Success Story: From Higher Education to Equitable Renewables
Alma Rayner moved into a role that fights for equitable transition in the renewables sector after decades in higher education
WHERE ARE YOU NOW?
I’m a lead analyst for my company’s Northern Illinois business development team, managing two analysts and driving strategy, data, and processes for regional utility programmes. We focus on making the renewables transition accessible and equitable, serving mostly income-eligible communities across the US and Puerto Rico.
My team compiles and analyses utility data, works on major data overhauls, and collaborates with external verification partners. We’re a women-founded, women-led company committed to impact, equity, diversity, and tackling climate change.
WHAT WERE YOU DOING?
I spent over a decade in project and programme management, data analytics, and process operations across higher education and nonprofits in the US, with a focus on partnership development and strategic planning.
My early career as a social worker in rural Midwest communities grounded me in equity and accessibility, helping individuals without high school diplomas secure their first jobs and continue their education.
I also worked with small civic leadership nonprofits, managing programmes and leading large-scale data projects to track trends and impact.
WHY DID YOU CHANGE?
For years, I wanted my 9–5 to make a tangible environmental impact while staying rooted in accessibility and equity. I’m passionate about education and higher ed in the US, but I reached a point where my impact felt limited. I was also looking for roles that were less people-facing day to day, while still allowing me to contribute in a meaningful way.
HOW DID YOU GO ABOUT MAKING THE SHIFT?
I was laid off in October 2024, along with a quarter of my organisation. Once the shock wore off, I decided to treat it as an opening to explore climate-focused roles that aligned with my skills, experience, and values.
I went through several rounds of mapping out roles, organisations, and sectors within the climate space. There’s so much out there now that didn’t even exist five or ten years ago – exciting, but also overwhelming at times. I began with job boards, search firms, and recommendations from my network, but quickly realised most of those pointed back to education and higher ed, which I was intentionally trying to move beyond.
So I shifted gears. I joined communities of people either working in or moving into climate, sharing resources and job postings, and building solidarity with others navigating the same questions. I started creating my own lists of organisations whose values matched mine, and those lists kept leading me to more. Rather than rely on the huge shared spreadsheets that felt impossible to digest, I built my own system from scratch – borrowing what worked from others, discarding what didn’t, and adapting as I learned.
Each week, I refined the list: adding organisations when I found a values match, removing them when deeper research raised red flags. I read articles and books on the sector, categorised organisations by the type of climate work they were doing, and built a search process I could come back to consistently. It wasn’t quick work, but it gave me structure and focus – and turned what could have been a chaotic search into a deliberate, values-driven shift.
“ It wasn’t quick work, but it gave me structure and focus – and turned what could have been a chaotic search into a deliberate, values-driven shift.”
WHAT WAS THE MOST DIFFICULT THING ABOUT MAKING THE CHANGE
The hardest part wasn’t figuring out my transferable skills – I knew which ones would get my foot in the door. What really tested me was the timing and how random the process felt. I didn’t do anything drastically different for the roles where I landed final interviews versus the ones where I barely got a confirmation email. The hiring climate is tough right now, and so much of it comes down to timing and luck.
My mantra became: when nothing sticks, keep throwing spaghetti at the wall. Having coached others through job searches before gave me a level of clarity many people don’t start with, but it was still a lesson in resilience.
WHAT HELP DID YOU GET
I received support from varied folks in fields of interest to me who let me pick their brains, gather ideas from our conversations, and encouraged me that I was certainly headed in the right direction and/or who offered gentle redirects where I may have been a bit off track.
I have a great community of chosen family who always offered words of encouragement and support during my search, and who helped me know on the more difficult days that the right thing was coming for me at the time it was meant to.
WHAT RESOURCES WOULD YOU RECOMMEND?
I’d encourage people to use existing resources, but also to build their own. Just because a job board or spreadsheet exists doesn’t mean it will actually serve you. A lot of the big boards miss smaller employers – I actually found my current role on a tech job board by filtering for “greentech,” not on any climate-specific board. It wasn’t listed there at all.
Make your own list of companies whose values align with yours and start networking with people there, even if they’re not hiring. You’ll learn more about the field and get a clearer sense of what’s a good fit.
That said, the common resources are still worth exploring – just pay attention to where you’re seeing traction and where you’re not. Some of the climate job boards everyone recommended didn’t help me at all, but they might be exactly what you need.
WHAT DID YOU LEARN IN THE PROCESS?
Aside from what I've shared above/elsewhere in my answers, I'll just reiterate advice that is important for literally any job seeker, but certainly someone trying to change lanes in a challenging climate: treat your job search like a job.
Even if you can't commit a regular 9-5 schedule (or whatever schedule works for you) to your job search, have a regular time that you commit to it, take breaks and rest like you would during a job, etc. A lot of things are out of your personal control during the job search, leverage your community, your network (and keep building it!), and other resources that are low cost and free to you.
If you have the ability to pay for additional resources that can speed up your search, use them (vet them first, of course/chat with folks who have used those resources to see if they've found success with them!).
