34 - Brady Mills

Looking to break into climate, sustainability, or real estate decarbonization? In this episode, Brady Mills shares the certifications, frameworks, books, newsletters, and industry organizations that shaped his two-decade career at the intersection of engineering, climate risk, and commercial real estate. 

We pulled together every resource he mentioned, from CRREM and GRESB to communication books and professional certifications, so you can keep learning long after the episode ends.

Resources (groups, certifications, terms, frameworks) mentioned: 

• Association of Energy Engineers (AEE) 
• Certified Energy manager (CEM)
• Professional Engineer (PE)
• American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE)
• Title 24 - CA building energy code 
• Carbon Risk Real Estate Monitor (CRREM)
• Greenhouse Gas Protocol 
• Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB)
• Building Performance Standards (BPS)

Books mentioned: 

• Nonviolent Communication - Marshall Rosenberg 
• How Can I Get Through To You? - Terrence Real 

Transcript

[00:00:00] Aparna: Hey POD people, welcome back. Today we are chatting with Brady Mills, who is a licensed professional engineer and senior leader working at the intersection of real estate climate risk, and the energy transition. He's a director at Partner Energy, where he helps institutional investors and owners translate climate goals, building performance standards, and ESG commitments into practical investment grade action across thousands of properties. With nearly two decades of experience, Brady spent his time demystifying decarbonization. I like that. Alliteration, stress, testing climate data, and figuring out what actually works in the real world, not just on paper.

Welcome to the show, Brady.

We're thrilled to chat with you. 

[00:00:42] Brady Mills: Thank you very much and happy to be on! 

[00:00:44] Aparna: Fantastic. So kicking us off, we would love it if you could summarize these last 20 years of your career into an easy to follow roadmap for us and the listeners. So tell us about your career. What drew you to engineering? How did your work evolve towards climate? Energy?

[00:00:59] Brady Mills: The question and for those who can't see us, which is everyone at home, there was a nice rollercoaster gesture that went along with that. And I like that because my career, I wouldn't say that it's had ups and downs, but, there have certainly been some external influences that have really crafted it and I just love this question 'cause I really do think of it as a journey. I didn't set out wanting to go into sustainability. It wasn't something that I dreamt about as a kid. And actually, the story of my career has changed. I had a version of it in my head recently where I thought that I chose to become a mechanical engineer when I was a sophomore in high school because of a tour that I had done at a local university. Recently was back at my parents' house and read a journal from when I was a freshman and it turned out I had my eyes set on engineering at that point. So, the story of how I got here has changed over time.

A lot of it was happenstance and coincidence and external factors, so I think, the more logical place to start off is grew up in Southern California. I'm not claiming to be, you know, a particularly sustainable person, but California has always had energy codes. We certainly grew up with water conservation and recycling and, separate bins for yard waste. It was somewhat ingrained, but again, it wasn't something that I had really chosen as a career path. In college, there were upper division electives that I could have taken for HVAC, HVAC being heating, ventilation and air conditioning design, or I, I believe there was actually a solar electric design class that I could have taken, did not take them.

Going to school in San Diego I think the obvious career paths were working for a defense contractor or going into more kind of biotech bioscience and that was actually, more of what I was drawn to. And one of the things that I like to, to think about when I tell my career story is: I came across a thought exercise reading self-help books somewhere along the line. And it was essentially looking at something that happened to you that you may be labeled as a bad thing at the time, and then thinking about all of the good things that came out of it. So I have a couple examples of that I'll share today. One truly was, more of a negative experience. I was a, a, I think a junior in college working at a restaurant, had a really bad day of work, was very upset. Gone on Craigslist and posted that I was seeking an internship. And I ended up getting an internship at a local bioscience company. I interned there for about two years for a small product group. We designed and made QPCR machines, so quantitative polymerase chain reaction. Really enjoyed it. But after two years, that company was acquired by a different company. They already had the same product team, essentially making the same products, so a lot of us were laid off. So I went back to Craigslist and I was pretty devastated at that point. I thought I was gonna stay at that company. And in retrospect, what did I know? I was probably 21 or 22. But the next internship that I got was at a local MEP design firm. So mechanical, electrical and plumbing system designed for large new construction projects in the San Diego area.

