How to make a career pivot. Inside the circular economy. And should you become a therapist?

Opportunity Seeker highlights ways you can grow your career and personal impact. We’re here to open up opportunity so more of us can belong in spaces that need us.

Hello friends, I’m back in Berlin! Summer’s over, school is back in session — and there’s a lot of opportunities kicking off for you to scale impact. This week I’m going to focus on career pivots and transitions into new sectors.

There’s more than 500 of you signed up now 🙏 — but if you know someone who is going through a big life change or wanting to scale their impact, share this subscribe link with them.

Today we’ll be diving into…

• The circular economy — what is it, and how you can join the fun

• Boost your AI knowledge (with 250k other people and Stanford’s help)

• How to become a green transition coach

• And figuring out if you want to become a therapist (for those who’ve toyed with this career pivot)

And to get us into the pivoting mood, here’s some wisdom from Dolly…

What goes around comes around…

A circular economy is “a system where materials never become waste and nature is regenerated”. It’s one of the keys to being able to reduce our consumption — and working in this area can really scale your broader impact. Here’s a selection of roles and learning ops if you want to move into the space.

• Paris/Barcelona: France’s BackMarket are more than just a refurbed tech retailer — they’ve been named one of the world’s most innovative companies multiple times by Fast Company. Now they’re rapidly scaling their engineering teams with multiple backend, frontend, QA and site relatability roles open. Engineering teams are led by Dawn Baker, who cut her teeth at FitBit, Google and LinkedIn - she’s shared more about her leadership style here.

• London: Are you kickstarting your career and interested in circular fashion? DePop is offering a 3-month paid internship in London — you’ll get experience across the Product, Marketing and Insights team.

• Remote: For those who want some flexibility, Vinted (DePop’s very fast growing rival) is on the hunt for a freelance Product Marketing Manager. They’ve also got full time Product, Engineering and Data Analyst roles going — if you’re up for the slightly bigger commit of relocating to Lithuania!

• EU: Are you working on a circular business idea or part of an org focused on circular solutions? The EU has put aside a pot of funding💰 for unrestricted grants and mentoring support - find out more about the open call for social innovators.

• Remote/Australia:  Planet Ark is one of the most vocal voices on the circular economy in Australia. They’re looking for a Communications Coordinator for the next 12 months. You’ll have to have both social media and press skills.

• Online: The source of truth on all things circular economy is the Ellen MacArthur Foundation — they’ve put together a free 3-week course, Circular Economy: The Big Idea, with FutureLearn.

Hello hello machine learning…

• Learn about Machine Learning: First up, you might need to up skill. This free Machine Learning Specialisation offered by Stanford x DeepLearning.ai currently has more than +250k learners enrolled.

• Get another perspective: One of my new favourite publications is Rest of World — it’s like reading TechCrunch, but not having Europe or the US tech scene as your epicentre. They’ve got a whole section devoted to the latest news on AI from around the world.

• London: Working in comms, but want to learn about AI? Climate Policy Radar are looking for a Communications Lead — as part of the role you’d be developing the brand and mission of the climate AI startup they’re incubating.

• San Francisco: This role is definitely not for those who are coming to the world of machine learning for the first time — Climate AI is on the hunt for a mission-driven Chief Technology Officer. You’ll need to be US based, but they don’t require previous C-level experience.

• Remote/Germany: Mozilla are known as one of the good tech companies and they’ve been pushing for a better internet, open and accessible to all, for years. Now they’re needing to up skill their team’s AI capabilities and are hiring a Senior Director of Machine Learning.

  • Each year Mozilla pulls together an Internet Health Report — the most recent was an 6-part podcast series focused on the impacts of AI on justice and society — it’s a fascinating listen.

Learning opportunities

• Become a green transition coach: One of the frequent questions I get asked is how to engage people with climate topics at work — how do you make colleagues (and especially your boss) care about planet over profit? Climate Change Coaches have put together a new course for those who want to learn how to ‘coach’ for green transitions in the workplace — ideal for those pivoting in sustainability and CSR officer roles. It kicks off next month.

• Want to be a therapist? One of my favourite mental health orgs is Self Space. Based in London they provide ‘on-demand’ mental health support and even have a walk-in spot on the high street in Shoreditch. Their founder, Chance shared that he’s had hundreds of conversations with people wanting to train to be a therapist. So they’re running a counselling and psychotherapy intro course — perfect for those who want to explore if it’s a career for them. It has already sold out for October, but they’re running another in November.

  • At the start of every month Self Space also have a free online Mindful Monday session, where you get a chance to connect in a low stress way with grounding, breathing, or group-led journaling exercises. Next session is October 2nd.

  • I also love this model Self Space shared of how to check in with where you’re at in your mental health:

Next week

Opportunity Seeker will be packing its bags again and heading to Spain for a month. I’ll be deep in a fellowship programme for female entrepreneurs — so any ideas for newsletter themes or open roles are most welcome! Just hit reply or send me a DM.

Signing off from blue skies in Berlin…

P.S. Got a spare second and feeling generous of heart?

There’s big climate conversations, events and sessions happening in New York this week (with lots of free virtual panels that I wrote about in the last newsletter). But sometimes with all the talking, or as Greta more eloquently called it the ‘blah blah blah’, it can feel that things aren’t really moving with the urgency we need.

One non profit campaigning for strong legal change is Stop Ecocide. They’re a legal focused non profit, pushing for ecocide - the mass damage and destruction of the living world (aka our home) - to be recognised as a crime in the International Criminal Court in the Hague. This would be similar to how war crimes are treated under international law.

This small org has already been successful in getting several countries to propose ecocide as a crime in parliament (go Scotland, the Netherlands, Mexico and Belgium). And they’ve also got the Pope on side?

Want to support? Sign their global petition which will be used to advocate for legal change, and if you’ve got the funds become a regular earth protector.