person at the very top embodies the values, you don’t just feel like a number. And there’s opportunities to give feedback without feeling like you’re going to be shot down.

Maybe be able to project manage sustainable builds in the future. There’s so much to learn in my field and there’s so many opportunities out there, so I’m still kind of figuring it out at this stage.

Number one is to remember to be grateful. I think it has such a positive impact on your outlook for everything, and two, try to keep work at work and home at home. Learn to shrug things off, otherwise you will never really stop and you’ll never really switch off.

You’re not expected to know everything on day one or day two or even day 100! You’ve just got to show up with a good attitude and be willing to learn and give it your best shot.

• Chemistry – Because it helps you understand what the greenhouse gases are and how things impact each other
• Maths – You are running through a lot of data and you need to understand how that data makes an impact
• Business Studies – It helps you understand that at the end of the day you’re doing this for a business. It’s always good for me to understand what the impact will be on the business before I pitch it to the board

There’s a lot of different pathways to reach the same end goal. What you need to figure out is what pathway is going to resonate the most with you and help you keep pushing on.