It was a smaller family owned business, SC Engineers, really enjoyed working there. I did not love mechanical, electrical, and plumbing design. I liked system design, system selection, but I didn't like spending long days in cad, or at least as a 21-year-old or 22-year-old. Now that I'm 41, sitting down and drawing ducts sounds like a more relaxing experience, but being at a desk all day wasn't for me at that time.

I did learn there or the fortunate aspect of that, that I'm grateful for is, of all places to begin practicing as an MEP engineer. I was in California where we have one of the most rigorous energy codes in the United States. It's known as Title 24. And as part of that, we had to perform energy models on buildings. And so we basically made digital twins, room by room of every room in whatever building it might be: a large office building, a student center at a local university, and as part of those, we use that energy model both for kind of system sizing, distribution, design, et cetera.

But we could also run simulations on how much energy that building would use over the course of a year and that's when it clicked that, the efficiency of the boiler that you select, or how much wall insulation you install has this lasting impact year over year on how much energy your building uses and how much your utility costs are. What led me to leave that job was, I essentially would experience a lot of frustration with projects. I'm sure that you both know because you work in commercial real estate, but for people at home, there's a large disconnect with the way that most of our buildings are built, where the person that is paying to build the building or to construct the building isn't the person that ends up paying the utilities on that building. And so we would frequently propose efficient designs, condensing, boilers, et cetera. Nothing bleeding edge, but trying to, make cost effective, efficient equipment selections where we could, but in a lot of construction projects over time, if they are over budget or getting close to budget, they go through a phase called value engineering, where they look at ways to reduce costs, and it was very common when going through value engineering to install less expensive, less efficient equipment and building systems. And so at that point I decided, I don't want to work somewhere where sustainability is a byproduct or a design selection that maybe sneaks its way through or makes the cut.

Like I, I want that to be the focus of the work that I do. In retrospect, I wish I would've spoken about that with my employer at the time. I don't think I learned until later in my career, uh, to talk to your supervisors about what you like about your job, what you don't like about your job, what you wanna focus on.

I think when I was younger it was easier for me to look for a job description that matched what I want to do and chase it. So that said, I ended up accepting a position in the San Francisco Bay area for a small startup called Sustainable Spaces. They were a company that performed single family home energy audits.

They also were an in-house contractor. So we did the work ourselves. If it was installing new HVAC systems, installing insulation, air sealing, et cetera. Then we also designed near zero and net zero new construction, single family homes. It was an incredible place to work. Certainly met some lifelong friends there and overall, enjoyed working there. 

My partner at the time left to teach at a university in Northern Mexico. And so I took a little bit of a sabbatical and did an extended Engineers Without Borders water filtration project in just in a small village in the desert in northern Mexico. One thing I kind of wanna add is that, this was 2006 through 2009 when the housing bubble was bursting. So at that point, a lot of the new construction work was tapering off. People weren't gonna be building homes, et cetera. So there was a little bit more of an economic movement where maybe that job made less sense and it worked out well for me to take this time off to view the Engineers Without Borders project. And that was late 2009. And then, the next very fortunate thing that happened was in late 2009, early 2010, the Recovery Act was passed. And as part of that billions of dollars were set aside to be invested in making low income housing and fixed income housing, more energy efficient.

So this was the Weatherization Assistance Program administered through the Department of Energy. When I was looking for jobs, I came across a nonprofit in New York City, and eventually relocated there to work for the Association for Energy Affordability. And we were a technical assistance provider and kind of engineering support for how all of these funds got allocated to make large apartment buildings in the New York City area more energy and water efficient.

