In this episode, Chad Reed sits down with Amanda Simpson, Vice President for Research and Technology and Head of Sustainability for Airbus in the Americas, to discuss her trailblazing career as the first openly trans woman appointed to an executive branch position by a U.S. president. Amanda shares the challenges she has faced and the opportunities she has seized throughout her career as an aerospace corporate executive and senior official at the U.S. Department of Defense. She also deep dives into the future of sustainable aviation—from Sustainable Aviation Fuels or SAF to ZEROe, Airbus’s hydrogen-powered concept aircraft, to the role of policy and consumers in decarbonizing the aviation sector.
In this episode, Chad Reed sits down with Amanda Simpson, Vice President for Research and Technology and Head of Sustainability for Airbus in the Americas, to discuss her trailblazing career as the first openly trans woman appointed to an executive branch position by a U.S. president. Amanda shares the challenges she has faced and the opportunities she has seized throughout her career as an aerospace corporate executive and senior official at the U.S. Department of Defense.
She also deep dives into the future of sustainable aviation—from Sustainable Aviation Fuels or SAF to ZEROe, Airbus’s hydrogen-powered concept aircraft, to the role of policy and consumers in decarbonizing the aviation sector.
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Episode recorded: January 20, 2022
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Amanda Simpson: Knowing the weight of those decisions, the understanding of the impact that I could make, I think, really served me well, and understanding that becoming a leader isn't about sitting in a nice comfy chair, it's about leading people, giving them the opportunity for them to make change in the organization, knocking away the barriers in their way for them to do their jobs.
Chad Reed: Welcome to Climate Positive, a podcast produced by Hannon Armstrong, a leading investor in climate solutions. I'm Chad Reed.
Hilary Langer: I’m Hilary Langer.
Gil Jenkins: I’m Gil Jenkins.
Chad: In this series, we host candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers driving our climate positive future.
In this episode, we sat down with Amanda Simpson, Vice President for Research and Technology and Head of Sustainability for Airbus in the Americas. We dive into Amanda’s trailblazing career as the first openly trans woman appointed to an executive branch position by a US president. Amanda discusses the challenges she has faced and opportunities she has seized throughout her career as an aerospace corporate executive and senior official at the Department of Defense. She also gets into the weeds with us on the future of sustainable aviation – from Sustainable Aviation Fuels or SAF to ZEROe, Airbus’s hydrogen-powered concept aircraft, to the role of policy and consumers in decarbonizing the aviation sector.
Chad: Amanda, thank you for joining us here at Climate Positive.
Amanda: Hey. Well, good day everyone.
Chad: We like to start by taking a dive into our guests' individual journey into climate space. From your bio, you grew up in Southern California and then, you got your bachelor's degree in physics from Harvey Mudd College, during which time you also trained to be a pilot. Then, you immediately went to work as an engineer for a major aerospace and defense contractor. Were there any specific experiences growing up that ignited your interest in aerospace?
Amanda: I'm a child of the Apollo era. I remember the last few Gemini Missions. Then, the whole idea of putting someone up on the moon just gripped me. I wanted to be part of that.
Chad: Yes. Sadly, we haven't done that over the last few decades. Then, your company that you initially started working with, Hughes, I believe, was acquired by Raytheon, but you continued to progress in your career for that aerospace and defense conglomerate. During that time, you made a public six-year transition to become a woman and shortly thereafter became the first openly transgender person in the United States to win a contested primary election, becoming the Democratic nominee for the Arizona House of Representatives. Can you tell us a bit about the challenges you faced in corporate America and local Arizona politics at that time, the late '90s, early 2000s?
Amanda: I appreciate that recap. Of course, when I joined Hughes, it was still owned by Howard. After he passed, it was then, of course, sold to General Motors. We were acquired by General Motors for a while, which was very interesting. When it was owned by the Howard Hughes Medical Foundation, it was a company that didn't have to make a profit. Amazing. An aerospace company that didn't have to make a profit. Then, when they were bought by General Motors, things changed quite a bit. Then, of course, as you mentioned, eventually, we were acquired by Raytheon in 2000 or late '99, I forget which.
