06 - Fulya Kocak

Featuring Fulya Kocak, one of the first ever LEED accredited professionals a sustainability educator, author, and entrepreneur.

Join us as we chat about ESG, mentorship, navigating periods where "green jobs" aren't plentiful, and anticipating industry trends.

Terms mentioned: 

• Green premiums

Resources mentioned:

1. Fulya's LinkedIn Learning Courses - Note: not all courses on the LinkedIn learning platform are available for free. If you are a student, check with your university, many offer access to the full LinkedIn learning catalogue. Professionals, be sure to ask your employer as they also offer this benefit.

Companies and Projects:

• Case study on the EPA Headquarters project mentioned
• NAREIT

Transcript

[00:00:00] Kiersten: Welcome back, everyone. We're here today with an illustrious guest, Ms. Fulya Kocak. She is a multiple award winning sustainability thought leader, educator, and author. She's a pioneer of green building and the ESG movement, and her experience spans more than two decades as a change agent and a subject matter expert in multiple industries.

So welcome, Fulya.

[00:00:21] Fulya Kocak: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:00:22] Aparna: We're so excited to have you here. To kick us off, we'd really love to hear about your journey to your current role. So if you could highlight the steps along the way that's led to where you currently sit today as an educator, an entrepreneur, an expert in the ESG field.

[00:00:39] Fulya Kocak: Well, I've been in the area of sustainability for a while, so I'll try to make it as brief as possible. I'm an architect by training. I practiced architecture for a few brief years, and I got into construction through my master's degree at Penn State Architectural Engineering. One little detail that made the whole difference for me was in  the early 2000s, USGBC and LEED was quite new. They piloted their LEED workshop at Penn State and that's how I was introduced to green buildings. That really became a huge part of what I do today and who I am today. Through that workshop I got involved in understanding LEED before it was even known much.

And I became one of the first LEED accredited professionals right after my graduation. I started in construction as a project manager, I worked on large scale base building projects and some interior fit out projects. But while doing those, since I had the LEED credential which was a rare thing at the time, as soon as there was an opportunity for a green building project that was the EPA headquarters at Potomac Yard. I was assigned to it. That was my first exposure to hands on practical application of sustainability and green buildings. I worked on that project that became the first LEED Gold certified building in Virginia. And with that, I not only worked on my project, but I started to create tools that the whole company started to use.

And I became the go to person by other team members while doing my project management tasks. I was helping others. And eventually when the big recession hit, I was told that it's best for me to get dedicated into sustainability and my company at the time used it as a competitive advantage. I then joined another construction company that didn't have a sustainability program. It's a very large general contractor. I joined in pre construction. I learned about what buildings cost, what green premiums are about. Through that experience, I learned that it's not that our clients didn't want to pay for these great green elements of design and construction.

It was just that sometimes things don't pencil out and projects wouldn't move on. So I learned to be smart about pricing and understanding the premiums so that the clients understood what they are paying for, what the benefits were, and the best way of achieving the highest level of green and certification level at a very cost effective way. So that's a skill I still treasure today, not understanding cost side of things really is a part of professional sustainability efforts that would make us really many times fail or get a lot of no's. So with that, having the construction experience, then sustainability experience. Going to pre construction and pricing experience. I was able to take on the Head of Sustainability role at that second company as well. Building a corporate sustainability program from scratch one more time gave me a lot of expertise. Later on, I was recruited for an organization called NAREIT. That's a National Association for Real Estate Investment Trust in the U. S. I was asked to build a program around this thing called ESG -Environmental, Social, and Governance- for the whole sector. As you can imagine, it's a huge role. I didn't fully know what ESG was and this was in 2015-16 when ESG was not a trendy subject. This job gave me an incredible opportunity to help define what ESG meant for the real estate sector. 

I was able to speak with investors. I was able to speak with different real estate companies, service providers, ESG, and sustainability frameworks. That was incredible because understanding ESG from a theoretical perspective versus being all hands involved, understanding different stakeholders and what they are looking for made a huge difference in my career. I built the ESG program for REITs with various tools, and that was around six or seven years of my life. I then saw that there was this huge gap of education and engagement, because we all know, at the center of every single challenge and problem is people, the solution also is people. So I wanted to engage and activate people as a solution to very complicated problems around climate change, sustainability, and corporate responsibility.

