ESG, International Careers, and Life Advice with Dr. Ricardo Calvo

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Dr. Ricardo Calvo, Partner at Environmental Resources Management about ESG, International Careers, and Life Advice.   Read his full bio below.

Help us continue to create great content! If you’d like to sponsor a future episode hit the support podcast button or visit www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com/sponsor-form

Showtimes:
1:15  Nic & Laura talk about the 2022 NAEP Conference
9:25  Interview with Dr. Ricardo Calvo Starts
12:02  International Careers
29:47  ESG
37:26  Life Advice

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Dr. Ricardo Calvo at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ricardo-n-calvo-phd/

Guest Full Bio:
Dr. Ricardo Calvo is a Partner at ERM, Environmental Resources Management.  He has 32 years of experience as an environmental and social (E&S) consultant in the US and abroad. Dr. Calvo started as a field biologist, doing wetlands delineations and wildlife inventories in Florida. Later, he started working on Environmental Impact Assessments throughout Latin America, worked for almost 10 years as a business development/marketing manager, and now is a Partner at a global sustainability firm, supporting clients mainly in navigating the environmental and social risks of their projects and operations and helping them develop and implement ESG strategy.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Transcripts are auto- transcribed

[Intro]

Laura 
Hello and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental nerds Nic and Laura. On today's episode Nic and I discuss hanging out at the NAEP conference. We talk to Ricardo Calvo about ESG, international careers and general life advice. And finally, female dragonflies will fake their own deaths to avoid mating with undesirable males.

Nic
That sounds about right.

Laura
I've launched onto that spirit animal every once in awhile.

Nic 
It's a good tactic. I think.

Laura  
Got to do what you gotta do, you know?

Nic
Exactly exactly.

Laura
Hit that music.

[NAEP Event News]

Nic 
Staffer Michael Baker International and Penrose environmental consulting will conduct a four day course sponsored by the North Carolina Association of environmental professionals on aquatic insect ecology for environmental professionals from June 14th through the 17th 2022 at Laurel community center in Shelton Laurel, North Carolina. Check out www.naep.org for details. We appreciate all of our sponsors, and they will keep the show going. If you'd like to sponsor the show, please head on over to environment professionals radio.com And check out our sponsor form for details. Let's get to our segment.

[Nic & Laura Segment: NAEP Conference]

Nic
You know everybody's different. That's another thing I learned a long time ago is like you can't just like even somebody who's really charming and really fun and has there's outgoing personality, but they might be the wrong person for the client that you want to bring in because that client may not like people who are like that.

Laura
They don't like nice people.

Nic
But it happens, you're laughing, but it's absolutely true. There was even like I remember like working one of my previous companies and yeah, there was a guy who was fantastic at marketing, but there was one client, he knows that he's like, I can't be the guy that does this. They will not like me, they do not like me. And I know that so someone else has to market this client. And it's like a crazy moment of self awareness because like, you know, in my mind, this guy's like bringing in millions and millions of dollars millions of dollars. And this is this should just be a walk in the park room but he actually she's trying to say not it's not going to be me. There needs to be somebody like okay, all right, Life Lesson Write that down.

Laura 
Well, and that is actually key to making all that money is turning down the things that aren't the opportunities

Nic  
They just weren't the right ones for him. Yeah,

Laura 
Yeah. Yep. I turned down job. A couple weeks ago. I was like, this isn't right for me. So Nope. And have to do that more often.

Nic 
Yeah, it's hard to say no. It's okay to say no, you should say no sometimes, but I always respectfully,

Laura  
People don't like it when they say no either, but

Nic  
No, God, no, of course not. I mean, we had a, we were looking for an acoustics firm, or a project or a proposal, and I have a great acoustics guy, like, love him. He's, he cracks me up hilarious, very good at his job, but I asked him was like, Hey, are you free? Can you help us out here? And I just like, I was like, he's never said no to me, ever. So I was like, yeah, no problem. He's like, I would love to but I honestly honestly can't. And I'm like, dang it, you know? But because he was a good guy, he's like, here's someone else that I know and I respect that I think would be a great fit for you. And that didn't work either. Because they were also busy, but I appreciate that he did it. You know,

Laura 
What you're saying is that's a good job to get into right now?

Nic  
Well, it's a niche field, right? So everything that's niche is super important to lots of different people. So if you are able to do noise modeling or air quality, those two things are niche. There's just not that many people that can do them. Not, even fewer, they can do it well, and it's it's something that everybody needs. The challenge is that not one firm is going to be able to probably support you to do the kind of work that you want them unless they're large. Like that's really literally it for niches. That's why partnering with large and small businesses, a shout out to my talk at NAEP, is a really good idea because small businesses cannot afford or just can't keep someone on staff billable enough for those those markets, but they are super important.

