Jon Powers (00:02):

Welcome back to Experts Only. I’m your host, Jon Powers. I’m the co-founder of Clean Capital and serve as President Obama’s Chief Sustainability Officer. On this podcast, we explore solutions to climate change by talking to industry leaders about the intersection of energy, innovation and finance. You can get more episodes at clean capital com.

Jon Powers (00:29):

Welcome back to Experts Only. We actually have a really special episode today where I’m talking to the Chief Operating Officer of Clean Capital, Zoe Burglary. Zoe and I actually go way back to my days in the White House when she worked with me as an intern and has been just an amazing emerging leader in the clean energy space and was actually our first employee at Clean Capital. So we talk both about her career and how she sort of came into the space, and then about the growth of the company. But as well, she manages all of our assets. And when you’re talking about hundreds of megawatts of distributed generation, that can be really challenging. So how does asset management need to change to help us scale? These are some of the questions we talk about. You can always get more episodes@cleancapital.com and I hope you enjoy the conversation. Zoe, thanks so much for joining me at Experts Only.

Zoe Berkery (01:11):

Very excited to be here.

Jon Powers (01:14):

Excited to have you. You’ve been around since Experts Only started since the company started <laugh>.

Zoe Berkery (01:18):

Yeah. I think I predate experts only believe it or not.

Jon Powers (01:21):

Oh, you totally do <laugh>. Hundred percent, hundred percent. Um, you know, I wanna, I wanna step back and sort of talk about you for a little bit and your sort of amazing, amazing growth across, uh, this industry. But before doing that, I wanna take you back to Michigan. Um, and you know, what first got you, you and I met when you came to the White House, uh, on an internship. Um, you know, what got you interested in the environment that internship was at, the council, environmental quality, like what was it in your sort of childhood or experiences growing up that that was something important to you?

Zoe Berkery (01:56):

Yeah, I’m one of those rare humans that knew I wanted to work in sort of the realm of the environment. Whatever shape that took since I was a child. Um, and that, you know, it, it eventually led me to clean energy finance. But I remember in kindergarten having a very cool teacher who taught us all about recycling and she called us Gar to, to understand garbage and where it goes. Yeah. And it really resonated with me as a child. And my parents said that I came home just, you know, preaching about recycling and it’s been the law in my households, plural. Yeah. Um, since sensing a child. So I think then by the time I reached college, um, even in high school, I had done sort of a summer program at Brown on, it was sort of an environmental lab out in Rhode Island. Um, and just kept sort of building and broadening my interest in the space, you know, generally. And by the time I got to Michigan Environmental Policy and International Studies, kind of the, the combination of those two was really where my interest lied. I think at the time I wanted to work for the UN Environmental Program, um, or something in that space and the beginning of my career. It lended itself well to that, but then made some transitions at a certain point. Um, yeah.

Jon Powers (03:09):

Which I know. Well, let’s talk, let’s talk about that. So I remember, were you telling me once that, you know, you just sort of fell upon that internship opportunity, uh, and applied for it? Um, yeah, tell that story. Cause like folks pe people think about, man, I’ll never get an internship in place. It’s like the White House, but I think you, you highlight why it’s totally possible

Zoe Berkery (03:27):

The start aligned. Yeah. I had, um, actually taken a job right out of college, um, working as a paralegal at a personal injury law firm. I mean, had nothing to do with the environment. Yes, I know <laugh> wanted, but thought maybe, you know, law school made sense. And I had previously applied to the White House internship and didn’t hear back. And it was, um, a TA in my environmental law program that I think had mentioned it to me, um, but didn’t hear back. And then suddenly during the middle of a workday, while I was working in Chicago, got a call from Will Garvey, who was then my boss, and he reported to you. Um, and right there on the spot he interviewed me. And then I think a week or two later, I was accepted into the role and marched into my boss’s office, quit <laugh>. But he fully understood and actually I had a friend of mine, um, replace me so he was not left high and dry, and then moved all my things from Chicago to dc. Um, and never regretted it once. But yeah, it was, it was very serendipitous. I guess I don’t, I don’t know what yeah, what the magic thing was, but it definitely changed my life and started my career off. Um, yeah. You know, in a really positive

Jon Powers (04:34):

Place. I think the magic was you, I think honestly, like, I think if you look across your career, there’s a lot of moments where, uh, you know, like you like to say the stars align, but honestly it’s cuz you were working hard to align the stars. Um, can you imagine your life as a personal injury lawyer today?