So I started my own business two years ago. I focus on educating at scale, and I also provide strategic advisory that makes all these efforts smart and strategic, completely integrated into businesses.

[00:05:17] Kiersten: That is quite the career really, really inspiring. We notice a trend that you've sort of been ahead of a lot of the things that blew up to be core parts of the sustainability job market and sustainability. I'm curious if you would share with us what you think the economy of tomorrow looks like?

Are there any emerging trends right now that you're excited to follow or be involved in?

[00:05:43] Fulya Kocak: Thank you for that comment. I now realize that I was always at the right time, at the right place, learning and doing the right thing. Initially, I thought that was a coincidence, but it kept repeating itself with LEED and green buildings, then ESG and it's hard to predict the future now with so much uncertainty because the past is no longer giving us all the tips and signals to predict the future. However, if I have to take that crystal ball and hope that it's still not a coincidence, and I'm still seeing that what's coming ahead. It's very likely we're looking at climate change and low carbon economy becoming more and more important right now. They are important, but not still a top agenda. We won't have a choice. I think we'll see these climate events only increasing risks or increasing, I know regulations took a backseat in the US, but climate change risks, climate change related opportunities, also being prepared to leave fossil fuels behind, which is very hard. Transitioning into this low carbon economy is going to be huge.

I myself prepare my professional skill set and knowledge in those areas. And I'm always an optimist and opportunist, so I don't want to just worry too much about the future thinking that we're all going to face a very tough and challenging future. Probably we may, but that comes with a lot of opportunities.

[00:07:08] Aparna: Right. Building off of that, speaking of the future and, you know, the situation that we're all finding ourselves in to call a horse, a horse today's climate in the United States, isn't the most encouraging of sustainability as an industry, right? So honestly speaking, do you have any fears around how to sustain (haha) a career in sustainability right now, just given the regulations, given the way we're going?

[00:07:32] Fulya Kocak: I speak to a lot of sustainability professionals. I was with one of the head of ESG professionals yesterday, for example, and we were talking about this and I've seen this during the big recession, a very significant number of sustainability professionals lost jobs and the new jobs didn't come about really quickly. But it always comes back, yet there, there is a period of time, let's be honest, that these positions may not be as plenty because it was thriving at some point. This is my advice, that is not based on just hoping for the best or predicting the future, this is based on my experience over the years seeing sustainability job market. Stick to the principles. Only sustainability may not save you today, but if you have that good background on understanding the financials, if you have project management skills, having that diverse skill set, that's what I had, is I can fall back on any one of those for a brief period of time. I use that diverse background that I explained early on when I am looking at sustainability as well. For example, I use my financial knowledge to bring things up for a cost effectiveness or maybe an opportunity for a product that is differentiated. I use my background in project management in being a strategic leader. So if you have all these different skill sets, or if you don't have them, if you start building them, you can fall back on them. I always, and always believe in diversity. You should have the background that is not just sustainability alone. So, when I see people studying sustainability investing in their education in sustainability, I worry a little bit because you need to be like this renaissance man, renaissance woman, where you have all these different things going on for you, and you fit in to whatever atmosphere you're facing, because it's going to get better again, but then it's going to go back to this situation again. It's up and down. You can't just depend on being the best sustainability professional ever.

[00:09:31] Kiersten: I think it's a great point to have a diversified skill set. And I think on a positive flip side of not just studying sustainability, that's very encouraging to folks that haven't studied sustainability that are interested in these sustainability roles, right? They too can diversify.

They can bring the strengths that they do have into whatever realm they are working in, and they can still bring that sustainable passion without having a formalized education around it, let's say. So I hope listeners that are out there who, you know, are interested in getting into sustainability, take heart hearing that.

