Public Affairs Specialist Job Description

How I Got Into This Field

My name is Emily and I'm currently working in public affairs, doing a lot of stakeholder outreach for a small environmental startup company that's focused on recycling. It started, my interest or my awareness, I should say, of this field was when I was in the Peace Corps in West Africa. There was no health or sanitation infrastructure in the village where I lived, which is something that I think you'd sort of take for granted living in the States. There also was so much waste generated that didn't have a way to be responsibly managed. So fast forward a few years from that and I actually went back to graduate school to get my master's in public administration, and I interned at a public utility agency working on some of their recycling programs. And that's it, that's what launched it. I had such an interest in it. So my career for talking trash began in graduate school, and I haven't looked back since.

Job Responsibilities

You need to love the environment and love environmental and sustainability policies. You need to be a good communicator, publicly, personally—in person, or just through writing. You need to be a strategic thinker. A lot of times, you're sort of mapping out how you're gonna approach a situation, how you're gonna engage with certain people, sort of what my company's perception is or perspective is versus someone else's. You also, I would say, can't be conflict-averse or afraid to state your opinion.

What Public Affairs is Like

It's about relationship building. So there's a lot of research that goes into finding out who the right people are to speak with, who the right people are to help you understand XYZ issue. There's a lot of emailing, there's events to attend. And right now, in the recycling and solid waste space, there's a lot of environmental producer responsibility—EPR—legislation that's being adopted in various states. And so I'm spending a lot of time reading those and making sure that the company I work for fits in and can support those great efforts.

Tips for Getting Started

A lot of states have recycling associations, and I think those are great associations to get involved with. You can volunteer with them, you can sit on their board, you can attend their conferences. It's really all about networking. And there are great platforms right now that allow you to easily do that. But in the recycling and solid waste space, I think you can always reach out—who's your recycling coordinator at your university? Who's your sustainability person at your university? The same goes for the city. A lot of cities have recycling coordinators or solid waste program managers or sustainability coordinators. Reach out to them, ask them for coffee, sort of see what they're doing, what their job consists of, how they got into their fields. That's a great start.