IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2017 - 61

perks like business-class flights, or
you might be expected to cover travel expenses from your own salary.
Engineers often worry about engaging in the social sector because they
have traditionally commanded high
salaries in the private sector. The
salaries in the social innovation and
sustainable development space are
certainly very complex and complicated. It took me over a year to wrap
my head around how salaries work!
But here's the bottom-line: the salaries of the innovators we interviewed
ranged from $30,000 to $300,000,
with a median salary of $80,000.
STEM professionals can choose to
focus their careers on creating societal value without compromising on
their personal finances and quality
of life.
The other important thing I learned is that it is never too late to start
or pivot into a career in sustainable
development! Many innovators took
several career pivots to end up where
they are today. Take Kate Chapman,
for example: after dropping out of
high school and later college, she
pivoted from working for a mosquito control company to earning
her bachelor's degree and eventually becoming the executive director
of Humanitarian OpenStreetMap,
which develops up-to-date maps
for humanitarian response. Volunteers contribute to OpenStreetMap's
open-source project by surveying with global positioning systems
(GPS), acquiring digital photographs
of regions, and unifying existing
public records of geographic data.
Another innovator pivoted into a
career in the social sector after working for several years at a civil engineering company. Aurora Sharrard
returned to school to pursue a doctoral degree and eventually became
the Vice President of Innovation at
Green Building Alliance. Now she
enjoys leading the Pittsburgh 2030

DECEMBER 2017

District team, a collaborative local
effort to create a community of highperformance buildings in Pittsburgh.
If you cannot or do not want to
leave your job within a conventional
company, you can become an intrapreneur, someone developing entrepreneurial solutions within a large
organization. Socially-conscious
large corporations can be a great
place to start a career because they
can quickly achieve economies of
scale with their tremendous resources. Right out of college, Steve Garguilo landed an entry-level job at
Johnson & Johnson. He spent a
year building credibility within the
company by consistently delivering results and then used his leverage to acquire a position where he
could work on what he truly cared
most about: social innovation. He
decided to become a maverick
within the company and push for a
more socially-aware agenda. He was
pleased to find there was a huge
appetite for corporate social responsibility within the corporation, and
by showing passion and articulating
his ideas well, Steve tailored a position to fit his desired role. Two years
after joining the company, Steve
moved to Switzerland and was the
emerging-markets business lead
for three years. Since then, he has
moved back to the U.S., but now
with enterprise-wide responsibility
for instigating a culture of innovation as a Senior Manager of Creative
Engagement. He has been building a
culture of innovation by establishing
a leadership development program
to improve creativity and innovation
skills; launching a nontraditional
ideas to action platform that drives
individual accountability around
ideas; and creating a support network for his grassroots community
of ambassadors around the world
who aim to drive cultural change
at their local Johnson & Johnson

∕

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

offices. Steve travels around the
world and helps J&J employees and
partners become more creative and
increase their economic and societal impact.

Get Going Now!
Can you have an impact wherever
you are and in whatever you do?
The short answer is, YES! No matter what, always: 1) conscientiously
consider implications of your work
on the economy, environment, and
society; 2) make decisions that create win-win situations for everyone;
and 3) measure your economic,
environmental and social impact. If
you can measure it, you can improve
it. There is no one well-trodden path
to a career in social innovation -
everybody carves out their own
unique journey. While careers share
some commonalities, every innovator we interviewed and profiled
had their own trajectory, pivots, and
challenges. Your own personal and
professional quest to improve the
human condition is not a sprint on
the running track; it is a marathon
through the jungle. Get going!

Author Information
Khanjan Mehta is Vice Provost for
Creative Inquiry, Director of Mountaintop Initiative, at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA. He is the Founding
Director of the HESE Program at Penn
State, and led it until Dec 2016.
Irena Gorski is a Ph.D. student in
the department of Environmental
Health and Engineering at the Johns
Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD.

Reference
[1] P. Coffee, "LeBron James and Adriana
Lima tell kids to be scientists, not celebrities
in Verizon spot," AdWeek, Mar. 31, 2017;
http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/
lebron-james-and-adriana-lima-tell-kids-to-bescientists-not-celebrities-in-verizon-spot.

http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2017