We noticed on your educational LinkedIn series that there was a tagline, from “Inspiration to Impact” if one of our listeners a company or was working at a company, that lacked a sustainability culture, how would you inspire them to make an impact, or to begin to shift the culture at an organizational level?

[00:10:22] Fulya Kocak: I have launched three different sustainability programs for three different organizations. Two out of three did not hire me or did not necessarily ask me to build these programs. So I started in different roles.

The first one was as a project manager. The second was as a pre construction executive. And the third one was the only one that they literally hired me to do it. What I'm going to say is that If we get too stuck on having everything ready for us to get going, then that may not really be available to us because these roles don't come in hundreds like a project management role or various different roles that come in big numbers. Usually there is one, two, maybe a small team of sustainability professionals. But there are things anyone can do for that inspiration to impact. For me, the first time around, I started with, as I told you, Helping other project teams. Sharing what I learned. Actually, I started to educate people as soon as I became a LEED AP.

I've been doing this for over 20 years, but nobody asked me to do so. I just took the initiative because I believed in that. So there are things you can do. I just don't want you to just think that, hey, I'm going to start a recycling program at my office. That's great, but that's not what I mean. Do something that integrates into the business. If you want that role to eventually turn into a full time job, nice to have initiatives, they are great but I'm talking about find ways to add value to your business on your own instead of waiting for someone to tell you what to do. Up to this point, nobody told me what to do. Even if I had a job description like the last one, I had to figure it out.

I had to use my expertise and background and all the information that I go get from others, the journey of discovery. You can do the same. I know it's not easy for the first one. It took me multiple years to get a position like that. And there was no promise. The second one, it took me a whole year to get a position like that. But again, it took me a lot of efforts on the side in addition to a day job. So yes, there are ways you can get involved. Yet, you just have to be patient and you need to navigate it in a very strategic and smart way. Just starting a committee, helping projects, coming up with some ideas. You'll need to work a little more than your typical work hours or sometimes from home in addition to your day job, because it just takes a little bit effort.

And so far, maybe I was lucky. It always paid off.

[00:12:53] Aparna: Exactly what you said. You need to work differently, you need to think outside the box, you really need to position yourself as that strategic thinker who can understand a full business as opposed to just one business line. And I feel like you, Fulya, are especially someone who, you like to look at every lesson.

You like to have a takeaway. You're trying to really better yourself and learn every day. And I know you shared with us a very fun anecdote about rock painting with your kids. And I think it's a beautiful example of how you can learn something from anything. Would you mind sharing that with the listeners?

[00:13:30] Fulya Kocak: Yeah, of course! I just have to say that as a mother, I learned that it's not just me teaching my kids teach me quite a bit, and they definitely made me a different person today, so I just want to give them credit for it, they don't always realize it. I started rock painting a while back. It's one of my big hobbies, so one day I was painting this rock for a colleague and it was almost finished. Somehow the rock flipped when it was wet. It completely got messed up. It actually, it was like four seasons and I think this was the fall, with all these different leaves and everything. It was so messy. I was so upset and kids were there and they were like, "oh what happened?" and I spent another 30 minutes on it and I redid it without erasing anything. It looked so beautiful and so unique that fall completely came out from that mess. And I told him, look at this, if it didn't fell on its face, if I didn't fail, I would have never thought of making it this way. So all the other three were that perfection. And the fourth one was this amazing piece of art that had a story behind it. So in my mind, sometimes we feel like we dropped a ball or we failed in something, yet something amazing comes out of it. So I try to look at things that way. And I also want to add this, I 100 percent believe in it. Having that creative side, maybe it comes from my architectural background. I always use that creativity outside of work as a way for me to think and solve problems. Because sometimes the solutions are not in a workday, are not in the processes we use to solve work problems. Sometimes we just need to go out there and create something else to come back and be creative in these solutions.

Because today's problems, especially around the environment and climate change, are not easy problems. They are very challenging and the regular ways we solve problems up to this point will no longer change. So one, having that diverse background and understanding all these different pieces from financials to technical environmental things to people relationships, there's also that creativity piece and having some fun with it that will help us solve these problems.