Yes. I transitioned in late '99 myself. It was an interesting process. Going to leadership and talking to them about it, I found out that there had been others that had transitioned at the company before but nobody knew. It was always done very quietly, people were relocated, very hush-hush. Even the HR team really had no experience. They didn't know what happened. There was no best practices. There were no policies. I was not willing to be relocated. I had a family. I had a support structure in Tucson, Arizona, which, by the way, is not the most progressive area. It was interesting place there as well.
I knew I needed to stand up and be who I was and be open about it and was going to do it publicly. It was a bit of a challenge but we established those practices. We came up with the policies and we put those in place and we shared those. Those are now the accepted standards that have been in place now for over 20 years, not just that company, but industry-wide. I'm really quite proud of that. Like you said, I ran for state office in 2004. I was blown off as a transgender person, what is that, could never win, couldn't really compete in a political arena.
I did win the primary, which shocked a lot [chuckles] of people but then I was outspent nine to one by my opposition and did not win the general. A little over 31,000 votes, which I thought was pretty good. About 40% of the people voted for me, which I did better than the registration would indicate for my district. I didn't have any support from the party, state party, or national party, even though it was a presidential election year. If you remember, John Kerry didn't do all that well. I used to joke with him after I met him years later that his coattails weren't just long enough for me either.
Sometimes, challenges and barriers are put in your way so that you can overcome them and become a stronger person. Not only did I think I grew but my friends, my family, and the corporations that I worked for grew. To me, that was a win.
Chad: Absolutely. Eventually, you were appointed by President Obama to serve in the Department of Commerce, becoming the first transgender woman appointed by a US president and the first to hold an executive branch position. Can you tell us a little about how that came about and what that experience was like?
Amanda: As I mentioned, I got involved in politics and even though I lost, I did really well, like I mentioned. That made the party notice that maybe we don't have to worry too much about her being transgender. She's a very smart person. She understands politics. She understands how to relate to the media and to the public. I became an advisor to the party. Over the next four years, I helped several candidates in Southern Arizona win, a matter of fact, the seat that I ran for was one in '06, so I felt really good about that, but it put me in the forefront. When '08 came about, I was elected by the fellow representatives and delegates in Arizona to be a representative to the National Democratic Convention that year.
At that convention, I met members of Senator Obama's campaign. Apparently, they took notice because sometime after the election, I got a phone call from the White House saying, "We'd like for you to join the Administration." I went, "Hey, who is this?"
[laughter]
Chad: Is this for real?
Amanda: Yes. I really hadn't expected any phone calls from the White House, but they did prove their legitimacy. Over the course of the next several months, we together evaluated where I would be a good fit, and we found a spot that would work well. That's where I became the senior advisor on technology for the Department of Commerce. That was pretty exciting. I pulled up my roots. Moved out to DC. Did, at that point, leave family and friends behind, and really start all new. It's a bit scary, but sometimes, you have to pursue opportunities that are presented.
Chad: Then, you had even more opportunities because you moved into the Department of Defense, and eventually, became the deputy assistant secretary of operational energy, I believe, is the official term. You managed a $19 billion energy budget, but you eventually left the DOD, I believe, in 2017 for Airbus where you now are the vice president for research and technology and the head of sustainability for Airbus at the Americas. How did your leadership roles at DOD, in particular, prepare you for your current role at Airbus?
Amanda: It's interesting because I had moved back over to the Defense Department because that's where my experience had been. I've been in the Defense Ministry almost 30 years at that point. There was a assistant secretary of the Army who had just started, wasn't all that familiar with defense items, and so she needed an assistant, so I was her special assistant for a couple of years.
That's when I became noticed by the Secretary of the Army as I work well with people. I manage projects. I manage people. They asked me to take over a new office that had been established, the Office of Energy Initiatives, which was looking at large-scale renewable energy projects at Army facilities around the US.
I did that very well for two and a half years. We established a little over $2 billion in contracts where the US Government didn't pay, was all privately financed, solar arrays, wind turbines, refreshing power plants to run on wood chips. A lot of it very interesting and exciting stuff, but of course, that came to the attention of the Secretary of Defense.
