Job Function Action Guides

Investors play a crucial role in scaling financing for climate solutions. They not only allocate and move capital but also identify and address material risks and send market signals to catalyze transformative business models that can help the private sector and the world take climate action even faster.

Engineers – from software to mechanical – take a product vision and turn it into a reality. As a builder, they can incorporate climate as a key component of product assembly, integrating it into how they code and manufacture.

Corporate finance roles influence how a business manages, spends, and invests its money. Finance professionals can influence how their company approaches financial risk, banking, insurance, cash and investments, retirement plans, planning and budgeting, supply chain finance, philanthropy, and impact investing.

Those who work in government relations or public policy can not only help their own company reach its climate goals, but also advance solutions in the broader world, through policy and regulatory advocacy, public shows of support, and influencing trade associations.

Grantmaking is a major force for accelerating climate solutions. Program officers, grant administrators, and others in the grantmaking field can help scale climate solutions by finding and realizing funding opportunities, ensuring grantees are successful, and connecting various stakeholders within and outside organizations to leverage action.

By rethinking how they run employee benefits, recruitment, and professional development, shaping workplace culture, and making operational changes, human resources and operations professionals can ensure their company’s workforce can move climate action forward in the organization.

Members of in-house legal teams can integrate climate action into their work by reassessing how they work with external firms, considering climate in legal agreements, and advocating for and complying with policy and regulation. Those who work as general counsel also have influence over the company’s board—from executive compensation decisions to how the board itself is governed.

Marketers understand consumer motivations and can help sway public perception and catalyze action. By engaging customers, rethinking production, creating climate-focused campaigns, and helping support climate policy advocacy, they can help ensure the business is promoting climate solutions.

Procurement professionals can leverage their purchasing power for climate action. They can work with and influence suppliers, help design products differently, and utilize good data to make procurement a force for climate action.

Product designers bring a range of skills and work across departments to make critical decisions about how users will interact with a product or feature. They can incorporate climate solutions into the design process – from sustainable prototyping and low-carbon materials to incorporating actionable climate information for consumers.

Product management weaves together business, technology, and user experience. As such, product managers can influence how their company conducts market research, develops product positioning, and defines customer success.

Employees who work in a customer or client-facing job can utilize their roles as connectors and propensity to be goal-oriented to take climate action. By reassessing pricing and fees, customer engagement, and sales models, and fostering dialogue within the broader industry, those in sales and client-facing roles can directly integrate climate action into their workflow.