You know, I think that was definitely one of the highlights of my career. Getting to just hop on the subway with combustion efficiency testers and gas leak de testers, and smoke spot detectors, anemometers that we could use to measure ventilation flows.

It was just really fun having all of this cool gear and getting to spend, days crawling around buildings and figuring out how they work and how you can improve them. I worked at that company for about seven years. This is another it ended for personal reasons again. So, my partner at that time had moved to southern Mississippi to obtain her PhD and we had my daughter, so I moved down to Mississippi. I am one of the original work from homers. I've been working from home since late 2012. And for everyone that's been doing that more recently, I'll say it's much better now than it was back then. But after a few years of working from home and traveling, I missed having an in-office experience and having colleagues and I ended up taking a position at a local MEP firm. Primarily again, just to get out of the house and to have colleagues and connections and friends and have that social aspect. I wasn't focusing on sustainability. It wasn't really a, an aspect of my job and ultimately after about a year of doing that, I confirmed that I don't like being an MEP engineer and that it is very important to me to work on sustainability projects. So I started looking for jobs again, and this is another instance where it was right place at the right time, or I managed to find a really good fit for me.

And so late 2015, early 2016 is when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were really kicking off their green financing programs. These were programs where if you were getting a loan on a multi-family building, if you could improve your energy and water use by about 15%, so reduce them by about 15% each, you could get better loan terms and a lower interest rate.

Institutional investors, really appreciated these loans. They were very popular. I ended up taking a job with CBRE. And CBRE obviously is a very large Fortune 100 company or Fortune 200 company. I worked within a commercial real estate due diligence branch. So they provided property condition assessments, environmental site assessments, appraisals and other typical reports that someone would purchase when they were thinking about buying a commercial property.

This was really my first entrance into kind of what I would consider commercial real estate. And it was a great fit at CBRE. They needed someone to perform energy audits. They needed someone to build a team that could perform these energy audits throughout the United States. So I started working there. I eventually hired a few people. We got pre-qualified by Fannie Mae to do the work and I had a good three years working there right up until COVID hit. And when COVID hit commercial real estate transactions pretty much fell off. We weren't essential. There was a lot of economic uncertainty, so fewer people were buying buildings, et cetera.

And about, I wanna say about 200 of my colleagues and I were all laid off. Most of us ended up at Partner Engineering and Science and Partner Energy. So Partner Energy is the company that I work for, which focuses on sustainability, partner engineering and science is our parent company, which focuses more on commercial real estate, engineering, and assessments. Again, this was a negative thing that had happened that affected me. I was laid off and I had to find a new career. I think the most interesting aspect of that was that when I started at Partner Energy, they didn't need me. They already had a director of multifamily.

They already had their network of energy auditors and their technical reviewers, et cetera. They already had that team entirely built up, what happened was when something new came along and they needed someone to figure out what it was that got given to me. So when clients started asking about carbon accounting, I was the person that got to figure that out.

And when the CRREM framework emerged, which stands for Carbon Risk Real Estate Monitor, I became the person that figured that out. And when building performance standards were passed, I got to be the person that figured that out and when natural Disasters started hitting our country a lot harder and insurance rates started spiking and physical risk really became, a consideration for commercial real estate.

I got to lead our physical risk group and contribute to the ASTM Resilience Assessment Guide and so it just became, a really good position where I got to figure out and solve these new problems that were coming in, which is really one of my core skills and they ended up being some of the most exciting and fastest growing areas in kind of commercial real estate sustainability.

[00:14:22] Kiersten: That was a fantastic recap. A few things that really jump out are first fact that you mentioned Craigslist for internships. It's definitely a different era. I can't imagine doing that, but it, pre LinkedIn world was totally different. So kids these days count your blessings. Second was, on the opposite side, very relatable on not wanting to work in CAD all day.

