Vin Valentino - From Bartending to Decarbonizing a Hospital

[00:00:10] Dominique: Welcome to Green Champions.

[00:00:11] Christy: Thanks for joining us in a conversation with real people sharing sustainability success stories.

[00:00:16] Dominique: This podcast is a platform for green champions to share their stories and plant new ideas. I'm Dominique

[00:00:21] Christy: And I'm Christy.

[00:00:22] Dominique: Today, Christy and I are very excited. We are with Vin Valentino, who is the energy economy lead for the Washington State Department of Commerce. Don't worry, we're gonna get fully into what that means.

But he leads efforts to grow Washington's clean energy economy, focusing a lot on investment, policy strategy, and building partnerships across government, industry, and communities. So much to talk about. Today, we're focusing on Vin's career path that has gone from brewing company in Columbus, Ohio, to green economy advisor for the city of Seattle, and we're gonna get into it.

But thanks for being here, Vin.

[00:00:53] Vin: Thanks for having me.

[00:00:54] Dominique: Before we get into your personal background, why don't you clarify what your role is today?

[00:00:58] Vin: Yeah. So I am the energy economy lead for the Washington State Department of Commerce. In the state of Washington, the Department of Commerce is an enormous agency. I'm in the Office of Economic Development and Competitiveness. We really think about how we, through partnerships, programs, policy, can responsibly grow Washington's economy in a way that creates real economic opportunities for people throughout the state. Those opportunities can be everything from high-wage jobs in the state's key industries, which we loosely define as clean tech, maritime, aerospace, life science, tech, the creative economy.

There's probably a few more in there, but for the sake of time. The other part of that is supporting those businesses and the owners of those businesses, whether they're small or medium. So broadly, my role is to be the state's clean tech lead. I work very closely with our energy office, who has championed and passed some of the most aggressive and ambitious climate policies at the state level in the country.

They really take the form of strategy, policy leads, granters and implementers for programs, and then regulators to make sure that folks stay on those policies. So I am not in the energy office, but I liaise with them from the economic office, really, you can think of my job as if we pass a clean energy transformation law, my role is to make sure that we have the companies and workers that can actually make that happen.

So a good example is we have a law called CETA, C-E-T-A, Clean Energy Transformation Act, that was passed in 2019. Very hard-fought, but it basically mandates that energy in Washington needs to be at least 80% greenhouse gas-free by 2030, and then it ramps up over time to be completely carbon neutral by 2050.

And so, right now, I am really focused on how we can ensure there's enough businesses, and enough trained workers to deploy all of the clean energy that that law mandates. So that is a little bit of what my current job is.

[00:02:56] Dominique: Thank you for explaining that and making that, I think, visual and easy to follow, 'cause you do a lot of things. And I know today we're gonna first kick off, you have a unique career trajectory in terms of I think you've woven so many of your talents and like also your creativity and ability to see opportunity into having a very unique career path.

So let's start at the beginning before we get into all that, which where'd you grow up? Where's home?

[00:03:19] Vin: I am originally from Dayton, Ohio. And I split my time between Centerville, one of the suburbs outside of Dayton, which is like if "Friday Night Lights" was a place. That's how I always thought about it, with a big Air Force base. And then split the rest of my time in Waynesville, which is, I think the antique capital of Ohio, and it's in a very rural space in between Dayton and Cincinnati.

So I grew up there.

[00:03:42] Christy: What led you to Columbus?

[00:03:44] Vin: A couple things. After I graduated high school, I actually did one year at OU in Athens, which incredibly beautiful place, really fun time. I did not know what the heck I was doing. 

I had been to Columbus a few times. My oldest sister and my older brother both lived there at the time, and so I had gone up ever since I was, like, a sophomore in high school. And generally just knew that it was, like, the biggest city in the state, and at the time I played a lot of music.

And so after my first year at OU, I actually dropped out for I think about a year and a half. I was still taking some part-time community college classes. But after a brief summer back in Dayton, I and a bunch of high school friends decided we would just move to Columbus and, I had a really good friend of mine was like, "I'm gonna go to art school." Another friend was like, "I'm just getting out of Dayton." And for me I knew there was a decent music scene. Ohio State is enormous and my siblings were there, so it felt just like a good place to go. And ironic, I think I moved there in 2010, and my plan was to be there for a year, and then I think I was there basically until 2021.

[00:04:49] Dominique: It stole your heart apparently.

[00:04:50] Vin: A little bit, yeah. I made some of the best friends of my life there. I really grew from being, like, a just dirtbag 19-year-old into a dirtbag 30-year-old, I guess. And in my time in Columbus, I know we're talking a little bit about career stuff, but what really kept me there was the music scene.