[00:15:44] Kiersten: Absolutely adore the idea of learning something from everything, thanks for sharing the story Aparna and I really, really enjoyed it. When we first met and spoke with you. It's pretty clear that in addition to learning from things, you put a lot of effort into improving yourself but not only yourself, I know that you put a lot of time into mentoring others. Given that you have a lot of experience in that area, we wanted to ask you if you have any advice to someone who wants to mentor someone else on how to be the best mentor possible.

[00:16:16] Fulya Kocak: I'll start with saying don't try to be the best mentor possible. It's impossible. The way I do it that makes me continue is that I don't try to be the best. I try to be available when I'm needed because I'm not always needed. Sometimes my mentorship is over many years, but maybe we speak once every six months and sometimes we speak every other week. It completely depends. The way I see it is that I take it a little less serious in ways that it doesn't have to be on a regimen. It has to be very organic, based on the need. I have so many people that used to work for me that I still talk to and mentor. All it is they send a WhatsApp message, or I send them a note saying, "Hey, I was thinking of you." That's all it takes. And then if they need something, they'd say, "Hey! Do you have a little bit of time? I may use your advice" and sometimes I tell them, "I need something" and they definitely be there for me and this is one thing I tell them, "Hey, I'm helping you and if you're thinking what I'm getting out of it, I say to them, I'll take credit from your success because I know that you're going to be successful" and all of them have done such incredible things that I feel very proud of, but I try not to pressure myself too much so that I can help as many people as possible.

[00:17:32] Aparna: I absolutely love the idea of just being available, being a text, being a friend, right? That's honestly what all of us need at the end of the day, just someone to be there and a very nice listening ear.

On that topic, you're imparting so much advice. You're being a great mentor, a resource for all these people.

With them, and maybe with the companies you've worked for as well, and just in general Fulya, what kind of a legacy are you hoping to leave behind through your work?

[00:17:57] Fulya Kocak: I'll try my best to answer it it is so important to me that I have a purpose, being alive and being on this earth it may feel a bit cheesy, but I'll say it doesn't feel like work for me. That's why I'm so passionate about it and I find that motivation. What I want to leave behind is to inspire people so that they do something about this. All I do is I share what I learned. But at the end of the day, they do what they need to do or what they want to do or what they're inspired to do. I try my best to scale my influence as much as possible, knowing that I don't know everything, knowing that I'm not the best at it. But I also know that sometimes I also need that one person that says that one sentence that makes all the difference. I'll tell you it's not easy for me to put myself out there and I'm putting myself out there big many times. Through LinkedIn I became a top voice, that means that I put a lot of posts out there. I'm a LinkedIn instructor every time I publish a course. I have 11 now. I'm like, I hope it's a good course I hope people like it and I hope I don't get bad reviews, but you will get that one or two anyways. It is vulnerable. It is hard and it is not easy for a lot of people and if you're listening to me and if you want to have that presence and if you want to have that thought leadership and you can't start or you can't continue know this. Every single thought leader that you admire feels the same way, even after they've done it for so many times. The legacy I want to leave behind is people make something better as a result of what I put out there. And I hope that with all that vulnerability and all the feelings I'm feeling every time I put something out there, I want you to hear them out. Because don't feel like it's because everything feels perfect.

I'm very confident and I think that everything I say will get the reaction I hope for. That is not true. Go out there and try it and I know that there's someone out there that you are going to influence, probably more than one person. But for me, if I made a difference for a single person, that's all that matters.

[00:20:06] Kiersten: Fantastic. And having looked at your courses and the viewership numbers, I know that you, you're talking to way more than one person. So also encourage listeners to check out Fulya's courses on LinkedIn Learning. We do want to ask you outside of your course, what other resources would you recommend?

[00:20:25] Fulya Kocak: There are many resources, and I'll say this. In the days that I started, the problem was there weren't that many resources. So it was really hard to find information. But today it's the opposite. I don't know which one is worse. Today there's so much that it's overwhelm. Like even I feel overwhelmed.