It's a fantastic reminder as well to listeners that, your career goals at 21 might not be the same when you're 41. So it's fine to, to be flexible to just think critically about where you are now. And that doesn't mean that it's forever going to be your path. I think your journey really exemplifies that.

So I love it. You also did an amazing job spelling out acronyms for us. Thank you so much. , We often have to ask guests like, oh, can you just go back? That's a industry term, jargony, so let's define it. You did all that! But one thing that we feel was missing maybe is could you just quickly run through what your title was? Like, what you were called in each of those things that you did, you gave amazing examples of what you were doing, but people don't know how to find similar roles unless we know what you're called.

[00:15:25] Brady Mills: Yeah, great question. I always find titles to be pretty fascinating, especially if you're working in a newer industry. My dad was a carpenter. If someone asked me what he was, I would say carpenter. And it was always just a one word answer and people understood it. It hasn't always been that way throughout my career.

I think at SC engineers, the first MEP firm that I worked for, I was probably a project engineer. At sustainable spaces, I think I also went by project engineer. Then at Association for energy affordability, that's when things started to get a little bit muddier in the green space, where I think I was an energy analyst.

I, I've seen energy analyst or energy auditor kind of used interchangeably. Then working up more into middle management, I think I was director of technical services for the East Coast which is more of reviewing energy audits, making sure the work that we're doing follows, recognized industry standards.

Because, for a lot of this, or for a lot of my career, we were kind of at the leading edge. Like with MEP design, for example, there are energy codes or ASHRAE handbooks, or places where you can go find the formulas and you know exactly what you need to do. And for a lot of the work that I've done, that hasn't been the case.

So there's a fair amount of researching, figuring out what you think might be the best way to do something and then hopefully applying that consistently. Jumping forward to CBRE, that title was probably one of my more inflated titles. I was a senior director of sustainability, and I think that's pretty broad. And if you were to LinkedIn search director of sustainability or senior director of Sustainability, I think you can really run into a pretty big variety of roles that have that same title. But broadly that's what it is.

And I think, I'll also just mention here, one of my favorite certifications that I have is the Association of Energy Engineers, certified Energy Manager cert. So you'll see certified energy manager or energy manager used, I think like Energy manager, energy Auditor, energy Analyst. Those can all be pretty similar.

Okay, so at Partner Energy, I started out as a senior technical manager, and now I am a director. Then while I was at re Tech advisors, I started off as a strategic advisor in the climate and energy group, and then was promoted to head of Climate Risk Technical Services which was a similar role to some of the other ones that I've said that have technical in the name where a lot of the work that you do is researching industry best practices especially, I've mentioned carbon accounting, so you might be looking at like the GHG protocol or just making sure that any work that you're doing applies to those standards.

[00:18:13] Aparna: Have to insert a quick little pun here. You said that your dad's a carpenter, and I have a pun, a day calendar. It's been, honestly, I look forward to it every single morning, but the pun for today is the carpenter came around the other day he made the best entrance I have ever seen.

[00:18:30] Brady Mills: Laugh track.

[00:18:31] Aparna: Insert the chuckle...

[00:18:32] Kiersten: We are laughing guys. We're just on mute.

[00:18:34] Aparna: Don't worry. They like my jokes. But yeah, thank you for explaining all the different job titles and giving folks keywords to search in on LinkedIn. With those caveats of a lot are gonna be broad strokes, and you really do have to nail down what the job is, not what the job is called. So to pull back the curtain a little bit on your current role as a Director of Partner Energy, can you tell us what the day-to-day looks like there?

So if we followed you around, you have Shadow one and Shadow two, what are we gonna see you do? 

[00:19:03] Brady Mills: Great question, a little bit of a roundabout way to answer it is, I live in New Orleans, so I'm in the central time zone. So one of my favorite things about living in the central time zone is that I typically have a little bit of time in the morning to do some uninterrupted work before all of my West Coast colleagues are up. I try to block off the morning again to do my most important tasks for the day. Today I was working on a presentation for the NREM Sustainability Conference in a couple weeks. So that, that might be a typical morning task working on proposals or pricing or product roadmaps.