I was really fortunate to meet some players early on. I played guitar, bass, a little bit of piano, a little bit of drums, and I sang, and I had been in bands since I was, like, a freshman in high school. And I just connected with some people, I think maybe six months into my time there, and it just opened a whole community to me that was, like, really exciting, really supportive.

And so most of the time when I was in college in Columbus I would study throughout the week. I would bartend or work at restaurants, usually Friday, Saturday morning, Sunday morning, just to make school work. But then generally, I was playing a show every Friday or Saturday night, which was great because it allowed me to go to bars and not spend any money and actually get paid a tiny bit.

But for a very long time, that was, like, my core community, and it was, like, a really special one to be a part of, especially for the stretch of time from I think 2013 through 2016. Certainly beyond that in a number of different bands I was in. It seems to have ebbed and flowed, but at that period in time, it was the first time in my life when I felt like I had come to find a community that all wanted to sort of practice in the same way and was really supportive of each other.

A very long-winded answer to say, yeah, Columbus is awesome.

[00:06:16] Dominique: So first love, music. Can you tell us where the spark then led to the love for the environment and sustainability?

[00:06:23] Vin: Yeah. So when I moved here, I think, like I said, 

my older brother was here, my oldest sister was here. I'm the youngest of four. My other sister lives in North Carolina, and I think at the time she lived in Kentucky. And my last class at OU was a political science class, and this was, I think, spring of 2010.

And I had this really great professor. For the love of me, I can't remember his name, but he had just come from, I think, UC Berkeley. And the class was transnationalism, and the whole focus was things that impact the world that are beyond borders, whereas internationalism is state-to-state stuff, this was a class purely focused on what are the things that impact us that are beyond two states engaging with each other, or multiple states.

And so we talked about refugees, we talked about economics, and we talked about climate change. And I first learned about climate change, I think like a lot of folks, when "Inconvenient Truth" came out. For me, when I was growing up in Dayton, I learned about that right as a drought was hitting Dayton, so I just have vivid memories of being a junior in high school or a sophomore in high school, walking around and just seeing brown grass everywhere and being like, "We're so fucked," like a good high schooler. And then took this class freshman year of college and at that time, the Gulf oil spill had just happened. And the way this professor ran the class is he would just pull up articles, and for the first 30 minutes of class, he would just like, "Here's a news article. Let's talk about this from a transnationalist lens." And he would just really belabor the point, very importantly, I'd say, on how, like, the pollution, the environmental impacts from this Gulf oil spill were just incredibly bad, and multiple states not really engaging the way they should and that was something that just really rubbed me the wrong way.

And so when I moved to Columbus and I was, like, in between school, taking some part-time classes at Columbus State, I have this memory of bringing it up to my older siblings. and I had also just been talking to them of "I'm not really sure what I'm doing here.

Like I'm working in restaurants, I'm playing some music, but feeling a little lost." And my sister was like, you seem really passionate about this oil spill thing. You seem really passionate about the impact it's having, and you seem to not know what you're wanting to do next. Maybe you should look into going back to school and thinking about something environmentally oriented." And for all the younger siblings out there, sometimes your older sibling just saying "Maybe you should do this," is like all you need for a path in life and so what that led to was me trying to figure out how to go back to Ohio State, kinda get some ducks in a row.

And this is where it actually combined with my experience with the music scene. A very good friend of mine who I would later live with as a roommate for a long time, was at Ohio State and was actually in city and regional planning, was doing some environmental stuff. And so I applied, gosh, this must've been like 2011 to get back into the school, maybe 2012.

And I got accepted and I think I was in CRP for a minute and maybe took a couple classes my first quarter. 

But in the first intro class at the top of the quarter when everyone was introducing each other, just around the room, everybody was like, "I'm an EEDS major. I'm an EEDS major. I'm an EEDS major." And I was just like, "What the fuck is this?" And then I like looked up what the program was and was like, "Oh, this is exactly it," 'cause I hadn't really loved the class list I was looking at for CRP. I had looked at environmental science and was like, "I don't wanna be a biologist."

And this seemed like something that touched a whole bunch of different things, but really maintained the climate sustainability lens. And so I think I changed my major one last time to be an EEDS major, and then I just kinda rode that through the rest of my time at Ohio State, and just really fortunate timing.

[00:09:56] Dominique: No shock that interdisciplinary work suits you. Cool that you figured it out there. 

