How a punk-rocking paralegal harnessed employee power to green Microsoft

Degrees podcast season 6, episode 1

Struggling to find a sustainability job? Well, good news. You don’t have to find one…you can MAKE one.

Drew Wilkinson was a punk rocker and eco-pirate when he landed a job as a paralegal at Microsoft. He felt like a fish out of water in the corporate tech world, but instead of changing his DIY-contrarian tune, Drew leaned in. Though “sustainability” wasn’t in his job description, Drew co-founded a powerful employee sustainability community. It would grow to the thousands, stretch across the globe, and push Microsoft to use their billions to do better for the planet.

In the first episode of Degrees Season 6: How to Green Your Job, Drew’s story is a top-notch lesson in forging your way into a planet-saving career. He took what he already knew how to do — disrupt a system, innovate solutions, and organize folks around him — and applied it to greening his workplace.

Now, he’s taking his climate solutions work outside the walls of Microsoft and working independently to help organizations become more sustainable through employee-led solutions, and make sustainability part of everybody’s job.

If you liked this episode, you'll love these related Degrees episodes:

Episode notes

Drew Wilkinson is a climate activist and co-founder of Microsoft’s 10,000-member employee sustainability community, which has pushed the company to protect natural resources and operate with more sustainable practices.

Now, as founder of Climate Leadership Collective, he helps organizations on the people side of sustainability: employee engagement, culture and change management, community building, green skilling, and leadership development. His mission is to make sustainability part of everybody’s job.