I moved up the ladder and then, two years later, now I'm the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Operational Energy, like you said, basically responsible for how the department used energy worldwide. That could be the fuel going in the trucks, planes, tanks, and ships, electric generators for outposts, air conditioning, and anything that had an on-off switch used energy, and thus fell under my purview.
It was ever-increasing responsibilities in the size of the team and the impact that my leadership had. One of the things I always wanted to focus on was about the end goal, it was about the mission. It's not about, "Hey, I'm a leader and I get to walk down the hall and people get out of my way," which they didn't, but it was about knowing that the decisions I made impacted thousands, sometimes millions of our service members around the globe.
Knowing the weight of those decisions, the understanding of the impact that I could make, I think, really served me well, and understanding that becoming a leader isn't about sitting in a nice comfy chair, it's about leading people, giving them the opportunity for them to make change in the organization, knocking away the barriers in their way for them to do their jobs. That has really served me very well. After departing the Administration, as most people do [chuckles]at the end of the term of a president, I tried the early retirement thing, it didn't work very well, so I re-entered the workforce and, like you said now, I'm vice president for research and technology Airbus Americas.
Chad: Let's move to the aviation sector, specifically its contribution to climate change. I think when you account for all the impacts of burning jet fuel including the contrails soCO2, NOx, black carbon, et cetera, estimates are that over 3% of all global greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to this aviation sector. This is about the same amount of emissions produced by the single country of Japan, the 11th most populous country in the world.
This is a lot of emissions. It's a big challenge. Traditional jet fuel sometimes called Jet A (is really a type of kerosene). It continues to enable the quick movement of people and goods across the globe. It does have these very significant negative consequences for the climate, which we must address in Airbus and your role, you're taking a really prominent role in addressing it.
I do want to walk through some of the solutions that the industry is devising to make the aviation sector more sustainable. The first is Sustainable Aviation Fuels or SAF. Amanda, can you explain to us what we mean by SAF?
Amanda: SAF is a non-petroleum-based aviation fuel. It is usually made from some bioproduct whether it be residual waste from the agricultural industry, it could be used cooking oil, solid municipal waste. There's a little over a dozen different ways to create SAF.
The key there is you're taking carbon out of the environment rather than pulling it out of the ground as you would with petroleum. You've closed the cycle. Sustainable aviation fuel burns in an engine just the way Jet A does. Unfortunately, it still has all the emissions that Jet A does, but then, once that carbon is emitted, it then is hopefully reabsorbed back into the environment through agricultural products, cooking oil, et cetera, et cetera, so then, it becomes a closed cycle.
The estimates are it's all over the place but estimates are that would reduce the amount of carbon by up to 80% but what it does is it's just keeping-- it's still adding more carbon, it's still keeping carbon in the atmosphere. Today, modern airliners are approved to run on up to a 50% blend of SAF.
In other words, you still have to mix the sustainable aviation fuel with the traditional kerosene. That's where we stand right now. The problem is while aircraft are authorized to fly up to 50% SAF, only about 1% is available. The production is so far behind the demand that it's very expensive and we're not really making much of an impact. There's a lot of opportunity.
The point is what we want to get to is 100% sustainable aviation fuel. Airbus is working to have, by the end of this decade, all of our aircraft approved to run on 100% Sustainable Aviation Fuel from, of course, these recycled sources. However, it's up to the energy industry to produce that SAF that could be used by these aircraft.
Chad: Right now, as you noted, the supply isn't there and the supply that is there is much more expensive than just the traditional Jet A 100%, and so it seems to really scale that solution, you do need the suppliers to be able to provide this fuel at a comparable rate to traditional jet fuel and it seems like we're not there yet.
Amanda: A comparable rate, a comparable price, and a comparable availability. There are certainly areas of the world where you cannot get SAF at all because there are no producers. The idea of moving fuel from one part of the world to another, well, that's not very sustainable right there. You need to be able to produce this sustainable fuel anywhere. Although, the good news is there's agricultural waste all over the world, so it should be possible, you just have to build up that industry.
