New World of Work Series: “Sustainability & Work” Event Recap

On Monday 10 February 2025, the Arts & Science Program held its second New World of Work Series (NWWS) event of the academic year, a Sustainability and Work panel and discussion. This event highlighted how work both influences and is influenced by sustainability and considered the ways in which sustainability and environmental justice might be taken up in fields including health, education and business. The event brought together a range of panelists with sustainability expertise, including Artsci alumni working in a range of fields and a McMaster faculty member. After the panel, participants had the opportunity to break into small groups for further discussion. The discussions were led by students and alumni facilitators who have academic, work or volunteer experience related to sustainability.

When discussing what topic to select as the theme for this NWWS event, we as the student organizing team – Camille (Level IV), Emelia (Level III), and Noor (Level II) – noted that, in conversations with peers, sustainability emerged as a key theme.

We know sustainability is a field that students and recent graduates are trying to break into, especially as climate change becomes a greater and greater issue for our generation. We also know that people who may not be working in an environment-related field may want to incorporate more sustainable practices into their work/life going forward, understand how climate change and sustainability will influence their work, and help find new ways to make their sector more sustainable. Our hope is students and alumni with any of these connections to sustainability felt like they were able gain insight from the event.

We decided to structure this event to allow attendees to learn from the expert opinions of our speakers and then, in the roundtable discussions, to reflect and discuss the takeaways from the panel and draw further connections to their own experiences.

We want to say a huge thank you to our 4 brilliant panelists:

• Katherine Charness (Artsci 2017), Policy Analyst at Health Canada’s Climate Change and Health Office
• Zachary de Jong (Artsci 2018), Manager, Climate Strategy at Sun Life Financial
• Rodrigo Narro Pérez, Assistant Professor, Earth, Environment & Society at McMaster University
• Emily Siskos (Artsci, 2018), Ecological Restoration Technician & Communications Consultant at Friends of the Rouge Watershed

Students and alumni were very curious about the panelists’ work and grateful to learn from their insights and experiences. Discussions with panelists covered topics such as strategies for addressing resistance to sustainability in the workplace, methods for teaching sustainable practices and environmental care to diverse audiences, and adapting approaches to tackling environmental challenges in a rapidly changing world.

Xin Law-Gallagher (Level IV), who attended the event as a student facilitator explains that he found “having the balance of corporate, academic and governmental perspectives really neat! Particularly, it was valuable in the discussion of the conflict between legal obligations to maximize shareholder value and obligations to abide by sustainability standards”.

Zoë Wind (Level IV) remarks: “I had a great time at the New World of Work Series sustainability event. Getting to hear from alumni in fields I’d like to work in was very helpful for planning my next steps and hearing about different pathways for advancing sustainability across industries was fascinating.”

This event also gave students and alumni a great chance to meet new faces or reconnect with old classmates. We hope this event inspired students to further consider sustainability in the workplace, and helped all participants to think about how to incorporate sustainability into their own work and day-to-day lives. Furthermore, we hope the event broadened attendees’ perspectives when thinking about climate change and sustainability by likewise encouraging them to think of climate justice and environmental racism.

This event was part of the New World of Work Series, which is supported through a generous gift made by Arts & Science alumnus Bruce Miyashita. Sadly, due to the winter weather conditions, Bruce Miyashita could not join us for this event, but we wanted to express our heartfelt thanks to him for making this wonderful evening possible.

We look forward to seeing you at our final NWWS event of the year, happening on April 1st! Click here to learn more about the New World of Work Series event: “Work/Life Balance”.

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The New World of Work Series connects current students, alumni, and industry professionals for meaningful conversations about the World of Work. The New World of Work Series is supported through a generous gift made by Bruce Miyashita (Artsci 1984) in honour of his late parents, Tom and Nancy Miyashita. The annual event series offers a unique opportunity for Arts & Science students to explore emerging themes in the rapidly changing world of work and to take up topics relevant to work in the contemporary moment from a variety of perspectives. It also allows a student organizing team to accrue experience in project management and event planning. Since its inception in 2018, the New World of Work Series (previously the New World of Work Forum) has become a signature initiative within the Arts & Science Program.