Career advice from AECOM's global ESG advisory lead

For those interested in career opportunities related to sustainability, the good news is that the sector is a broad tent with “many characters and dispositions that are suited to varying roles,” according to Robert Spencer, who has spent a quarter of a century working in many aspects of sustainable development. “To take a binary restaurant analogy, do you like being front of house, engaging with the customers, and creating an experience that they’ll remember? Or are you a creative/innovator working in the kitchen with your team of experts on the next taste sensation? I probably fall into the first category,” Spencer told Devex. As an environmental, social, and governance, or ESG, adviser specialist, Spencer helps clients define and build their ESG goals and programs. This involves action planning and prioritizing what the key ESG issues for that organization are, thinking about how to address them, and getting buy-in from its workforce all while responding to any investor needs. “All of these are things that people need support to think about [because] they've not done [them] before. It's not like your annual budget, which people have been doing for centuries. This is all new stuff,” Spencer, who became the global lead for ESG advisory at AECOM in March, emphasized. While he now identifies himself as somewhat of a generalist, Spencer also highlighted the benefit of acquiring a degree of specialization that organizations can rely on when integrating sustainability and making net-zero part of their strategic growth — drawing from his previous experiences in land use and forestry development across the first 10 years of his working life. In a recent interview, Spencer shared further insights into how he's successfully navigated a career that's led to his current leadership position with AECOM and what aspiring development professionals should consider when pursuing environmental roles. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. How did you end up in this type of work? I'm one of those people who grew up with David Attenborough’s “Life on Earth” and other of his earlier wildlife programs. When I was 17, our geography teacher organized a six-week trip to Nigeria. This was 1989 — so quite an adventurous thing to do in those days. At that time there was a lot of investment from the European Union to halt the creep of desertification in the Sahel region. There were lots of tree-planting campaigns so we planted some trees and learnt about how well that works. I remember being really inspired by that and ended up studying geography at Southampton University. When I finished my degree, I got the thirst to go back to Africa. A few friends of mine and I saved up and went on an expedition across eastern and southern Africa and worked with a number of charities that were operating in those areas. I came away thinking that I had done something useful and that we had made a small contribution, but really I didn't have any skills that were transferring into the local communities. I [realized that] I needed to get more technical, so I got into Oxford and did a master's in land use and forestry. At that time, Shell had a forestry business so I did a bit of research for them. After that I got a job with a company that in those days was called Scott Wilson and became a community forestry advisor for nearly three years. What does your day-to-day look like? I'm several months into this global advisory lead role. I'm coming to that after being involved in the heart of that process at AECOM for the last two or three years. So I'm trying to help our clients make sustainability net-zero ESG part of their strategic growth — action planning and prioritizing what are the key ESG issues for that organization, how to address them, and get their workforce behind them. All of these are things that people need support to think about [because] they've not done that before. It's not like your annual budget, which people have been doing for centuries. This is all new stuff. In terms of my day-to-day, I'm still heavily involved in the in-house effort to drive sustainable legacies and embed that into our work. One of the initiatives that I'm helping support at the moment is activating our own supply chain organization of nearly 50,000 people around the world. We use a lot of suppliers to help us provide solutions for our clients, [and we want] to bring them on the net-zero journey as well. So I work with all our value chains to see if they are thinking about their carbon footprint and managing data more effectively. What are the biggest challenges of the job, and what lessons have you learned that help you overcome these? I guess I am a worrier. When I was a kid, I might see a worm or a snail stranded on a pavement after it had rained, and I’d pick it up and move it along and then wonder afterwards if it was going to be OK. On the other hand, I love a rare opportunity to munch on a slab of rare roast beef, which isn’t very sustainable. Such is the paradox of being human and the sociocultural mess of experiences and inspirations that make us who we are. So the biggest challenge of this job, any job that you love, is that you worry about it. Are you doing enough? Are you focused on the right stuff to make an impact? Are you creating value for your business while at the same time fulfilling your own personal mission to make a difference to the fate of our world? The other day my 8-year-old kid and I were listening to the news, and there was talk about the climate crisis. After the segment, my boy turned to me and said, “someone is sorting out the climate problem aren’t they?” I said yes, lots of people. I should have said yes, lots of worried people! I recommend people read a book called “Essentialism.” It’s about paring away the stuff that you could do but wouldn’t make much difference and focusing on the stuff that serves some serious purpose. A not insignificant part of my week is spent working out what I can’t do and must decline or carefully pass to others better suited. That way I