We have a sustainability software now and there's a lot of development that goes into figuring out what features we wanna do next, how we wanna improve existing features. I spend a fair amount of time on proposals and meeting with clients. I probably have, one to two meetings a day where I might be pitching our services to a new client or weekly check-ins with existing clients. We have a number of clients where we manage their, United States Energy Compliance Program, so looking at all of the building performance standards and audit and tuneup requirements, and distilling that down into kind of actionable steps that they can take, making sure that all of their asset managers and property managers know what they need to do in the next 30, 60, 90 days, et cetera, and then there's a fair amount of internal quality control reviewing reports before they go out. Answering questions from other engineers that I work with. The questions typically relate more to the programs that I work on. We have a number of energy auditors and project managers that are great at, inspecting a building and figuring out what you can do to make it more efficient over time. But I will typically help bring in the QC, or the quality control, as it pertains to that ordinance. If we're doing an energy audit for New York City's local law 97, making sure that all of the aspects that relate to the carbon emissions thresholds and those taxes are accurate, making sure that it's presented to a client in a way that they can understand and is actionable. Overall, I think my career has gotten a lot less technical over time. I do a lot more business development and sales type work now or higher level review again, it's making sure that whoever is getting the report, can really figure out what to do and making that the information that's in that 50 page report or a hundred page report easier for them to digest.

[00:21:36] Kiersten: Perfect lead into our next question, which is you have made a transition from a technical engineering role into more of a leadership role, what are the top three skills you would say you brought from your engineering background and now use the most in your leadership role?

[00:21:51] Brady Mills: Thinking off the top of my head, engineers aren't known for our communication skills. I actually looked back through my transcript as part of the preparation for this and was looking at how few writing classes I took. I think that I will always rely on the engineering background and kind of foundation that I have, but what I've been focusing more on is how to communicate the value of that engineering and how to make sure that my clients understand those engineering findings.

[00:22:23] Kiersten: That's something other guests have echoed as well. So that's definitely something listeners would wanna take note of is to, no matter how technical you start out, make sure that you can communicate those ideas and tell the stories.

[00:22:35] Aparna: And with that listeners, we'll give you some time to mull things over as we take a very Quick break.

Break

[00:22:40] Aparna: So to start off with learning more about your industry, Brady, we'd love it if you could give us just a broad stroke explanation of this industry that you work in. 

[00:22:47] Brady Mills: I've worked in different aspects of the industry for a long time. I've talked about always working in sustainability. But my clients at the beginning were single family home owners or developers. And then when I was in New York City, my clients were people that owned maybe one or two affordable housing buildings or maybe dozens of affordable housing buildings, but all in that New York City area primarily. Now I work in the broader commercial real estate industry, which I describe as being, institutional investors, private equity companies that have, hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, rEITs, so real estate investment trusts, companies and organizations that own hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of buildings worldwide, and these owners are subject to different sustainability requirements depending on where they are. So the European Union has a lot of sustainability requirements. I've mentioned some of the jurisdictions in the United States that have sustainability requirements.

Overall. I tend to work for owners that believe in sustainability. They've probably made a net zero commitment.

And then one of the other things that I wanted to mention was GRESB, which is the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark, which is a voluntary system where people that own portfolios of buildings can submit information about their portfolios of buildings and be ranked against their peers.

That entails submitting energy, information, water information, waste information, information on which properties have green building certifications or not, ultimately these, companies are competing against each other. Part of why they're doing that is because it helps them raise money. So if they are going to buy buildings and place them in a fund and they want to raise money from other investors to use that money, a lot of European investors and other sophisticated investors understand that sustainability is really just risk management or that sustainable properties perform better financially than unsustainable properties. So we are really working with them to, identify poor performing buildings and improve them however we can, or certify buildings that are already operating really well. I think the buzzwords that people say now are, , climate risks and climate opportunities.