Zoe Berkery (04:48):

God no. <laugh> what it turned that, that would’ve been, yeah. For the legal experience, but I was doing a lot of just paperwork <laugh>, not, not a sexy job. Let me tell you.

Jon Powers (05:00):

So when you, you finished at the White House, you went on to the business council for sustainable energy, you know, what did that sort of teach you about the bridge between like what was happening and sustainability and, and what was happening in corporate America?

Zoe Berkery (05:12):

Yeah, it was kind of the, just such an ideal next step. Um, the Business Council for Sustainable Energy is a trade association that represents energy efficiency, renewable energy, natural gas, kind of across the broad clean energy spectrum and represents these businesses at the state, federal and international levels doing, you know, policy advocacy on behalf of the business interests. And it was such an incredible experience such that I got to work on all of these different levels of policy. Everything from, I was primarily focused on the federal level. So these were the days of the Clean Power Plan, got to Right. Um, you know, give testimony in front of the EPA while they were collecting public comments. And then at the state level, sort of similarly, these POCs were trying to wrap their heads around what they needed to do to be a part of the Clean Power Plan.

(05:59):

So would go out to, you know, some of the interesting parts of the world like Reno, um, Reno, Nevada, and go to those p u c meetings and, and you know, get to sort of say what, how clean energy businesses could support what they’re trying to do. Um, and then at the international level, which, you know, my, my major and you know, so my interests up until that point really aligned with we would go every year to the UN climate conferences. Right. And I was able to attend, um, UN Cop, let’s see, I think it was 19 in Warsaw all the way through 22 in Marrakesh. So I was at the, the Paris Climate Agreement. Yeah. In 2015. I’m trying to remember all my years. So just, you know, sitting behind Al Gore during one of the sessions, it’s just, you know, it it’s the 18 year old in me that was reading climate policy was just mind blowing and just so cool to sort of live that dream and be in, in the moment there. Um, yeah. But I guess I did, I did find myself at times you get a little jaded in the policy space when, you know, so much of that two week meeting can just be negotiating a single word in a, in a document. And it was, I found myself wanting something a little more tangible. Um, but not just any policy is so important, but I started to feel a need for a shift.

Jon Powers (07:17):

Yeah. I mean, you and I had a drink at a rooftop outside of, uh, maybe it was eight quarter bed, I can’t even remember. And you told me you were thinking about, uh, making a move and were, was interested in the startups. Yep. Uh, lo and behold we had a startup in clean capital. Like what was the, what was the, in like what, what for you, like what was the, um, thought process be like, okay, I’m ready to move into this sort of new, new space.

Zoe Berkery (07:41):

Yeah. I, I think I just found myself wanting to work for one of the businesses that B C S E was representing. Um, I think I found, um, just sort of the finance side and just making it make financial sense, just penciling in a model. Um, I found just so compelling that there was no amount of political haggling, um, that could deny the fact that renewable energy just made sense. Energy efficiency just made sense. Um, and I wanted to dive deeper into that area of the industry not having had much finance background at all. Um, you know, I thought it made sense to go back and get my mba same <laugh>. Yeah. Um, and definitely made, made strides towards that. I mean, you wrote my letters of recommendation and Right, right, right around that time I had accepted a, um, a at least a partial scholarship at Ross and, and thought I was going to be back at Michigan in the fall when um, you guys offered me a full-time job. And most of my friends and family thought I was insane to drop out of my MBA right before orientation for this five person startup. But I really liked what we were doing. Um, and of course our business model has shifted so many times since then. But just the idea of kind of bringing more, you know, bringing capital to the distributed renewable space and being creative about it and doing it in a way that you, if any had done up until that point was just really compelling for me. Um,

Jon Powers (09:09):

Yeah. I remember when you came back from your trip, was it Spain right before Yeah, we

Zoe Berkery (09:14):

Went Spain in France Yeah. For the mba. Yeah. Pre-class trip <laugh>.