Chad: That's one potential solution that Airbus and other manufacturers and airlines are working on. The second, which could be even more promising is hydrogen. Could you talk to us about how we could replace jet fuel fully or partially with hydrogen and why we would want to do that instead or in addition to Sustained Aviation Fuels?
Amanda: Hydrogen. We'll just start with the basic. It is the elemental building block of the universe. It is atomic weight one, so it's plentiful, but here on earth, it's often combined with other things. The thing it's most often combined with on our planet is oxygen, which makes water and that's the beauty of hydrogen. If you can separate and have hydrogen, when you burn it in an engine, per se, you create water vapor. No carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitric oxide, sulfur oxide, soot carbon, none of that stuff exists. You're just burning it and getting [chuckles] water vapor.
That's the ultimate goal. You have zero-emission other than water, which is already in the atmosphere. That's why you want to do it. Now, the downfall [chuckles] is that, kind of like SAF, you can't find a lot of hydrogen available for purchase to power anything.
NASA has been using it since the Apollo program, I might add, to power spacecraft, not just the rockets that you see, but we combine it in liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen for the rockets, but when they get up into orbit, they have hydrogen and oxygen on board, which they combine inside a fuel cell to create electricity. That's what they're doing up on-- even the Space Station today, hydrogen-oxygen creates electricity and also creates water.
Now, it's mostly supplemented today by the large solar panels, but back in the day of the space shuttle, and of course, Apollo, before that, they didn't have the solar on there. It was all using fuel cells. What we're doing is taking these technologies and moving them into aviation.
While it may seem like a new novel idea, the Air Force flew an aircraft on liquid hydrogen back in the '50s as a demonstration. Then, the Soviets actually built an airliner that ran on hydrogen in the '80s. It's been around. It's certainly feasible. The complications are in the engineering and the availability.
The good news is that hydrogen per unit weight has three times the amount of energy as kerosene. That's the good news. The bad news is that one pound of hydrogen takes up four times the volume of a pound of kerosene, so you have a storage issue.
Chad: You have to redesign the aircraft when you use hydrogen in a way that you don't with some of the sustainable aviation fields that we're talking about earlier. Is that right?
Amanda: Right. You can't just put the hydrogen in the wing fuel tank of today's airliner. You have to redesign how the hydrogen is stored and that, like you said, gets to a fundamental redesign of the aircraft. That's where we're standing right now, so how can you use them in the airliners of today, but if we're really going to get to clean aviation in the future, we're going to have to have that revolutionary leap to new types of propulsion, which requires this new way to store the energy on board.
Like I said, you can do a couple things with hydrogen. You can burn it in a jet engine in a turbine like you do kerosene today. Matter of fact, today's engines will burn hydrogen. They're not optimized for it but they will do it. Of course, the other is to put it in a fuel cell, create electricity, and that electricity drives an electric motor. The electric motor could drive a propeller or a fan and propel the aircraft.
There's a third way that is also not often talked about, and that's what we call Power-to-Liquid. That's by using hydrogen, combining it with carbon, particularly from a carbon capture plant that's taking carbon out of the air. If you take hydrogen and carbon and you put them together, you got, let's see, hydrocarbon. Ah-ha. You're making a synthetic fuel, which we call Power-to-Liquid because it does take energy to do that, but now, you have a synthetic fuel that would burn in all of the aircraft today.
Now, it would still emit carbon and all the other things that we don't want to have happen, but it stops at least taking petroleum out of the ground. We're looking at all three of those opportunities, probably when you start looking at it, not speaking just for Airbus, but for the aerospace industry in general, you'll probably see fuel cells first because that's technology that's been around for a while. I drove a fuel-cell-powered hydrogen-fueled car as a demonstration back years ago. Those still exist. There's, I think, 10,000 of them on the road in California and many others in Japan, since you mentioned it. Then, you will see hydrogen combustion, i.e., in a turbine engine, that'll be a little bit later in development. Then, we're looking at that Power-to-Liquid for those existing aircraft or for aircraft that are today too large or have to go too far to use hydrogen because of that volumetric issue. The fuel tanks themselves would be so large that the aircraft would become bigger, heavier, and not very efficient.