[00:25:16] Kiersten: Excellent, you mentioned climate risk- what trends are you seeing on how this institutional capital, maybe REITs, view climate risk.

[00:25:24] Brady Mills: I think it varies depending on where you are. So I think the way that we define climate risk is a little bit different than the way that Europe defines climate risk. For example, like in Europe, they are very CRREM heavy for transition risk, CRREM again being carbon risk real estate monitor. I will define how I view climate risk in the United States. So climate risk is broken up into two pieces. There is transition risk and physical risk.

Transition risks are risks associated with our transition to a more carbon free or carbon neutral economy. So if you were to imagine a company, like a car manufacturer, that only makes gas cars that's a transition risk. People like electric vehicles there are, likely ordinances or laws gonna be passed about fuel economy, et cetera. So it would be a risk to only manufacture gas powered cars. Same thing for building owners.

Transition risks are buildings that use a lot more energy than their peers because at some point when you're trying to sell that building, a sophisticated buyer is gonna recognize that your building isn't efficient and likely want what they call a brown discount on it. So they aren't gonna pay as much for a poor performing building as they would for a good performing building. These are ordinances where if a building uses more energy or emits more carbon than is essentially allotted by that jurisdiction, then you can pay, you can face a penalty. So New York City, Boston, washington State, Oregon State, Colorado State, Denver, Colorado, maryland State, Montgomery County, and there's a number of other jurisdictions that have committed to passing these. So that's a very concrete material one, because you can look at some of these websites and see, this building, if they don't make any improvements, they are going to begin facing a $50,000 a year penalty in 2030, and that's gonna escalate through 2050. And you likely need to invest in that property in order to avoid those penalties. A very other, another very simple one that I think about with buildings is just how much of the energy that they use on an annual basis is from fossil fuels versus electricity. With the building performance standards, there is a lot of emphasis on electrifying existing buildings, and it can be costly to replace some existing gas systems with new electric powered systems.

Then for physical risk I'll focus on buildings, but it also applies to supply chain. The way that we talk about it most often is just, I guess taking a step back, owning buildings for a lot of people is a business. The way that you judge how successful owning a building is typically looking at its net operating income. So you're looking at all of your revenue from rent, et cetera, and then your subtracting all of your expenses, which includes utilities. So if you have buildings where, and your insurance costs are increasing because you're in a flood prone region or a hurricane prone region, or a wildfire prone region, those are risks to those buildings, and then those are risks to your business.

So for physical risk, it's really understanding what types of natural disasters might impact your building, what you can do to your building to make it more resilient, and then ideally how you can ensure your insurance costs are competitive or accurate, based on what you understand about your building.

[00:29:01] Aparna: So many good little nuggets in there. And I have to say on the topic of BEPS, I believe that DC was one of the first to establish those standards back in 2018. So shout out DC some good city pride happening for here. Thanks for highlighting those and some ways that owners think about all of this stuff.

I think that's really useful for all of us who work in the space adjacent to this space or even, occupy an office space like this. keeping on the same thought process with building owners, what are the biggest misconceptions they have about decarbonization specifically?

[00:29:33] Brady Mills: Decarbonization, a common misconception is just that it's not gonna be cost effective to do, or I wanna use the word fluffy, like it's, you're doing it to save the planet or for some kind of altruistic motive, whereas, my background has always been in energy efficiency and really my goal wasn't to save earth or anything along those lines.

For me, it was always just about , there is a better way to operate a building. There's a better type of equipment to select, there are opportunities to make improvements, et cetera. So , I think the biggest misconception is that a decarbonized building or a sustainable building, is less cost effective or makes less money or that there's some kind of sacrifice associated with it? For any building that I work on, there are ways to make it more energy efficient that do have that return on investment that you're looking for or that simple payback that you're looking for. And then often there are incentives available.

