Episode Details

In this practical and liberating episode of Straight Talking Sustainability, Emma Burlow talks with Claire Osborne, accredited climate career coach with 15 years of sustainability experience and more than 2,000 hours coaching clients from organisations including the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Amnesty International, Octopus Energy, and Unilever.

Together they explore why experienced sustainability professionals are increasingly questioning whether to stay in their roles, leave the sector, or find new career paths that balance purpose with life outside work.

Claire explains why career confusion often feels like a “tangled ball of wool” — made of values, climate anxiety, identity, family needs, team culture, and future uncertainty — and why this knot cannot be solved through qualification‑chasing or imagining future scenarios. Instead, clarity comes from inner foundation work, building a tight brief that makes decisions obvious, and most importantly, testing your way forward through short, realistic experiments rather than thinking your way forward.

Claire highlights a shift many feel: sustainability roles once focused on impact (cutting emissions, protecting nature, engaging people) are increasingly narrowed by employers to reporting, compliance, and risk protection. This misalignment between purpose-driven professionals and operationally‑driven organisations—combined with global instability—affects stamina, optimism, and clarity.

They discuss two common states:

1. Burnout: overwork combined with misalignment to what you believe
2. Bore‑out: being under‑challenged, disengaged, and stuck

Both leave experienced professionals questioning whether to reshape their current roles or pivot entirely.

Claire describes why people often start in the wrong place — jumping straight to job boards and asking “What job should I do?” — when meaningful work often doesn’t appear on traditional job platforms. The real work begins internally: clarifying what matters, strengthening confidence, and dismantling unhelpful personal narratives (“I’m not the kind of person who does this”). Only then can people create a brief that clarifies what to pursue and what to stop wasting time on.

Claire’s “freedom of a tight brief” concept (borrowed from marketing) shows how clarity suddenly makes choices obvious. The brief is less important than the journey of discovering your strengths, interests, and unique value — the process that creates conviction.

They explore information asymmetry: we have full information about our current job (“the life raft”), but almost none about potential future options (“islands offshore”), which makes change feel risky. Claire stresses: don’t hypothesise. Test. Tiny experiments give real data, not imagined fears.

Claire shares her favourite tool: the energy tracker — five minutes a day for a week noting what gave or drained energy. Patterns appear quickly and reliably. Her own tracker showed she loved deep philosophical conversations; she initially dismissed this as “not a job” until discovering coaching — a moment she describes as being “hit in the face with a brick.”

Emma and Claire discuss the overemphasis on technical qualifications in sustainability roles. Many professionals ask, “What knowledge do I need to finally feel enough?” when the real questions relate to working environments, purpose, and ways of thinking. Emma reflects on her own trainer experience — the real challenge is not knowledge, but confidence, listening, meeting people where they are, and applying business understanding through a sustainability