Maya Albanese is a young, bright, and influential player in
the world of sustainable business. She
is less than five years out of college and has already made quite a name for
herself through her various endeavors across the globe. Maya is currently a part of the Rainforest Alliance team and charged with expanding the portfolio of companies that
sustainably and efficiently source, sell, and promote tropical commodities such
as coffee and bananas. She previously worked
as an assistant buyer of furniture at Williams-Sonoma Inc and at the Commercial Service of the U.S.
Embassy in Paris, France. Maya, a
self-described “yes-woman”, takes every opportunity she can: she spent seven
months backpacking through South America while writing, learning the Spanish
language, and doing conservation work. In
her spare time, she writes a column for GreenBiz called “How She Leads”, participates
in cause modeling, launches activist campaigns, maintains a well-read travel
blog, and serves as a brand ambassador for responsible organizations. Maya clearly has a wealth of experience in
the sustainability space (and beyond), so I sat down to learn more about her
and her career thus far.
On her passion for
sustainability and her chosen career path:
Maya was brought up in a family in which being a part of the
solution was encouraged. “I’ve always
known that I wanted to make change. I
come from a family of activists and from a culture of being politically engaged
and not sitting on the sideline.” Maya’s
father is a professor of economics and consumer behavior and her mother is a
composer and musician, which, she explains, is probably where she derived her
creativity, business sense and ambition. “I used to be a total nag in terms of getting
people to recycle and be responsible about the environment and then when I got
to college I realized that was actually something about me that wasn’t just
annoying. It was something I was
naturally passionate about and it would be easy for me to work in and it
wouldn’t even feel like work.”
“Working with the private sector and working with big
business in operations to make positive change appeals to me more than being
just an activist”, she states. Maya has
worked in the public and private sector, and currently works in the NGO world
at Rainforest Alliance. “Throughout my entire career it has always
been about sustainability and environmental and social change. What I’ve
realized is you have to play with the big guys because they are the ones with
the influence and the resources. They’re
some of the biggest economies in the world so sitting there pointing your
fingers from the sidelines is not being a part of the solution.”
On public, private,
and non-profit sectors and her work in each:
“They’re definitely really different and I wouldn’t say I
had a preference but I did have a goal upon graduating university that I wanted
to try out public, non-profit, and private sectors”. Maya elaborated: “I wanted to go on the
inside of these structures and figure out how they work and which I liked the
best because it’s important to have idea of all the full landscape of all the
stakeholders involved. The public,
private, and non-profit sectors all have really key roles to play and none are
more important or better so I’ve really valued my time working [within each of
them] but they’re all really different.”
Maya had the opportunity to hold a true business role while
working in corporate merchandising at
Williams Sonoma. Her role as sustainability assistant there was
something that she did out of passion. She told me her experience at Williams Sonoma was
really interesting because it was very bottom-line driven. “I got a really good window in on what it’s
like to be a sustainability person at a company where sustainability is not
really tied to people’s performance reviews.
It was really quite an uphill battle.
At Rainforest Alliance everyone is working there because they’re
passionate about its work, not the money.
They are working at it because they like Rainforest Alliance and their
morals align with its mission and that’s really cool to see. Here I don’t have to influence other people because
they already get it. I think another advantage
to working at an NGO like Rainforest Alliance is that you have the opportunity
to consult with a bunch of companies that want to partner with you versus being
confined to the structure and desires of one corporate board or entity."
Maya then provides me with some wise words concerning her
experiences: “Public sector, private sector, and non-profit are all huge
umbrella terms generalizations and working in a sustainability role at Williams
Sonoma is nothing like working in a sustainability role at Nike or Microsoft
because they face completely different issues. Companies that are publicly
owned can’t make sweeping changes and broad general public statements like a
company owned by a family for 200 years can.
So you in deciding your career you have to take each open position as a
different animal not by sector necessarily."
On the name she’s made
for herself and her advice for other young people interested in this field:
Maya is incredibly humble and thanks me when I mention how
impressed I am with how far she’s come in just a few years since she graduated. “Every day I wished I’ve accomplished so much
more. I guess that’s the unfortunate
symptom of being an over achiever and someone who is anxious to make change in
the world.” As for advice, Maya says
it’s all about being passionate but rational.
“The number one reason I’ve
gotten the jobs I’ve gotten and the exposure I’ve gotten is because I’ve put
myself out there and said, “I know I don’t have a graduate degree or an MBA but
hey, I’m gonna do a damn good job at this because I’m passionate about it”. When you put your mind to anything, you can
do it well. I think people really want to see confidence and passion and enthusiasm
and dedication to the company and the cause.
Nobody is going to succeed in the sustainability world unless they are a
cheerleader and a preacher and someone who can really influence the people at
the top and the consumers at the bottom.
You have to pair that passion and creativity and idealism with straight
business sense. I’m always going to want
to do more than I can do and I have to consider the bottom line because
ultimately nothing is going to succeed for you in your career unless you have that
rational, practical business-minded sense.
I think that’s why I’ve succeeded. People may be drawn to my energy or
passion, but they wouldn’t hire me if they also didn’t think I was knowledgeable
and rational about what’s possible and what’s not possible.”
On commonalities among the women she has interviewed for her How She
Leads column:
“I wouldn’t say there is any over-arching theme or trend. I
think what is interesting about the column is how varied [the women’s]
backgrounds are…the type of woman in the role in terms of experience and
passion varies by company and what that company needs to work on the most.”
“To get really down-home gritty about it, women in general
see sustainability as an issue affecting generations to come. As women we have a maternal instinct and a
lot of these women [that Maya has interviewed] have children and they want to
see that their children’s children have clean drinking water and have fresh air
to breath and good food. Being a mom, or
even just being a woman if you haven’t had kids, makes you much more inherently
aware and concerned about this issue of sustainability for future
generations. That’s often a response I
get when I ask women why they are passionate about [sustainability].”
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