Spotlight on Sara: Adapting and thriving
Many different roads can lead to a career in renewable energy. Meet Sara. Originally from Mexico City, she’s now a project manager for PV international, based in Germany.
Her career so far is a dazzlingly diverse story. Since getting a degree in communication science, she has worked in fields ranging from web design to life insurance and telecoms maintenance. It’s precisely this variety that makes her such a perfect fit for the project manager role, where adaptability is the core of her job.
Sara never stops learning
Her day-to-day working life sees Sara communicating between clients, service teams, and subcontractors to bring projects closer to success in operation. She works with technicians and manufacturers to resolve issues as they arise, alongside a host of general responsibilities that keep our work moving.
That’s a lot to balance, often working with new technology that the world hasn’t seen before. Picking up new skills on the fly is critical, and Sara had no background in renewable energy before joining us. However, her adaptive nature and proactive approach let her take to the job like a duck to water. Working with talented colleagues was another big motivator.
“I’m not an engineer, but I have other skills that let me do my job. Luckily, there’s support from people with great experience in the sector, they’ve shown me all the ups and downs. Personally, I think back to when I was in telecoms maintenance. I’d be climbing these 50m high towers to fix things, I had to know that the logistics people in the office were on my side. That’s the experience I try to provide for our on-site-technicians today.”
Having joined us in 2019, she’s now responsible for bringing new team members up to speed with what their jobs require. Absorbing new information and communicating it clearly is a very special talent, one Sara is using to the fullest.
People can be afraid to make decisions, it happens sometimes. I feel like, in the end, simply doing things in a pragmatic way is often the best way to solve a problem. Don’t sit and anticipate everything that could go wrong, you’ll never act. Once there’s a clear action plan, get started. Then, once you succeed, you can explain exactly how you did it because you know your plan works.
Sara
Project Manager, Germany
Sara is breaking down barriers
Sara’s approach to project management comes down to setting a clear goal and giving people the freedom to achieve it. Letting her team adapt and use the tools which make their workload more efficient beats a heavy-handed micromanagement approach. She understands the kind of people she’s working with and knows how best to unleash their creativity.
She’s also something of a creative herself. Painting, drawing, photography, fashion design, modelling; there’s a huge well of talent here. Embracing that side of herself makes it easier to come up with new approaches to fresh challenges. Because sometimes, yesterday’s success becomes today’s puzzle to be solved.
Sara worked on the Supernova solar plant. Built in 2013, it required major maintenance and repair works to bring it up to today’s standards. Reworking existing equipment, complex central inverters for instance, called for a completely fresh set of ideas and perspectives. That’s why we put Sara on the job.
She relishes the range of opinions she gets from her international team. A broader, more comprehensive vision is sure to make a project more efficient when it reaches completion. But first, we have to reach that end point. Here’s where Sara’s driven, proactive management style comes to the fore.
With new markets opening up all the time, Sara is looking forward to fresh challenges to be conquered. Great things are possible, whatever your background, when you’re working to make the world a better place.