You were talking about the interdisciplinary degree and you were talking about EEDS and all of this. Everybody might not know what that means, but you have a degree working in the areas of sustainability, business, economics, public policy, and design. Only five areas. Did I miss any?

[00:10:17] Vin: There was like a couple chemistry and biology classes in there.

[00:10:20] Christy: Look at that. So all of this information, I love that. how do you think those skills prepared you for the path that you're on today? How did they lead you to where you are today?

[00:10:29] Vin: It's a great question. I think more than anything it gave me the practice in jumping from distinct subjects, an economic policy class, a public policy class, a community development class, a business class, an economic class, but maintaining a constant lens of what does this mean for climate, what does this mean with a sustainability lens. So actually, when I describe the degree to folks, because saying EEDS and then describing the whole thing is a little long, I generally say my degree is in applied sustainability, in policy, economics, business, finance, planning, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it just gave me an ability to talk to a bunch of different people about something that I think they see from many different lenses.

And then through my career, I've really learned it's one thing to see that and communicate that, and then what does it mean to do something about that? 

[00:11:19] Christy: I can see it's really that systems thinking, and when you're thinking about all those different disciplines and even from the class in OU, how you were having those conversations to the position you're in now, so many areas of impact. It's really great to see that. 

Maybe to belabor that, a good friend of mine in the program, I think he's living in Columbus now, but we worked on a couple capstones together. Still a very good friend, we talk pretty frequently. And I have these memories of talking to him as we were getting out of I think one of our classes and really realizing there's not jobs for this.

[00:11:53] Vin: You have to go out and seek it and use part of this skill and create opportunities. So, consulting was always an idea, policy was always an idea, but there was a real recognition that we were actually in, maybe in the right place a little bit at the wrong time of having the right skill sets and the right degree, but before the market really pushed for things.

And then I gotta tell you, in 2020 everything changed. Obviously COVID, but as somebody who was looking for more sustainability work, I interviewed 50 times that year for different jobs throughout the country, and that seemed to me to be when it really seemed to be taken more seriously on both the policy side and on kind of the business side.

[00:12:32] Dominique: Yeah, and I think that's exactly where I want our chat to go next is like you got this cool role with, we'll start with Land-Grant at this brewing company, in Columbus, and then you found yourself out in California, and then to Seattle. And I really wanna talk through like how you made those opportunities 'cause to your point, you have to create it in some way a lot of times with the work that we're trying to do, it's because it's important because it's not being done or not being done the way that we think it could be. And so let's start there with Land-Grant Brewing. How did you land yourself there, and tell us what your role was?

[00:13:05] Vin: 

I bartended and I worked in restaurants the entire time I was in college, and a little bit beforehand. And so a friend of mine worked at Land-Grant as a bartender, I think, after they'd been open for about a year and a half.

And they were looking for bartenders, they only needed part-time, and I actually was working for the Environmental Defense Fund. They were doing kind of a grassroots, youth-oriented, get out the vote style campaign. So I was doing that part-time. And friend needed me at Land-Grant, so like I did the two together.

And for the campaign, we were really trying to think about how to bring home the effects of climate change, which still I think in certain parts of the country and certain parts of the world feels very abstract and far away. 

 the campaign was called Defend Our Future, so oriented towards youth thinking about keeping the future. We ran an event called Defend Our Beer, and we worked with Land-Grant and I pitched the owners when I was working there as, "Hey, we wanted to do an event to get people together."

Part of it was to sign people up to vote, pledge to vote for candidates that support on climate. And we basically used the event to talk about, "This is climate change. Here's its effects on agriculture, and here's what that means for a pint of beer." So we had a campaign person there, like my boss on this panel.

We had one of the owners of Land-Grant on the panel. We had a friend of mine who worked in kind of urban agriculture on the panel, just talking about these things. It was maybe 30 minutes, an hour long. And during that, the owner, Adam Benner, had said "Hey, when we were looking for funders for Land-Grant, we wanted to be sustainable, but we didn't really know what to do. We didn't really have the knowledge or skill sets. As we go further and grow this company more, it's something we're really interested in." And, I'd I'd had a beer at this point, and I didn't know Adam super well. But I did go up to him afterwards and was like, "Hey man, we've known each other a little bit through bartending."

This is far more eloquent than I said it at the time, but I basically was like, "Here's my degree. Here's my background." I'd had the good fortune of being an intern for the city of Columbus when I was in college, and so that kind of gave me a little bit of credibility on my degree.

And I had a quick conversation with him, was like, "I'd love to talk to you more about this, and I'm happy to do some consulting work to build a sustainability plan." And that turned into that whole summer, a third job of doing a bunch of research into sustainability and craft beer, coming up with a plan of what it means, how to talk about it.

