Use the Energy Club to transition to an energy career. Contact David Danielson, dtdaniel[@mit.edu], for help.
EC: How did you hear about the Energy Club?
TA: After working for 12 years at Goldman Sachs as an IT manager, I wanted to make a change. A change in my career, industry, role, geography, everything. I quickly discovered that my passion lay in energy, but also that I knew very little about it. Ken White, an MIT alumni career counselor, encouraged me to look around campus for energy-related activities, and there you were!
EC: What made the club valuable to an alum?
TA: Two things: education and networking. As for my education, the Energy Club provided a broad overview of the entire industry, and even better, there were no problem sets! Biofuels, nuclear, transportation, solar, wind, buildings, the electricity grid, policy issues, everything. I attended every lecture, discussion and executive committee meeting I could. The Energy Club is all about understanding the facts, and that's exactly what I needed. It was a great way to learn from people who were already in the industry, to find out which part of the energy sector seemed most compelling to me.
EC: And as for networking?
TA: The club is a phenomenal place to network. I started by assisting with the lecture series, which gave me a reason (and an excuse) to approach energy executives who I found compelling. All of a sudden I had a reason for cold-calling CEOs of companies, or for going up to speakers at the end of a lecture. Leading the Building Efficiency panel at Energy 2.0, the first annual MIT Energy Conference, was another invaluable opportunity to do more of the same.
EC: What about other networking opportunities?
TA: The rest of the networking I would prefer to call "making friends with people who share the same professional interest," and there are now too many of these to count. A pivotal moment came at the first meeting I attended where a recent alum, Tod Hynes, talked with me a lot about the various avenues I was exploring. He really opened my eyes to some opportunities in the electricity markets. He even mentioned the name EnerNOC, the company I am with now, though it took me another 9 months to get there!
EC: How did you find your job?
TA: In fact, the Club was the catalyst for 2 jobs! One of Mike Berlinski's job opportunity emails mentioned a volunteer position to research ways to develop biodiesel businesses in India, and I jumped on it. My research project with S3IDF.org lasted 4 months, just enough time to figure out that I didn't want to be in the biodiesel business.
EC: And the second job?
TA: I had talked with enough people by this time to know there would be a great match for me in electricity power industry. It seemed that an increase in distributed power generation and continued generation and transmission constraints made this sector ripe for more advanced grid management systems. As I was trying to devise a way to approach EnerNOC, another email from Mike told of a job fair at which EnerNOC would be present. And the rest is history.