Emily Stone's career path to becoming a Sustainability Officer and a Hill-walking Guide. Emily talks about working abroad, the importance of project management to all of her roles, and how her love of writing helped her land her first job in the industry! Current Job Tell us about your current role I do two things! Four days a week, I am the Sustainability Officer at Heriot-Watt University. My job includes educating colleagues about sustainability, managing sustainable transport, looking after waste and recycling operations , and supporting energy-saving and carbon-saving projects such as building insulation upgrades, heat pumps etc.I also do freelance hill-walking guiding for various outdoor companies. Much of my work focusses on a community project called Connect Outdoors which works with community groups, taking people who are new to hiking into the hills to benefit their wellbeing and give them the new skills. Career Beginnings When you were 15, what job did you want and who did you ask for advice?Such a good question! I wanted to be a Graphic Designer or a Landscape Architect/ Designer. I enjoyed Graphic Design at school but I wouldn't say I was super good at it. I asked friends of my parents for advice, and got some work experience with a graphic design firm where I designed flyers for clients. Later, a friend of my neighbours put me in touch with a landscape architect who showed me the design work he did. I also loved writing, and at times wanted to be a writer. I was always writing draft books, and designing blog posts. Did you have an interest in the environment at this time? I was interested enough that I joined the Green group at school, which Mr Gordon the maths teacher had set up. I still have the t-shirt.My parents were a big factor in my interest in the environment. When I was 16, my dad was getting solar panels put on the house and he was so enthusiastic about it that the man who owned the solar panel company gave him a job. He went on to install solar on a lot of the houses in my town. I remember being frustrated when Mr Gordon said we probably couldn't install solar panels on the school! My mum was an environmental chemist, working to reduce environmental impact for a glue manufacturing company. She always got excited about things like new bins. I thought this was quite sad, but it's worth noting that our new waste contractor came on board a few weeks ago and guess who was excited about the new bins...My interest in the environment consolidated when I was at University studying Earth Sciences. There were two paths - either you did the oil industry-related modules, or the more environmental ones. I remember thinking, if I was the one to discover a barrel of oil, I would undo all of the good impact my dad had made through solar panels 1000X over and I didn't want to do that to him!What were your first steps in starting your career? Either you did the oil industry-related modules, or the more environmental ones.I left University and, while my peers were doing masters degrees, graduate schemes, PhDs and further training, I did a ski season in Canada. I worked in burger joints, summer camps, restaurants and high-ropes adventure courses, and one ski season became three.During the summer of 2017, back home in the UK, I had both obtained my Mountain Leader award, and narrowly missed out on a job writing for an outdoor magazine. My visa had run out so I couldn't work, but I wanted to practice writing, so the local ski town magazine let me write a few pieces in exchange for gift vouchers. I wrote one piece featuring people who were lowering the environmental impact of winter sports. I interviewed someone who had built the world's first electric snowmobile alongside a professional skier who was using an electric car and had cut out flying to reduce the emissions from his engagement with the sport.I returned to the UK and started applying for jobs in Scotland whilst working part-time as a leader on Duke of Edinburgh's Award expeditions. I applied for a job at Energy Saving Trust, working on programmes to encourage and facilitate the uptake of electric vehicles. At the interview, they were very taken with the article I had written. I believe it's what got me that job, which paved the way for everything else! And, I didn't realise until later but having the experience of outdoor leadership also paved the way for the outdoor work I have done since! Career path and skills What does your career path look like? I did not know what I wanted to do in school. I chose to do earth sciences at University because my school offered it at A-level and I enjoyed it, mostly because I got outside. I enjoyed the climate change-focussed modules at University, and found I could exercise my creativity in other ways outwith my degree course - for example through planning trips for the Uni Mountaineering Club.I worked for year or so with Sustrans on a data-capture project on cycling across UK cities but it was too process-based and rigid for me. After lockdown I started working for Edinburgh Science as Climate Engagement Manager, which involved talking about climate change and helping others mitigate it. I worked with various stakeholders and sponsors of the Science Festival connecting organisations and helping them form partnerships. One success of this role was a toolkit to help small businesses understand what they could do to help the environment.The role at Edinburgh Science opened up my eyes to the broad range of sustainability-focussed roles that are available. I now have contacts from consultancies, charities, the private sector, the arts, and the public sector - all involved some way in ensuring our species' and others' collective future. I moved to my current role because I wanted to embed sustainability in an organisation, as I felt I didn't have integrity in showing others how to do it if I didn't have direct experience of it. The University also enabled me to work a 4-day week, so I had time for my freelance work whilst having a stable job that provides a good pension (something worth considering early-on in your career), holiday pay, sick pay etc. I do value job stability - but it's always a balance as it's important for your wellbeing to be inspired, motivated and feel like you are making an impact in your work.What skills were important for you to develop in your career? I am a "generalist," able to turn my hand to a lot - but on the flip-side, sometimes I envy those with a defined skill-set and a key area of deep expertise.That being said, the main skill set which should be in the arsenal of any generalist, which is highly transferrable across sectors, is project management. Energy Saving Trust sent me on a two-day Project Fundamentals course and I have put the skills I learned into practise within every project I have done since - from event management, to waste management, to running the logistics of hill-walks with various communities!Although numerical/ data management skills certainly help with work activities I would say that 80% of my skillset is made up from soft skills - including behaviour change and training; partnership management; and community engagement. These have been important skills both in sustainability and in my freelance community work. And I developed them on the job!Creativity has kind of followed me along like a neglected pet. It's been there in event plans, articles I've come to write in my current job, and workshops I've conjured up. I think it's underrated and probably as influenced my work more than I give it credit for. If I could create a job in the environmental sector that doesn't exist yet, I would be a......Tour Guide in a cool landscape which has helped the local community adapt to, and the world to mitigate, climate change by drawing down carbon and providing mediation of extreme weather events! This article was published on Monday 19 October 2026
