Naomi English | Managing Director, Head of Climate Strategy at MSCI Inc.

As Naomi found it isn’t always necessary to switch to a new company in order to carve out the role in sustainability you want. Instead it’s possible to work within an existing organisation to adapt your role, the culture and do more of what you love.

The challenge:

I had been leading on ESG at MSCI for about two years. I was leading a global team of eight and supporting about 600 clients globally, who were integrating our ESG data into their investment process. But for some reason I was feeling a bit bored or unsatisfied. I had ended up in a client support role and I wasn’t sure that’s where I wanted to be.

The solution:

Shannon provided space and a framework to think about my career in a structured way which really helped me identify what my values were, what was important to me and what a dream job was. I could step back from the day to day, and just think about this and she gave me a lot of insights about the broader industry, different types of roles, different functions, different organisations, different sectors.

She also gave me a really interesting perspective about the possibility of redefining myself and changing my function within an organisation that I already knew. So I'd already kind of established a lot of capital and goodwill at MSCI. They knew I was capable, I could execute. And she planted the seed in my head that it may be easier to go to a different function within that organisation rather than go out to the market. That they’d be willing to take a bit more of a gamble on me.

The result:

I evaluated the options out there, and ultimately decided to stay on at MSCI. But I had a lot more confidence. I felt like I was making a conscious choice. And in those moments of uncertainty, it's been helpful to go back and say OK, what really matters to me and is there an opportunity to change my role? My approach has been always if things weren't going the way I want them to go, whether it was my role, or even the culture of the organisation, I’ve asked what could I change? Can I either help feed the culture or influence teams at the organisation to do things differently? Or can I try and do more of the things I want to do?If I can't change it, then I'll leave. But I've been able to change it or influence and see the change that I want. And so I stuck around.