Neema Kwangu

I'd say where I come from, specifically my home country, Tanzania, and my family. I would say it's really shaped the way I viewed the lens that I look through the rest of the world. A lot of this drive for sustainability comes from seeing how it affects my home, and that's kind of what keeps me going in this field - we need solutions for poverty that take into account the limits of the Earth. Yeah, so I say my biggest driving factor would be where I come from.

I would say, first of all, don't stress. When I was trying to figure things out, I felt like I had to make the right decision, and there was just so much pressure that I was putting on myself. I think that seeing your professional career as a portfolio of developing different skills at different times, and you're kind of building yourself for success in the long run, rather than trying to find the one perfect thing that you're going to do and be a complete amazing act. Sometimes, thinking about reducing the pressure and thinking of yourself as, okay, what is the next best move for my career? And even if it's not that perfect fit, I think that thinking about yourself as building a portfolio of skills and experiences, and all this one day, in a bigger picture, will make more sense.

Within sustainability, I would say connecting sustainability to markets. I think that there's this kind of divide between sustainability policy and also the markets, and I feel like there's so much opportunity of this integration with markets and sustainability - how can the private sector incorporate sustainability into their practices? How can accounting for sustainability be improved within firms? I think that's a huge opportunity, and I know there are people already in this field making great strides in coming up with new ways to account for sustainability and kind of assessing ESG metrics and trying to say how can we make them more robust and more able to be accounted for.

I think authenticity is a big one. I think even in the realm of professionalism, there's still an importance to being authentic, and the only way we can create good work is by being true to ourselves in the work. I think authenticity is a huge one.