Again, very fortunately, the craft brewing industry, it really prioritizes sustainability. There were a lot of resources I could take advantage of. And towards the end of that summer, I came back to Adam and the two other owners, Quintin Jessee and Walt Keys, and gave them a pitch which was effectively "Here's a program that could be created.

Here's what you could do. I'd be happy to do this if you want me to." And they said yes, and then it turned into figuring out that role. And I started doing that, and I was still bartending. And so my role was, I think, sustainability and operations manager, which meant I got to figure out a sustainability program, but there was a lot baked into that operations side.

So I was also running our safety program, making sure we were in compliance. I was like, I got trained on the forklift, ordering hops, working with the city, working with state EPA, looking for financial tools to, I think initially we wanted to put solar on the building, and then did some big energy retrofits.

So, like, as I was looking through your guys' list of who's been on your show I've talked to John Seryak quite a bit, Greg Rafio, Pete.

I met them when I was a student in 2013, and was able to work with them in 2017, 2018. So that's kinda how I got the role, and it was really like a lab to figure out what does it mean to make a factory that plugs into a farm that has a patio.

How do you make that sustainable? And, I just, again, the degree was really helpful, allowed me to think through a lot of things, but working there was one, just cool as hell. Great way to round out my 20s. But two, it was, like, a really good sense of what does it really mean to make a thing sustainable as much as you can.

And really grappling with, I have this idea about energy and water efficiency, but then I have to go talk to the guys whose job is to not do any of that, is to brew beer, and really how do I work with them and make sure I'm being supportive but they're also appreciative of this. Yeah. So that's kinda how I got the job.

[00:17:12] Dominique: No, that's awesome. I was just gonna say, I think your ability to just the way you just described a brewery and the system that it is, the way that you're able to peel back the layers and see things at their core while also balancing the nuance and the details of the environment that you're in, I think is a unique skill, and I just wanted to call that out. 

But then you did this another thing. You said, "Ah, Palo Alto, I'm gonna go here. And what's going on in healthcare?" That seems like a little bit of a shift to me. So can you walk us through how you went from Land-Grant to being a senior sustainability program manager at Stanford Healthcare?

[00:17:46] Vin: Yeah. Well, it all began with COVID. 

[00:17:50] Christy: Great. Great. 

[00:17:52] Dominique: Every good story begins that way. 

[00:17:53] Vin: Like a wrecking ball, it came in, Yeah, I will skip over COVID 'cause it does play a big role here but, leave that in the past. So actually as 2020 was starting up, I was really starting to think about what to do next, and again, I had been to Columbus for a while. I was really hungry to leave just 'cause I'd been there longer than I had really wanted to. COVID came in, threw some initial plans of looking for other jobs out the window as everybody entered a hiring freeze.

And so really, for that year I was not the sustainability manager. I was a beer driver. I did whatever I was needed to around the place. And then, I actually got laid off. I think like a lot of folks during COVID. And again, I just have to give huge thank you to the owners of Land-Grant.

They really supported me even when that happened. They gave me a few offers of "You could do this, we could do this." But just by the nature of COVID support system at the time, it made a little more sense for me just to leave and do a little bit of work on my own.

In that period, I actually reached out to a bunch of contacts that I'd had, and let them know "Hey, I've been moving on from this. If there's anything you think is a good fit, please let me know." And I have to give a huge shout-out to Sarah Moore who, I think she's like the senior vice president at limited brands for sustainability.

And Sarah had been in the EEDS program at Ohio State, and she took me up on that. And at the time she was working at Jennings and was doing their sustainability work, was managing also like I think the real estate program, and she brought me in to do to re-up their B Corp certification.

So partway through 2020 I was doing that as a consulting role, and was interviewing a ton just because like again, early 2020, I think a lot of people forget this, but like the CEO of BlackRock put out his big thing that he put out every year and he was like, "Sustainability has to be important to every business."

And everybody took him up on that apparently because there was just sustainability jobs out the wazoo. 

 And I saw a job posting for Stanford Health Care, which is like the Wexner Medical Center of Stanford. And so, I applied, and I have some vivid memories of telling a lot of friends "Oh yeah, I have this interview coming up. I don't think it's gonna work out." And, "Oh, I've got like a second interview coming up. I don't think it's gonna work out." And then, those motherfuckers called my bluff and offered me a job.

And it was this like crazy moment of, I had really wanted to leave for a long time. I'd been looking for kind of the next step in my own career, and it was Stanford, and like you kinda have to say yes to that. And it was like living in the San Francisco Bay Area, and like you kinda have to say yes to that.