[00:30:35] Kiersten: Building on that, I would love to hear what separates climate strategies that work in the real world from ones that look good in reports. I think a lot of people think some of these solutions only look good on paper. So as someone who has evaluated thousands of properties and worked in multiple parts of this industry, I'm curious just what separates a climate strategy that looks good on paper from something that really works and looks good in the real world.

[00:31:04] Brady Mills: You are correct there, are a lot of strategies, there are a lot of commitments that don't make sense that building owners implement. And I think it can be a complicated landscape where there are a lot of product vendors that are making claims that are maybe stretched a little bit. I think each building to a degree is unique. So what works well on one building might not work well on another building. And you're correct in talking about the grid, , on average in the United States, natural gas is almost four times cheaper than electricity. 

So, you do have to really do the math to figure out what makes sense. I think for any building there are low hanging fruit type opportunities, so like things like LED lighting and better controls retrocommissioning, those are always gonna work. I think more of the challenge that I see or that I deal with is just making sure that opportunities aren't missed in a given property. For most of my clients, they purchase a building and they might own it for five years, 10 years, 15 years, and during that ownership period, the goal isn't to get to net zero, it's really just to do what makes sense during that hold period.

So if you do need to replace your roof, let's make sure that we install additional insulation. It doesn't make sense to rip off a roof that doesn't need to be replaced and install insulation.

Another example might be, if you have major mechanical systems that need to be replaced making sure you do studies that you need to do in advance so that you understand what your options are and you understand what the lifecycle costs of each of those options are. Otherwise, what happens more often than not is like a piece of equipment fails. You call your contractor, they install that same code minimum piece of equipment that's already there. So I think, when you're looking at decarbonizing large portfolios of buildings need to use the appropriate lens to figure out which ones really need more interventions or less.

And then you do need to commission studies by independent third parties that you can really trust to show you what those numbers are, and then make the decisions that align with whatever your strategy is. The goal isn't always to do everything that you can. I think it's to do the easy things that make sense and then to take advantage of the opportunities that you have and to really try not to miss those opportunities.

One aspect of it that can be a little bit frustrating is this applies to me too, where, I've had additional kids and purchased another house or purchased a new house and now I live in a 100-year-old house with no floor insulation. And I wish that floor was insulated, and I will likely insulate it at some point, but I haven't done it yet.

So I find myself, in the same position as a lot of my clients or like another example might be my HVAC system is relatively inefficient, but I'm not gonna replace it right now. I'm gonna wait until it needs to be replaced and then when that happens, I'm gonna install a more efficient piece of equipment.

[00:34:04] Aparna: I think that makes so much sense. You don't wanna cut short the lifespan of a piece of equipment, and that's always something that we talk about with, when's the best time to replace it? At a planned replacement anyways. Although I do hope for the sake of cold feet, you get the insulation on your floors or addressed in the near future.

I would like to ask what advice would you give to an engineer who wants to work in climate or finance besides things you've already hit?

[00:34:27] Brady Mills: Yeah. My, main piece of advice, which I don't like, but it's just to be active on LinkedIn. Like, I think I learn and grow so much through being on LinkedIn. There are so many very intelligent people out here that are posting, and so many great industry associations that have events and have webinars, and I s- I spend...

my boss, Tony, don't listen to this part if you can, but I spend a decent amount of time on LinkedIn every day. That's where I get a lot of news. And I follow people, I see who they follow, I see what they repost, and even on the weekends, I'll spend a little bit of time going down those rabbit holes.

And then I think there's only so much that you can do online. So I would say at some point you probably do need to get up off your couch and attend, it could be a lecture that your local AEE chapter is hosting or, oftentimes universities have sustainability groups or real estate groups that talk about sustainability.

I think you do need to get out there and rub elbows and network with people, and a lot of good can come.

[00:35:37] Kiersten: Fantastic advice. We are big LinkedIn users, ourselves. Especially since starting the podcast. But yes, wrapping it up. What legacy, Brady, would you say that you hope to leave behind through your work?