Jon Powers (09:19):

Yeah, exactly. I, I felt totally conflicted that entire summer cuz I was like, I can’t tell Zoe not to go to school cause this is her future. Uh, but I really wanted to be part of this team. And you came back and you’re like, Hey, what are my professors said? What are you doing? This is exactly what people go to school for. Yeah. Um, and uh, you know, gosh, I’m so glad you made that decision cause it’s been, uh, an amazing rollercoaster ride. So

Zoe Berkery (09:41):

You and me both, and I think those first few years were sort of an MBA by doing, you know, I learned so much by just reading all of our project contracts, reading our financing agreements, you know, writing down every acronym I heard on calls and Googling them later <laugh>. So I think I got a lot out of just yeah. Rolling my sleeves up and, and trying to self-teach a bit and then, you know, asking questions along the way. Um, but to this day, I have some friends that were in that B class. Um, and you know, I think I got a little bit of the best of both worlds where I got to do some of the early on networking with them and they’re still friends, but I dipped out early <laugh> Yeah. To say the least early jump capital. Definitely.

Jon Powers (10:27):

I’m get to the sort of your growth here in a second, but, you know, you’ve heard me say this, that there is, were this really critical dynamic of, or alignment of policy, technology and finance in a way that I think many of the industry never thought, uh, would happen. You actually have uniquely sat in all of those spaces. Um, there’s very few people in the industry that have, um, you know, what does your experience on the policy side, right? Uh, then sort of sitting within, you know, what one point we consider ourselves a tech company. Like we were truly a startup, right? And now we are sort of a, honestly, like a long term asset owner with life insurance capital we’re putting into work, right? You have sort of seen all sides of the spectrum. Like how does that sort of help you think about sort of the way you approach your job and sort of the way you approach the market?

Zoe Berkery (11:18):

Great question. I think it’s, it’s really helped me be able to see clearly what needs to be prioritized on a given day and what really matters to our business and where we need to add resources or refocus maybe on a given day. I think that’s, I think a lot of our leadership is able to kind of see through that and, you know, align the company in such a way that we’ve been successful to date. Um, I think on the policy side and very recently, you know, we’ve been able to really build up that, that part of our business and it’s sort of, it’s always great, you know, listening to Scott’s updates, um, and sort of being back in that world a little bit more. Um, and yeah, you know, then kind of that flowing into the tech piece, into um, kind of how we’re scaling. It’s, it’s been awesome to see.

Jon Powers (12:05):

Yeah. So I’m gonna talk about, so your, your growth here. I mean, you came literally came on first as an intern, which, um, we were none of us getting paid in time. Uh, you’re literally our first paid employee, uh, at Clean Capital. Um, then, um, you know, we started, you know, with, for folks that don’t know, like we had this whole pitch in the beginning of like, we were gonna streamline finance and the tech platform, do that and, you know, make these deals really efficient. And then we started getting deals and realized we all started to manage the deals, right. So the idea <laugh> of actually developing an asset management program from scratch, which you have done, uh, literally from the day you, um, sort of raised your hand and took on the responsibility, you know, what, um, what has that taught you? Have we sort of gone from, you know, an eight megawatt portfolio to, what are we today? Almost 300 megawatts.

Zoe Berkery (12:56):

About 250 operating.

Jon Powers (12:58):

Two 50 megawatts.

Zoe Berkery (12:58):

Yeah. Yeah. With about 40 under construction.

Jon Powers (13:02):

Yeah.

Zoe Berkery (13:02):

Large development pipeline behind that.

