The last time we spoke with Erin Bauer – a Sustainable Management master’s graduate who also serves on the Sustainable Management Advisory Board – she was working as a product development manager. While her career has evolved, her core principles surrounding sustainability have remained consistent.
Erin is now an industry program manager for a trade association focused on manufacturing, automation, and workforce development. Her position puts her at the intersection of education, technology, and sustainability—helping shape both the future workforce and the industries they will enter.
Erin’s current role is twofold. On one side, she partners with educators to strengthen curriculum in hydraulic and pneumatic technologies—systems that quietly power everything from agriculture to aerospace. On the other, she leads content development around emerging industry topics like sensor technology, analytics, electrification, and powertrain innovation.
Together, these efforts support a broader mission shared across many trade organizations: connecting industry and education to close skills gaps and prepare the next generation of workers. Workforce development initiatives increasingly rely on collaboration between employers and educators, and her work reflects a growing trend across sectors where partnerships drive both innovation and opportunity.
A Career Threaded by Sustainability
Her master’s degree in sustainability has woven itself through every phase of her post-graduate career, even as she transitioned into a role more centered on manufacturing and automation.
“Sustainability and quality have more overlap than people think,” she explains. “When you’re talking about automation in manufacturing, you’re still talking about efficiency, reliability, and risk management.”
Knowing today’s sustainability professionals focus on environmental outcomes, they also need to balance economic realities, workforce needs and operational performance. Some sustainability-supporting roles, while absent of “sustainability” in the title, are embedded across operations, logistics and manufacturing positions, she says.
Avoid the Sustainability “Silo” Trap
Erin advises sustainability professionals not to operate in isolation from other aspects of an organization.
“You can’t just focus on emissions or one metric. You have to understand trade-offs, opportunity costs, and how decisions impact the entire system.”
That includes speaking the language of business. Concepts like return on investment, workforce capacity, and cost-benefit analysis aren’t optional—they’re essential to drive change.
It’s also about momentum. Erin emphasizes the importance of recognizing progress along the way as sustainability evolves within an organization.
“Celebrating wins matters,” she says. “It reinforces cultural change and keeps people engaged.”
How To Manage Real-World Complexities Through Sustainability Education
Erin’s sustainability story has come full circle. She is now teaching in the program – specifically, SMGT 760: Geopolitical Systems, where she challenges students to think beyond theory and assess real applications.
Her class explores how decisions made at every level—local, state, national, and global—interact to affect outcomes. For example, students examine how two neighboring communities can face entirely different sustainability challenges based on access to resources, infrastructure, or funding (such as tax base).
She also requires use of practical business tools like a SWOT analysis and emphasizes concise communication—skills she sees as critical in the real world to describe both external and internal challenges.
“Leaders don’t have time to read 50-page reports,” Bauer says. “By developing sustainability professionals who can explain challenges more effectively, especially with ROI or impact to their customers or community, this helps gain leadership buy-in more quickly.”
“I ask my students to think of themselves as being a key partner to other professionals such as lawyers, accountants, engineers, and supply chain managers – they do not have all the answers, and sustainability practitioners can build trust by showing up and providing insights to achieve better outcomes.”
How to Enter the Sustainability Field
With more than 15 years of experience in sustainability, Erin has learned about its many complexities.
“Sustainability is a continuous improvement process,” she says. “It’s not black and white. You’ll work with different perspectives, and compromise is part of the job.”
Rather than viewing industries as inherently good or bad, Erin encourages professionals to see them as interconnected pieces of a larger puzzle. Real progress, she argues, comes from collaboration—not opposition.
That includes being open to imperfect solutions. For example, energy sources like nuclear power may carry trade-offs, but could still play a role in reducing emissions and meeting growing infrastructure demands.
Finally, she reminds emerging professionals that job titles don’t define impact, but communication, collaboration, and results do.
“You don’t need ‘sustainability’ in your title to do sustainability work,” she says. “These skills apply everywhere—solving problems, reducing risk, improving performance.”
Interested in Earning a Degree or Certificate in Sustainability?
If you’re looking to develop green skills to make you more marketable in the sustainability field, consider earning a degree or graduate certificate to boost your chances of getting hired. Or, upskill to prove to your employer (and future employers) that you are committed to learning and ready to adapt to change.
Graduates of the 100% online University of Wisconsin Online Collaboratives Sustainable Management bachelor’s, master’s and certificate programs have pursued sustainability careers across a wide range of industries. These programs offer working adults the flexibility to study when it’s convenient for them, regardless of full-time jobs, family obligations, or hobbies.
Degrees:
Certificates:
- Climate Leadership-Graduate Certificate
- Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)-Graduate Certificate
- Environmental Sustainability-Undergraduate Certificate
- Sustainability and Well-being-Graduate Certificate
- Sustainable Enterprise-Undergraduate Certificate
To find out more about our sustainability programs, contact an enrollment adviser by calling 1-877-895-3276 or emailing learn@uwex.wisconsin.edu.