And so, I started the job right as Stanford Health Care, the hospital system, was kicking off this giant sustainability program. And so I got hired alongside a few other folks, and my role was really thinking about how to decarbonize the transportation impact of the hospital, the supply chain of the hospital.

And they wanted me to do a little research into ESG for capital projects and what that might mean. And so I moved out to San Francisco, I think August 2021. I lived in San Francisco, and it was still partially online, so like I would take the train down to Palo Alto. And then I later lived in Oakland, and I would take the train from Oakland.

And in many ways, it was not too different from the spirit of the work at Land-Grant, just the scope and system was much larger. And so when I was there, it was working with the transportation team to install EV chargers. We did some loose exploration of what does it mean to decarbonize our ambulances.

But I also worked with like a really brilliant user experience researcher and a professor at Stanford to host these interview sessions with staff across all spectrums of the hospital. So like doctors through janitors, and basically say "How do you get here? What decisions go into you deciding you were gonna come to campus today?"

In a part of the country that has a really decent transportation system, multiple trains, the university had its own shuttle system, and the goal certainly being like reduce single occupancy vehicles. 

And then like digging into the supply chain is crazy.

I know you guys have had Lauren on here, and so like Practice Greenhealth, again, a whole ecosystem of people trying to figure out how to decarbonize something that is super hard to decarbonize, at a time when like supply chains and their vulnerabilities I think were top of mind for literally everyone.

And so a little, honestly, a little less success there. Much harder to figure out. That's a little bit more of like federal government. But I think it was a longer answer than you asked for, but that's how I made my way there. 

[00:22:15] Dominique: I think I can get a sense in a way for how that then led you to Seattle and more of the work that you're touching on now, but I know there's been steps in the middle there with the Green Bank as well. But I know in the interest of time, I'm gonna pause us there, and we'll get into Seattle in our next episode, and talk about Green Banks, the work you do now, all that good stuff. But Vin, why don't you finish us off with just telling us what your best advice would be for somebody who admires your career journey? What's the biggest takeaway you think for a listener who's "okay, wow, this is awesome"? 

[00:22:45] Vin: I think if someone had that reaction first, I'd say, "Thank you very much." It's, I'm making it sound a lot cleaner than it was. It really is like the people you surround yourself with. I had some very good friends I made right when I moved to Columbus who were super entrepreneurial and really gave me, along with my own siblings, this sort of communal sense of you gotta shoot your shot and you gotta find your shot, and it's okay to be uncomfortable.

So like I guess I would say any of this sounds interesting to you, one, you could probably plan it better than me, but two, like just go for it. If you don't feel like you've got the degree for it, and this is a hard thing to say at a time when like entry-level work is just really messed up everywhere, but keep applying to jobs like every day.

Like during COVID I was sending out like five applications a day. It was crazy. But it's the other stuff beyond that, whether it is getting involved with local groups that are attached to the scene, or really just trying to like cold call folks on like LinkedIn. 

And I think anybody in this field is like happy to answer those questions and help you figure it out because it is less about a career and it's more about a skill set and taking advantage of opportunities as they come along. So reach out to people, ask questions, apply as much as you can, and yeah, I guess that's what I'd say.

[00:23:57] Dominique: Thank you for sharing your wisdom. And thank you also for just being honest. I think your vulnerability and ability to be transparent about the parts of the journey that have been uncomfortable or felt messy, I think is just so refreshing to hear because I think so many of us can relate to that.

Like it can look great in hindsight, but when you were in it, it might not have felt that way. So just thank you for being here and talking about this stuff. I think your ability to see opportunity is special. I think I love that you credited your sister with some wise advice, and her role in giving you the nudge towards a direction. And then, I think also it's been really great to hear how you've been energized by interdisciplinary work and work that feels important because it crosses borders. Those things still ring true, even though those were lessons that were taught to you like so many years ago.

How can folks connect with you and support the work that you're doing? 

[00:24:42] Vin: If you wanna connect with me about job stuff, hit me up on LinkedIn. That's probably the best way, if you wanna talk through any of this work. I'd say that's the best way. 

[00:24:50] Christy: Each guest brings a different approach to sustainability. We're here to highlight the people doing the work that inspires others because climate action takes many forms.

[00:24:58] Dominique: As always, you can find our episodes and support the show at thegreenchampions.com. If you enjoyed the episode, you can follow, subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. You can find us on LinkedIn and Instagram @greenchampionspod. Our music is by Zayn Dweik. This was the Green Champions.

We'll be back with the second half of Vin's success story in our next episode.