Jon Powers (13:05):

Yeah. So, you know, going from a one person asset management team of yourself <laugh> with Yeah. With some spreadsheets. Um, and, you know, growing up now, uh, not only as a chief operating officer across the whole company, but really overseeing now a 26 state portfolio of, of assets, you know, that’s almost scaling own co your own company within the company, you know, what has that experience sort of taught you, um, uh, and what have you sort of learned about asset management along the way?

Zoe Berkery (13:34):

Yeah, so it’s interesting. I was kind of reflecting on this conversation this morning and kind of was breaking out sort of the different phases of clean Capital’s growth. And as you mentioned, in 2016, we had the first eight megawatt portfolio. From there we went on to, you know, what we called HoldCo two, and there was three portfolios in there, one of which, um, was made up of 315 sites across Missouri that were 25 kw each. And for those that don’t know, that’s basically residential, you know, that was that on churches, that portfolio, yeah, on churches and small schools, small businesses. Um, and that portfolio I think took years off my life, but it taught me a lot in terms of just the amount that goes into managing solar assets. Each and every single site is basically its own small business. So we’re, so currently we’re managing effectively 126 customers.

(14:29):

So we can, you know, basically think of that as 126 small businesses across 150 site, 55 sites. Um, so, you know, within between, you know, that whole PO two period and, and now we had a, a a period of time where we were partnered with BlackRock and CarVal. We had about 175 megawatts at that point. So that was also a big jump. And it, we were, um, just working on figuring out how to manage, you know, our deliver deliverables to our investors who are very sophisticated at very high standards. And at the time we had outsourced a, a lot of our asset management and reporting requirements and just the amount of time I was taking, just kind of translating the reporting, finding errors, trying to improve, improve upon, you know, what we were receiving from our third parties, make sure performance was under control. We had outsourced, um, o and m management as well.

(15:22):

And it just seemed like I was sifting all this information through third parties. And at the end of the day, you know, clean capital myself, we cared the most about how our assets were performing. And it just seemed to make sense to, you know, cut out that, that middle part and really take in the ownership of all of our deliverables and, you know, rise to the standards of what we needed to, to be putting out. So I think between that, during that time, we, um, we started to kind of build out the team slowly. Um, Maria Shapiro, who’s still, you know, a friend of of the company and is a mentor of mine, came on a C F O for a time. We built out our, our accounting software. Um, we then in 2021 onboarded Radian Lens as our asset management and compliance software added, um, kind of then restructured or structured, not restructured, it was the first time we were structuring the asset management team to sort of have accounting and finance branch that oversaw all things, you know, financials, ar, AP billing that, you know, customer facing relationship, and then a technical branch that, you know, every single day they’re looking at performance of the site and getting to the root cause of any underperformance or technical issues, managing any claims that may come up and, and working with the facility managers on site to get the best performance.

(16:43):

And then between those two teams, our reporting has become incredibly robust and detailed. We understand every little variance. Um, and it’s just been awesome to see the growth. We’re now a team of 14, whereas you mentioned it was just me back in the day. Right, right. Um, but we’ve had, you know, many of our investors and, and John Hancock most recently, um, you know, give us accolades on the fact that our reporting is, is so clean and, and we really have a handle on the performance of our many assets at this point. Um, it’s just really cool to see it pay off. Um, you know, it’s not perfect. There’s always ways to improve as I think any company, you know, anyone who says they have it all figured out is mine. Um, right. <laugh>. So, you know, we’re definitely always growing, but it’s, it’s, it’s awesome to have built out such a, such an awesome and smart team that I learned from every single day, um, and, uh, get to, you know, continue growing and, and operating solar for the life of the, the life of the assets.

Jon Powers (17:41):

Yeah. I mean, we are reporting, you know, we hear, I think we hear regularly with some of the best institutional reporting out there, but we were reporting some, some of the, uh, biggest institutional players in the market, Hancock, major debt providers, tax equity providers, and everyone, and you guys have really, really helped communicate for folks that don’t understand what that means, I mean, basically we’re talking to these investors about how their investment’s doing. You have to do it in a way that’s sort of clear and concise. And at the same time, you know, Zoe’s dealing with the fact that a typhoon can’t hit Guam and knocked our project out there, or that there are fires on facilities in certain regions, or we have school superintendents in Colorado who wanna break their power purchase agreements, uh, because they, uh, don’t like solar on a, a daily basis.