What Airbus is doing, a couple of years ago, we rolled out concept designs of our hydrogen-powered aircraft, which we're calling ZEROe for zero-emission and they're just concepts. Some of them look like standard tube-and-wing designs that we have today, except for the back third of the aircraft, which doesn't have any windows because that's where the tanks would be for the hydrogen. You'd want liquid hydrogen cryogenic and you need to put that in a cylindrical or spherical tank so that's now in the fuselage.
On the flip side of that, because you're not putting fuel in the wings, the wings can now be optimized for aerodynamics, which now means you have a thinner wing, you have a longer wing, you have a more efficient wing.
There's a lot of benefits that you get when you go to hydrogen as well. Then, we're also looking at a concept that would be a real radical step-change away from the tube and wing into something that we call the blended wing body, which looks like a big triangle with propulsion on the back, short wings at the end of that for control, but models of those, subscales have been flying for quite some time.
They're much more aerodynamically efficient. They're actually very volumetrically efficient, so for storage of fuel, they actually become very efficient, but there are some challenges that need to be overcome with those. We don't expect to see those and I don't expect to see those in the first generation, but they're coming.
Chad: That's very exciting. This is all very exciting. I guess my question is what does the timeline look like, right? What is the useful life of a passenger aircraft? Because it seems like to move to a fully hydrogen-powered aviation sector, we're going to have to replace [chuckles] most of our aircraft with some of these new designs and concepts that you've just discussed.
How does Airbus look at the timeline for rolling out these new designs and what would the timeline be for actually adopting these at significant volume so we can hit our decarbonization goals?
Amanda: Yes. Great question because airliners tend to last a long time, somewhere between 30 to 40 years. While we see them here in the US as new, then they get-- after they're used, maybe they go somewhere else and are repurposed by other airlines, and then, eventually, work their way into the cargo-carrying facility. They exist for a long, long time.
The good news is that the airliners that are being built today are 50% more efficient than the airliners that were built [chuckles] 20 or 30 years ago. There's been advancements in the materials to make them lighter in the technology and the engines to make them more efficient. We're doing a good job, but like you said, the best thing we can do today is replace those older aircraft with the newer aircraft, but then, eventually, replace those aircraft with these cleaner hydrogen-burning aircraft.
I think what we're going to see is some of the small aircraft. When I say "small," I mean like nine passengers, 19 passengers. We'll start seeing some of those be converted to hydrogen probably in the next 8 to 10 years and they'll be very limited route. They'll only be able to fly a couple of hundred miles, but they'll be clean.
Then, Airbus is pushing to have a fully new concept in service by '35. That would be a hydrogen-powered aircraft carrying 100 to 200 people going 1,000 to 2,000 miles on a tank of hydrogen. Like I said, that's going to be entered into service by '35.
What does that mean? That means some airlines somewhere is going to be having two or three aircraft, but over time, that will grow and will start to replace the shorter routes and then, eventually, as more hydrogen becomes available, and we learn how to use it and the technology continues to advance, because we are pushing the technology on this one.
Then, you'll start to see large aircraft that can carry more capacity, more cargo, more people that can go farther. Over time, the fleets will get replaced. This is not a 10-year thing. This is not a 20-year thing. This is a multi-decade replacement of aircraft. It's going to take a while but it will happen.
Chad: Airbus is a manufacturer, obviously, and you sell your airplanes to a number of different counterparties, but the airlines, the companies that we might know as American and United and Delta, what is the opportunity for industry collaboration, whether it's you collaborating with other manufacturers or you working in collaboration with the airlines that themselves have set decarbonization targets by certain dates? What is the status of that industry collaboration effort today, and how can we improve it and accelerate this transition?
Amanda: No company can do this all by itself. We don't go out and buy a ticket to fly from Airbus, you buy it from our customers. Working with our customers is key on this to find out-- understanding where we are with the technology, what do they believe they will be able to use on their route structure that will fit with their future operating model that will be appealing to their customers. We're absolutely working with those customers and we've announced several alliances already.
