Thursday, January 10, 2013

Green U Speakers: Debbie Raphael

For my second installment of speaker summaries from Green U...


I really found Debbie Raphael’s talk to be very interesting, and my conversation with her following the talk was very meaningful! She currently works for the California Department of Substance Control and described her role of getting involved with government. She considers her role to be that of a civil servant, rather than a politician. She initially came from a science background but wanted to make something happen, and she believes that government is the place for that.

Raphael also believes in the power of asking the right questions and with her work in regards to products that contain many chemicals,  she wants items to be produced in the safest way possible, rather than saying that something  is probably “safe enough”. She warns against the “seduction of appeasement”, or the danger of compromising and in the end, only having something that really isn’t any good. Her core value that she shared with us was to express vision in what we believe, and ended by saying that the world is run by those who show up.

I enjoyed my conversation with her as we discussed the plastic water bottle industry, and I learned how there are no regulations for bottled water, while there are regulations for tap water. When discussing the difficulties with waste and recycling, one comment she made that I wholeheartedly agree with is that we can’t shop our way out of this problem, and I think this message is valuable for such a consumerist society. We ended our conversation with Raphael with a discussion of something that she has done to get nearly every job she has ever had. She has asked employers and other individuals for “informational interviews”, in which she asks them not for a position, but for a half hour of their time. She asks them related and meaningful questions and always concludes the interview with the question “can you give me the names and contact information of three people who might be able to help me out or are doing work similar to what I have talked about, etc. It was very cool, and she was a sweetheart and told me that she would love to do this with me should I choose to ask her! This was just the first of many valuable interactions from Green U as I continue to talk about these speakers over the upcoming days!

If you missed the first post that contained more general information about the speakers or experience at Green U, click here!

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