Zoe Berkery (18:24):

Yeah. There is never a dull moment. You never know what the day’s gonna bring. And I am often, you know, it’s kinda a triaging situation. Whatever you thought you were gonna get done today, you’re not, because you were in fact dealing with the, with the impending typhoon and Guam <laugh>, not hypothetically <laugh>.

Jon Powers (18:41):

Right. Seriously, if, if you could give like one message to investors, whether it be, you know, not take it outta clean capital for a second, but you know, the broader industry is they’re thinking about, you know, it’s one thing to put these things in a model is totally different when they’ve gotta actually run and, and be, uh, invested. And I see, we see it, we see it a lot in the market where, you know, our competitors may be, um, under investing in OM and asset management because they wanna basically get the financial pop versus actually building quality projects. Yeah. You know, what would you say to the market about sort of the importance of sort of the long term view, please?

Zoe Berkery (19:20):

Yeah, I think, I mean, I say it a lot and then I, I think we’ve developed a good feedback loop at Clean Capital in terms of asset management, sort of weighing in on deals and diligence. But I think it’s really easy to throw a really low o and m number into a model, and then right away you’re reporting a variance because it’s actually more expensive to maintain that site to the standards that you’ve also modeled. So you just have to, you have to look at the project as a whole and think about how, just think smartly about how you’re managing the site, you know, work with these o and m providers to, you know, to grow your relationship with them, give them more business and potentially better, better pricing. Um, you know, we have sort of geographically preferred partners, and I think that started to pay off in terms of some of the rates.

(20:07):

You know, we’re just always thinking about how can we improve performance, um, while, you know, meeting, meet, meeting modeled expectations. And I think it’s so critical for deals, teams and asset management teams do not work in silos. There needs to be that feedback loop and understanding of, you know, what, you know, the asset management team is actually seeing on the ground and, um, performance of various types of equipment and how much things are actually costing vegetation maintenance. It, it’s been a really volatile and increasingly expensive line item that I think at one point wasn’t even factored into a lot of, um, financial models, and it increasingly needs to be. So, um, so having that, you know, back and forth communication, I think has made us even smarter and more capable investors. And, you know, you can see it in our, in our reporting that we’re, we’re pretty well aligned with our expectations, which is awesome to see.

Jon Powers (21:01):

Yeah. So with, you know, I remember falling back a few years ago when we had a project in North Carolina where we literally had to pay one of our contractors who was a contractor and someone else to take his lawnmower out and mow the lawn on this facility. Yeah. Um, but now there’s been a pretty strong consolidation in this space around providers. Like, talk a little bit about what you’ve seen, you know, as the, uh, market has really brought efficiency.

Zoe Berkery (21:25):

Yeah, I would say, I mean, I think a lot of, you know, different service providers across the industry are making strategic decisions on where they’re gonna focus. You know, maybe they’re not gonna do utility and dg, they’re just gonna focus on DG or, or the other. And I think that allows them to specialize a bit. And I think, you know, there’s, there’s groups like the, um, o and m, um, Amicus Cooperative that, you know, these smaller o and m providers actually kind of share resources and help some contract out with to each other. And I think that that’s been sort of that, you know, attitude amongst the, the industry is really helpful. Um, yeah. And, but we’re seeing, you know, it’s, it’s interesting o and m providers and, and other service providers, I won’t just say o and m that, you know, we relied on for years.