Then, you also say, "Well, those aircraft have to land at airports. There has to be fuel at those airports. There has to be infrastructure." We're working with airports around the world and we have discussions with them. Then, it's the energy providers. Where's the hydrogen going to come from? We're talking to the hydrogen providers. We're talking to today's energy companies about how are they going to make the switch from petroleum to hydrogen.
We're working that whole end, but then, like you said on the supply chain, we're working with engine manufacturers. We're working with our major component manufacturers to say, "If you're involved with fuel systems, what does cryogenics mean to you? If you are, say, on the fuselage, what type of new technologies, what type of new materials, composites that allow this? How can we leverage the newer, lighter, stronger, easier-to-manufacture, simpler-to-maintain, how do we incorporate that into the next generation of aircraft?"
Then, we even go further [chuckles] back and we're talking to the material suppliers and we're talking to the governments on what are the regulations to make sure that what we're doing is going to be safe, accepted, and incorporated into the logistics of the aviation sector.
We've talked a little bit about SAF and we've talked about hydrogen, but there's a third part, which is how we operate the aircraft. I think all of us have been on a plane. You take off and it feels like you level off, and then, all of a sudden, the power comes back and you go higher. Then, you fly across the country and then you get to your destination, maybe you level off at other altitudes or maybe you go into a holding pattern. Then, the worst part is you land and then you sit on the ground, they go, "Well, we don't have a gate." [chuckles] How do you optimize that because the engines of today are most efficient at high altitude?
Whenever you're at those intermediate altitudes, either climbing or descending, you're not very efficient. How do you optimize air traffic management systems so that you don't push back from the gate and start your engine until that aircraft is going to be able to taxi the end of the runway without delay, take off, climb all the way to cruise altitude, fly the most fuel-efficient and environmentally-efficient route to its destination, be able to pull the throttles back nearly to idle and virtually glide right to the end of the runway without delay and taxi to a gate without any halt?
That is big data. That's artificial intelligence, bringing big data into analyzing all the different systems, thousands of aircraft in the air all the time, to do that type of work. Operations, whether it be like air traffic management, like I said, or things like how do you shut down an engine when you land and have maybe a robotic tug pull you to the gate instead of actually running an engine?
All those things probably account for another 10% of savings. There's lots of different opportunities that we can start employing today, even that don't impact the fuels. We're looking at all of those things and we're doing it in cooperation with everybody. No one company can do all this.
Chad: Absolutely. You mentioned the role of governments and policy in this process. Is there one or two supportive policies that you think would really be effective and help bringing down costs for either SAF or hydrogen-fueled aircraft, and/or support manufacturers, support airlines in early adoption?
Amanda: Yes. If there's one thing that I would poke at is to get the regulators and the policy writers involved early. Now is the time as we are developing the technology, as we are learning the details, we are starting to make those decisions on, "This is the path to follow." Getting those regulators and policy influencers involved now helps not only educate them on the way we're going, but also gets them involved in that choice process on which path to follow. That's going to make it much easier [chuckles] when we actually start putting these aircraft into operation. Some of those regulation agencies, and there's many, many around the world are indeed involved in summer, are taking out, "Well, we'll wait and see," attitude, and that's not what we need. We need them to get involved.
Chad: In that vein, at the individual level, in any given year, I believe about half of Americans take at least one flight. If you're a frequent flyer like I am, I assume you are, flying is a significant portion of our individual carbon footprint, probably at least 20% of the carbon from our lifestyle is likely attributed to our flying patterns.
Do you have any thoughts on the role that individual consumers can play in accelerating this transition as well? Are there any actions we can take to help drive the demand?
Amanda: Well, one thing that's going to become obvious, or should be obvious, is that this new technology, these new cleaner systems, are not going to be less expensive. There's going to be a financial issue that eventually is going to trickle down to the consumer. Some airlines already today offer the opportunity to say, "Well, if you throw in a couple more dollars, we'll offset your carbon."
As more and more passengers are willing to do that, that sends a very strong signal to the airlines, to the operators that the traveling public is concerned about the emissions, and that they need to be doing more than just buying offsets and planting a tree, because that'll never get us to our goal.