Which one should I read? How do I stay up to date? So it's really hard and I want to recognize that. It's much harder than ever to find the right information without spending too much time and reading similar things over and over again in some ways it's, I'm going to say that there isn't a single resource that you'll get everything from, but I do like following some LinkedIn thought leaders.

When I have my own newsletter, for example, I share a lot of information in that newsletter and I myself follow a number of newsletters. And I'll give you the advice that I give myself that, I stopped overdoing it. I stopped over reading it because there's a, that sweet spot that you have to stop at some point and start doing it. So I try to read few articles and a few resources, but at some point I stop. Number one resource for me currently in my career is people. I talk to peers, I talk to investors, I talk to different stakeholders. I talk to anyone who is hands on involved in various parts of this work. So that is number one resource for me, and I don't see why not, it could be a resource for everyone. So reach out and ask people that you appreciate or you enjoy their work, that you know they are doing something that you want to do, talk to them and ask them how they are doing it. The LinkedIn learning courses I put together are very foundational, so I highly recommend them. There is one on climate change as an intro to climate change, introduction to ESG, sustainability for construction, design, and architecture. So I'd say start with those because they build your skill set. But at the end of the day, you just have to be hands on and start implementing it. So I know that I'm not giving you that magic bullet but just it's not as simple as this is the resource. Those days are over. Even if you read a lot, doesn't mean that you learned everything you need to learn. Just do everything in your hands to create that foundational knowledge before getting too deep into all these opinion pieces and articles, just understand what is climate change? What is climate change risk? What is transitional risk? What is ESG? What are ESG performance metrics? How do green buildings connect to ESG and performance metrics? There are so many principles within this new world of performance and risk that there's plenty to learn about. Just don't get too deep into one topic and get lost in it before understanding these important foundational parts.

[00:23:15] Aparna: Makes so much sense. Master the 101 before moving on to the 201, if I were to put it back into college terms. So, maybe not a 101 or a 201, but just a Fulya-01, but we wanted to know, thinking about yourself and your daily life, how do you practice sustainability?

[00:23:32] Fulya Kocak: In my daily life, my family sometimes gets upset with me, but very basic and simple things, separating the recycling bin because they don't always do a good job of it. But I try to be conscious about my resource use as much as I can. But at the same time, I'll tell you this, I don't consider myself a tree hugger.

I consider myself a very like logic based, person. If something is making me suffer, I don't try to push it because I just know that I have to be productive and effective in my life so that I can give back. So even the things I do in my daily life, I'm very strategic. I don't want to overwhelm in such a way that that stops me from the most important job I have in hand, which is helping others do better and change the world. I mean, I have like renewable energy credits that I do for my electricity. So there are different things that I'm sure a lot of other people are doing. And my daughter and I love thrifting, so we haven't bought anything new in a long time. We made it a fun thing, and I think it's trendy among teenagers now. So yeah, we do our best, yet I'm not a diehard live green kind of a person. I'll just be very transparent with you.

[00:24:46] Kiersten: I think that like so many other things you've shared, it is a great perspective. You made the point about valuing resources and not over consuming.

Time is one of our most valuable resources so I think we will wrap up today’s conversation there but, we do want to extend a heartfelt thanks for you coming on the show and sharing all your wisdom with our listeners. So thank you so much.

[00:25:08] Fulya Kocak: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. I can tell you that what you're doing is amazing work because we need an army of new generation professionals us, but not just sustainability professionals. Every single position can overlay sustainability, but also In their roles, and that's what we need.

We need everyone to think about it in a very smart way. Again, not in a diehard or “this is what we have to do” or in a preachy way, but there's something we each can do. And we are the solution and our brains work very interestingly that we don't have to go look at what everyone else is doing once we get it, once we believe in it. We'll come up with incredible ways and very creative ways to find solutions within our own roles, sustainability or not.

[00:26:00] Aparna: It's incredible that you said that without being prompted, because one of the through lines we have on this podcast is that every job can be a green job. So, we're so happy that we're all aligned on this. Well, thank you so much for the kind words. We really appreciate it, and can't wait to follow up with you in the future.

[00:26:16] Fulya Kocak: Perfect. Thank you for having me.