(22:09):

Maybe there’s a change in ownership or they’re tightening margins and, you know, sometimes the, the service then implodes. You know, it’s, it’s always sort of a volatile, um, thing that we’re tracking and, you know, keeping tabs on all of our service providers to make sure that, you know, the, the quality is, is what it was and continues to be. And if not, then we need to sort of figure out what’s best for our projects. Um, and just kind of always be, yeah, thinking more broadly. And, and also I’d add not not rely as I think has sort of been the theme, not rely on our third parties too extensively and think about how we can manage our own solutions. We just recently, um, and Tommy Gold, who’s our director of asset Technical Asset management, was hugely critical in, in implementing this. But we have our own spare parts program now kind of operated separately from many of our own m providers, but our own m you know, they, they utilize this warehouse and they’re able to pick from parts that we have on, on stock. Um, so we’re producing downtime. And so thinking kind of creatively how to do that, um, is, is super important.

Jon Powers (23:13):

Yeah. Interesting. Um, you have any favorite projects in our portfolio?

Zoe Berkery (23:18):

That’s a good question. Probably in the Cedar Breaks portfolio, lapus and Lancaster in Massachusetts, they’re nice, you know, above five megawatt, just steady as they go. Good performers, not a lot of issues. I just, those are the golden children right now. Yeah. I would say then I, I think the bad eggs are often more top of mind, but it’s always a mixed bag. That’s why distributed works. And it’s kind of cool to see that, you know, even if there are wildfires in California, you know, it, it doesn’t always pull down the performance of the whole portfolio because we are so distributed now. Um, and yeah, there’s kind of all carrying the weight at different times, which is awesome to see

Jon Powers (24:01):

As the, as the industry gets more and more efficient as financing is more efficient as we’re, you know, moving manufacturing back here to the US and we’re really beginning to sort of scale, you know, what do you see if we’re gonna hit our climate goals in 2030, you know, this needs to continue, you know, will you continue to sort of execute? Are there any sort of key things that you see that need to happen, uh, over the next few years for us to evolve and, and, and reach those goals?

Zoe Berkery (24:26):

Yeah. Um, I think a few things. I mean, just in terms of scale, I think it’s so easy to just, I mean, it’s still difficult, but just throw, you know, bodies at the problem just hire higher, higher because, you know, it’s really hard to manage all of these assets. We need more and more people. But I think always taking a step back, thinking about your processes, what makes sense? How can we do this more efficiently? What is actually needed here to get the job done and utilize software, utilize, you know, different automation that can help us scale and manage optimally without, you know, being too glutted, um, with Right. You know, which is a larger and larger team. It has always been first and foremost. Um, I think in terms of just the future of the industry, the reality is we have so many aging solar assets on our hands, and I think about this all the time.

(25:16):

Um, you know, some of the older oldest sites in our portfolio are, you know, from 2008, 2009, and just across the industry, we, it’s, it’s nice that this term of art repowering is increasingly on, you know, the schedules of, of different conferences, but what that really means and how maybe the, the IRA and the kind of more robust I t c implications that have come out of that, um, can help us think about repowering getting more, more life out of these existing assets, but doing so responsibly. So I’m always thinking about how kind of the full life cycle of solar and what that means for yeah. You know, end of life of these sites and recycling. And there aren’t, there are solutions, but they’re still incredibly expensive. So more r and d into, into that area as well as, um, just the, you know, equipment efficiencies as a whole and, you know, making sure that we’re improving as an industry and gaining more efficiencies, but doing so responsibly. And I think kind of the domestic manufacturing component will be a huge part of that as well.

Jon Powers (26:19):

Um, I love that you talked the recycling, going back to your cardiologist days, right?

Zoe Berkery (26:23):

<laugh> Exactly. It all come full circle <laugh>.

Jon Powers (26:26):

Yeah. Um, speaking of full circle, if you could, you know, um, just get to sort of the final question you, I’m gonna take you back to, um, you know, before you applied, before you applied to be a, uh, a paralegal, uh, at a, at a <laugh> at a law firm, you could sit down and, you know, have a beer with yourself. Uh, and you know, I think it’s hard to, you have an amazing, uh, trajectory as a leader, as a, uh, you know, as sort of the future c e o of an awesome company and somewhere in the tech space. Um, but that, you know, there wasn’t a straight line, right? You sort of worked through a variety of different ways to get here and took some risks and, and some opportunities. You know, if you could go back and sort of sit down with yourself and, you know, give yourself a piece of advice, what would it be?