As an individual consumer, that's what you can do. As an individual member of society is to talk to your policymakers, your Members of Congress, and others and say, "This is important." We need to be pressing those agencies to get involved to invest in research towards cleaner aviation fuels, to invest in those new technologies for engines or for materials. There's so many things.
Here, in the US, that's not just the FAA, which is the certification body, it's the Department of Energy, it's the Department of Transportation, it's the National Science Foundation, it's the National Institute of Standards and Technologies, developing what are going to be the standards for these kind of fuels. What are the material handling properties? There's so many different parts that have to be developed today if we're going to have these aircraft entering service in the next 10 to 15 years. That's where we can reach out and start making a difference.
Chad: Well, Amanda, we're almost done but first, we'd like to move to the hot seat.
Amanda: Oh, my gosh. Okay.
Chad: [laughs] In this section, we ask for your quick and candid thoughts on the following statements.
Amanda: Go for it. Let's see what we can do. [chuckles]
Chad: [laughs] The most important advice I have ever followed is--?
Amanda: Be open to opportunities. You have to first be able to recognize an opportunity and then, be willing to say, "Yes." I'm afraid that many people don't even see the opportunities around them and then, when they do, are reluctant to use them. Taking advantage of opportunities is, I think, the best advice I've been following in my life and career.
Chad: The best feedback I ever rejected is--?
Amanda: Be quiet. Sit in the back of the room. You're too disruptive. Your ideas are not welcome. That was one I absolutely rejected and [chuckles] literally, said, "Maybe I shouldn't be part of this team because this is not a team if our opinions are not valued."
Chad: The hardest decision I have ever made is--?
Amanda: Well, if I set aside my transition some 20 odd years ago, it was probably deciding to move to DC and leave my family on the West Coast behind my son and the rest of my family and strike out on my own. That was very difficult, but it was the right thing to do. It was a very, very hard decision.
Chad: Something a little lighter. The most insightfulbook or article I've read recently is--?
Amanda: It's an old, old book and it was a Stephen Covey, The--
Chad: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People?
Amanda: Yes. It's a classic. You have to start there and then you can get into all the other little intricacies, but if you can work on those seven successful habits, you can absolutely change your life.
Chad: Absolutely. I just finished a book called Atomic Habits, which is I think a similar book on a similar vein, but written more recently and it was also very good.
Since you spent so much time in Arizona, I also recently visited Arizona, and I saw the Grand Canyon for the first time. I spent a day in Sedona. I visited the Wupatki National Monument.As someone who has made Arizona your home for several years, can you tell us the most underrated place tourists should visit in Arizona?
Amanda: I love communing with nature, so I'm big on climbing a mountain and just sitting on the top and taking in the vistas and there are so many around Arizona, whether it's the San Francisco Peaks in the north or the Catalina Mountains outside of Tucson where you can just sit and look around and go, "Wow. What a fascinating wonderful planet we have," and what a privilege we have to be here and how we have to take care of it. The planet will survive, but if we're going to be part of it, we need [chuckles] to maybe change our ways a bit.
Chad: The most important or impactful issue I've changed my mind on is--?
Amanda: Without going into specifics? It's certain people. Oftentimes, you make a judgment around someone and you have to take a step back and reassess and say maybe that fist opinion, that first assessment was inaccurate. I need to give that person another chance because they can be an influencer. They can have it, not just an impact on me, but on society, and I need to maybe reassess and not dismiss them so quickly.
Chad: Great advice. If I weren't the head of sustainability at Airbus in Americas, I would be--?
Amanda: I guess if I wasn't doing this, I'd probably be retired, flying my airplane around.
Chad: Excellent. Final one. To me, climate-positive means--?
Amanda: To me, climate positive means that we think about our impact on the planet and we make even the smallest adjustments so that we are leaving the planet in a better situation than when we found it. That's difficult to say for those of us who [chuckles] have been around for the better part of a century, but it doesn't mean we have to solve all the problems today, but it means that we're on the path to making that impact a reality.
Chad: Well, thank you so much, Amanda. This was a really great discussion. I learned a lot, and I really appreciate your time.
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I'm Chad Reed.
And this is Climate Positive.
[CR1]Let’s go with this one