have some time to make headway on the really important stuff that I can do and still have time for family and some social life. What to take away? If you are a worrier like me, then channel the worry into your work as an ESG or sustainable development specialist. How do you see the impact of your work? For me, the best way to see that my work and my team's work has had an impact is if someone else notices it. There’s nothing like a third-party reference to validate some effort. For example, a few years ago I set up a circular economy infrastructure forum for AECOM clients — a safe space to share best practice and create meaningful tools and approaches for turning a concept into reality — fully circular infrastructure development. In 2017, that forum won at the Business Green Awards — a wonderful moment. Since then, the industry papers and tools our forum has developed have been used widely across infrastructure projects and cited by governments and policymakers. Younger hands than mine now steward that group. I also see an impact in the young people I’ve worked with over the past years. For example, my immediate team managing sustainability at AECOM has grown tremendously in the scale and scope of their work since we joined up as a team in 2019. I watch their careers progress with interest and I learn from them all the time. I’ve learned it's so important to keep those who are younger and brighter than you in a good place and give them every opportunity to thrive and make hay with their ideas and concepts. What skill sets have you found to be most valuable, or what skills have you focused on building to progress in your career? For the best part of 14 years now, I have been working at a strategic level in sustainability. My big break was being asked to develop [a legacy AECOM company] Scott Wilson’s sustainability business plan in 2009 and 2010. That commission was decided by a competition culminating in a dragons den-style presentation to the Scott Wilson Board, as was. It was scary and exhilarating at the same time, and I still remember it well. I knew my team had won, as when the meeting was finishing, one of the directors asked me to give him the presentation right away as he was going to use it in his next meeting! Since then, I have written and presented many business cases and business plans, created investment programs in innovation, run forums and advisory councils, and sat on company boards and senior committees. Most recently I was one of the principal architects of AECOM’s own ESG strategy: Sustainable Legacies. All of these things have been possible as a result of developing a rapport with decision-makers; presenting ideas and concepts clearly and concisely and being able to convey a degree of enthusiasm and energy for the outcome that can be achieved with collective effort. What kind of person is wellsuited to do this job? As there are many jobs in sustainability, there are also many characters and dispositions that are suited to varying roles. To take a binary restaurant analogy, do you like being front of house, engaging with the customers, and creating an experience that they’ll remember? or are you a creative/innovator working in the kitchen with your team of experts on the next taste sensation? I probably fall into the first category, although I enjoy and am good at convening groups to undertake innovation. I enjoy presenting and taking people through an idea or mission or program. In ESG and sustainable development there are so many fields opening up for specialism: be that clean energy, nature-based solutions, or a decarbonized circular economy. There are also opportunities for the introverted and the extrovert across all these themes. Whatever field you go into and whatever stage in the value chain, at many points in time you will need to communicate and present your ideas and create buy-in and ownership. For that reason, if you can engage people in a process or conversation and make it meaningful to them, then you will be well suited to this field. What advice would you have for other professionals looking to work in this type of role? In order to be an effective adviser, in addition to being well-read on current ESG challenges and opportunities, I think the key thing is to offer some “lived-in” experience of delivering change and impact. The best way to achieve this is through getting involved in project or product delivery and directly solving for clients and communities. My career began in international development, working with local communities in Nigeria and China on environmentally linked poverty and community management of natural resources. Insights I gained from those projects about capacity development and training and the need for hard economic insights and benefits still serve me well. Any innovative approach or novel direction needs a business case and a group of committed backers: working to secure that kind of momentum behind a project works well in many applications and developments. So, I would look ahead as to what is trending positively in the world of sustainable development and has the potential for significant impact in tackling the combined climate and biodiversity crisis. If I was starting my career now, I would be looking to gain some hands-on project experience of the up-and-coming technologies and approaches, [and] I would certainly recommend some degree of specialization in a sustainability field early in your career, in order to gain deep knowledge and pragmatic expertise that others must then rely on. That is where you will earn value for yourself and your organization or institution. And on a final note, learn to touch type very fast! The less time you spend writing executive briefs, slide decks, field reports, and industry white papers, the more time you have to think about what you want to say, to bring people on board with the mission narrative you are driving, and the easier your work will be. It also makes volunteering to take the notes in a meeting or working group a pleasure rather than a pain and gives you a strong platform to express your views.