Zoe Berkery (27:15):

Good question. Um, I think to sometimes not take yourself for life too seriously. I think there were moments in my college days where, you know, I stayed in to study for that exam and yes, okay, that’s important, but I think it’s also important to just have fun and know that if you have drive, it will work out in the end. Um, and if you kind of maintain that focus. And also, you know, I think I, you know, I, like you said, I think I did take chances, I mean, queen Capital being, being a big one, but maybe take even more and, you know, kind of take that odd summer job and um, you know, try different things. I think would be some advice that, that would, I would also give myself and, and also take every networking opportunity possible. Um, yeah, I think just, yeah, the more you talk to people, the more you learn about what they do, how they think, where they see the industry going, um, it can only just kind of help you hone in on what, what interests you the most. Um, for sure. So,

Jon Powers (28:16):

Yeah, I, I’ve never asked this in the show before, but I’m gonna ask you a question, uh, that if you could go, you know, there’s so much as our industry grows, right? We, we so many more folks that come into the industry, you could be an accountant right now in oil and gas or, you know, in some other asset real estate, and you wanna get into solar, right? Or you could, you know, be a paralegal and, uh, at a, you know, personal injury law firm, but you really care about climate <laugh>, right? So what piece of advice would you give them, uh, about moving into this, you know, transformational industry that we’ve fit in?

Zoe Berkery (28:50):

In terms of kind of what, what they should,

Jon Powers (28:52):

Yeah. Like how do you get into it? How do you Yeah. If you’re not, if you, if you didn’t study the environment, if you’re not an MBA from the Yale Forestry School, but you really care about climate and the environment and you wanna make an impact, um, you know, how do you start to move into this space?

Zoe Berkery (29:06):

Yeah, I think about that a lot. And you know, I, I feel for some of the newer app, like younger applicants we get for some entry level jobs, you know, I, we wanna, it’s so important to sort of broaden out the network of the industry, right? Not just be constantly hiring within our own networks. And we think about this a lot, atlin capital, and, and it’s really hard, I think, especially as this industry grows and there’s more and more capital just pouring into it, it’s making it so much that much more competitive. I, you know, I think it, yeah, it, it’s, it’s just, so it’s changed just in the, in the, um, duration of my own career. But there are groups like Rise Women in Renewable industries and Sustainable Energy cli, clean Energy Leadership Institute. I’m, you know, I’m plugging those two, those two parts.

(29:52):

Yeah, please. Cause I have so much, you know, experience with both of them that I think Rise in particular is such a good opportunity to opportunity start networking within the industry with, with, you know, it’s, it’s women and um, I think, you know, well it’s non-binary focus, but it, it just gives you an opportunity and a platform in terms of webinars, physical networking, events, conferences, to just start meeting people in the industry as well as some scholarships to allow you to go to different conferences and job careers. So these kind of, these nonprofit trade groups, um, I think are such a good opportunity for young people trying to get into this space that maybe don’t have experience, but it opens doors to them in terms of, um, the folks that are members and involved and they can find opportunities that way and learn where they can get their foot in. That’s probably,

Jon Powers (30:40):

That’s awesome.

Zoe Berkery (30:40):

That’s awesome. Yeah.

Jon Powers (30:41):

Well, Zoe, thank you so much. It’s been obviously an amazing rollercoaster with you for a long time and really happy to have you an expert only and look forward to the next phase at Pink Capital.

Zoe Berkery (30:51):

Likewise. It’s been such a fun ride. Excited for it to continue. Thanks so much, Jon.

Jon Powers (30:57):

Of course. And so, first of all, as always, you can get more episodes@cleancapital.com and I wanted to thank Colleen Young, our producer help as always, for helping to put this together. Um, you know, we’ll have plenty of new episodes coming out this summer and into the fall before re plus. So we look forward to continuing the conversation. Thanks.