TH: You talked about interest and passion, but beyond interest and passion in environment issues or sustainability issues, what skills and experience are companies looking for?

FM: That's a good question, and I think in many cases it's evolving pretty rapidly and it's likely to continue to evolve. In many cases people with the skills to go into kind of a green role, say as a sustainability director in an airline or a consumer products company, those roles are not necessarily fully codified yet. So companies are, I don't think, always sure of what they're looking for. They tend to revert to kind of what they're used to doing when they're hiring: looking for someone with a lot of experience. The problem is not a lot of people have a lot of experience.

Increasingly I think you're seeing MBA programs offering courses, and in some cases there are MBA program that are dedicated exclusively toward a sustainable development experience and path. I'm speaking specifically of Presidio College and there's a college in Washington, Bainbridge, and Dominican College has a green MBA program -- all of which are integrating the ideas of sustainability into a traditional MBA curriculum.

And then in addition, places like Berkeley, Stanford, and the top 25 business schools that have teachers that are focused on the issues trying to kind of offer a dimension around how sustainability operates in business. So there's a process in place now where I think increasingly people who are following a business route and who are interested in these issues and in helping green organizations, or create their own green organization, are finding they're able to get those skills through business school curriculum.

Companies themselves to a certain degree, trying to figure who's going fit here. In many cases, I think the folks who go into a green career path at a company are those who express an interest and who have done some work outside the organization or volunteered for opportunities within the organization.

So they're starting to develop an expertise through on-the-job work, trying to answer questions such as what do we need to do to our products' so that we're addressing sustainability issues, so, if it's a product company, so that we can sell and continue to sell into a Wal-Mart, which has a sustainability scorecard that it's using to kind of vet its vendors now.

And so, you can get some hands-on experience in the organization you're in by just raising your hand and trying to get involved. Or else, in the community, volunteering for organizations, going to events like Green Drinks, talking to people, networking and building your knowledge.

A lot of this is kind of coming up from the ground right now. There's not a set of certifications. That is likely to change over time. In some cases, like in the building sector, there is a LEED certification. And that's something that a lot of architecture firms, for instance, in San Francisco, folks that I talked to here, they're wanting their architects to get LEED certification because they recognize that green building is going to be an increasingly large aspect of their portfolio of work.

TH: Frank, do you need to be an environmentalist to do an environmental job?

FM: No, you don't. I think there's a lot of motivations for getting involved in a career related to sustainability. In many cases, people are entering this sector 'cause they recognize there's a huge opportunity. The whole world of cleantech products and services that are designed to reduce, better monitor energy use, for example, there are all kinds of startups in that sector. Many analysts think that the next Google will emerge from that sector, largely because the costs of energy continue to rise. So if you can come up with solution to reduce those costs, it's gonna be a huge win.

Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist that used to work with Kleiner Perkins I believe, he has been investing millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars, in startups in, for instance, the biofuel sector. So there's a lot of money going into that sector right now. You know, a lot of those people, they may be working on an issue that's going to help protect the environment, but I don't know if they're all necessarily environmentalists. The things that I hear, a lot of them just recognize this is a great business opportunity.

TH: Where do companies look for green employees?

FM: I think the first place that companies may look is internally: Who inside the company is really showing a passion for issues related to green? And that's kind of a natural place to look because you have a relationship with that person, you know what they can do, and you want to keep your employees excited about what they're doing. So, that's one kind of obvious place.

I think there's opportunity for people who want to green their career to really think about how they can contribute internally to the organization they're in, how they may be able to over time shift their job so they've got a real green focus on what they're doing, to get known as the green advocate.