[00:35:50] Brady Mills: I don't... I think I'm just gonna not answer your question. No. It's a great question, and I'll answer it as I can today, but I think that in a lot of ways my career has reinvented itself every five to 10 years, and my stance today is different than it was. Early on I probably would've wanted to be known for designing, net zero energy single family homes that are extremely comfortable and having the data to back that up.

But from my current perspective, I will still provide two answers. The first answer is, look, I have a big ego. I would love some sort of lifetime achievement award for all of the work that I've done in this industry or, being recognized as maybe a person that can help you decarbonize a portfolio of buildings more cost-effectively than other people or than other consultants can.

A recognition of achievement, I think that would be great.

The softie in me would actually say that I want my legacy to m- be more about how I was as a mentor and as a colleague. And, as I've left jobs in recent years the feedback that I've gotten from junior employees, thanking me for the time that I spend and showing them that I cared, like I think that actually ultimately means more to me than the big contracts that I signed or the heads of sustainability that respect me.

[00:37:17] Aparna: I love that, and I think it makes total sense. Honestly the rollercoasters coming back. You've had such the career journey, so it makes sense that your legacy's gonna switch with these changes with how your life has been playing out. I am now also thinking about Mean girls with Amy Poehler, like I'm a cool mom.

You could be the cool supervisor. So our last question for you, we love to ask everybody about the media they consume, the books they read- so are there any books or documentaries or other resources that you recommend to the listeners to check out?

[00:37:49] Brady Mills: Yeah. The media that I consume, so I feel like I'm not gonna have the most helpful response to this one. I... Early on in my career, I worked with a lot of people that said, "Work hard, play hard," and I never liked that phrase. But that said, I do work hard, and I do consume a lot of very specific, LinkedIn articles, webinars, white papers.

But what I'm trying to get at is when I'm, when I am not at work, I actually prefer to live in a fantasy land. So most of the media that I consume, it's gonna involve witches, dragons, vampires, something along those lines.

Like I said, LinkedIn has been very helpful. I do really like the GRESB newsletter. There's also a section in there of kind of what they are reading, so they recommend other articles. I follow, Urban Land Institute, ULI, and a number of other organizations. So I like to just read the quarterly updates and just very specific relevant industry knowledge. I'm less into kind of broader sustainability books.

The other thing that I will say is that, and I touched on this earlier talking about my engineering background versus communication skills I've been married, I have a partner, I have kids, I have pets.

I think some of the books that have helped me the most in my career have been the relationship books the parenting books, the pet training books and I guess a specific example that I really liked there's a book called Nonviolent Communication by Michael Rosenberg. It sounds like an aggressive title, but really it's about communicating better and listening better, and I think that's helped me out a lot, especially with kind of workplace mediations, contract negotiations.

There's another book by Terrance Real called How Can I Get Through to You?, which again, has a lot to do with communication. I think I have found that in my work technical capabilities are often not the limiting factor. It really is about communication and interpersonal relations

[00:39:53] Kiersten: Driving that point home again, it's a strong one. And I also have to throw in that you are not the first guest to say outside of work you're reading about, fairies, dragons, witches, you might be the first to say witches specifically, I'll give you that. But a more common answer than you might think. And I think it is helpful in its own way, right? To be like, you don't have to be business all the time. We need peace of mind and other things like that.

[00:40:20] Aparna: Is this our cue to start a a green color pod book club?

[00:40:23] Kiersten: We do have an alumni group, but yeah, maybe we need a thread in the linkedin channel about what, uh, fantasy books are you reading. We could have a separate one about sustainability books, so we're well-rounded people. But yes.

With that, listeners, we'll let you go because now you've done your technical outside of office hours listening about green jobs, and maybe it's time to snuggle up with a good fantasy book and wrap it. But Brady, we really, really appreciate your time, joining us here today. It's been a fantastic conversation.