Laura 
Yeah. So I didn't get to see your presentation. What was that about?

Nic 
It was about the value of large and small businesses in relation to NEPA. Like why it matters. Sometimes we have to do it. There's requirements that make it let's say you have to have a small business component to your large business project. There are also opportunities that are specifically for small businesses. But you know, even those opportunities can be millions of dollars, that can be humongous projects. So having a partner is really important. Having a good partner is even better. And so honestly that basically what we did was walk through, we know how to have a good relationship. There's almost like we joked about it a little bit, like almost like dating. It really is like that, you know?

Laura
Who's we?

Nic
And you know, so I also did the presentation with Chris Holdridge from HDR, and so, Dawson and HDR have a really good working relationship that's been going on for years. And yeah, we've had a lot of good work come through that. And it was a lot of fun to have him up there, up there with me talking through it.

Laura 
So I missed a lot of the presentations at the conference. What else were some highlights? Because you were there the whole time.

Nic 
I saw them all. Yeah,

Laura 
that's a good girl evolved a little bit.

Nic 
It was a lot of work. And you know, a lot of people can thank me for the conference. But I want to use the platform to say that it was a lot of different people that helped with that. And yes, I did have a hand in it. But yeah, there's so many people that in Florida, the Florida group that's Tim Perry as well. Who was basically leading the effort, great, great people. Great, great crew helping us out. So I did want a shout out for them. But yeah, the conference was really great. There were a lot of really fun presentations, I think Sunny's on wetland data and predictive modeling was really really cool. One of the things we do in the field and Laura you know, this, it's you want to be able to predict where wetlands are, and then field verify said wetlands and they have a tool to do that even better, basically, as as well as you can without having to go in the field and it was really neat to see how they do and why but it's absolutely absolutely one worth checking out. It was really neat. So Eric Neugaard, that was on with us. He had a great tour of Port Everglades. I mean, people have been ranting and raving about how good it was. So I want to give a good shout out to Eric and he helped organize all that and pull that all together. Did a great, great job with that. I mean, there's a lot I mean, we obviously can't get to everything that was really good. But you know, having Brenda Mallory there. Her speech was really really, really good. And it actually tied really well to Sunny's keynote speech as well. Actually all three keynotes were really, really good. We had Drew Bartlett from the South Florida Water Management District. Which is SWFMD, I found out from Laura about basically restoring flow, natural flow to the Everglades. That was really neat, too. I mean, it was, it was funny because the reason that flow was from the Everglades was messed up was because of canals. They basically built canals like oh, we need water. Let's just take it from here. And then they realized that, that makes everything algal bloom all over the place, and that causes all kinds of environmental disasters, but they're changing it with more canals, which is kind of funny, but But it actually the way he presented it the way it went, it was a very good it was a very good talk.

Laura 
But this time, there's science involved.

Nic 
Yes. Yeah, kinda of.

Laura
Last time it was kinda good.

Nic
Yes, just do this. Yeah, it was the 40s. You know, like, we built so many of these things. installations, military installations, same problem. I was just like, let's just put it here. Why not like cuz it's a wetland and it's literally under the floodplain. Like, what are you doing?

Laura 
Yeah. I can't wait for 100 years from now, people look back and go look at what these idiots did.

Nic 
I know, I mean, but yeah, that's what we're doing now. You know, like, people build the stuff they build in the 30s and 40s. They're like, what if we just make everything a straight line? Instead of all this bending in the river and they don't have any contact

Laura
Instead of winding down.

Nic
Yeah, why would we want that? It's like, oh, it floods. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God, how do we undo this? We can't. Okay, great. Yeah, so it's just like, you know, those long term things, but there's a lot of really great NEPA talks as well. You know, NEPA case law update at the end of the conference is always it's always the best update of the year was really, really informative. So Pam Hudson, Fred Wagner and Michael Smith all do a fantastic job with that. And it is absolutely a really important one. It's actually kind of a funny one this year where it was basically the 2020 rules for NEPA were like they're not in the legal system yet. So we just don't even know if agencies are even using those rules, because they're just not showing up in the legal framework yet. So it's going to be a really interesting year. And I believe they're actually going to do an advanced workshop with that for the NEPA case law as well. Sometime in the future. But that one's always always fun.

Laura 
Yeah, so stay tuned, we'll keep you posted.

Nic 
So all in all, it was a really great conferences. I can say it's unfair to say that there's, there's so many good topics there and you can go look at them on any naep.org and they are still there. So really, really neat stuff. If you're a member, you can check it out.

Laura 
If you're not a member, you could become a member and then you could check it out.

Nic  
There we go. That's why she's here, folks.

Laura 
Actually, I'm here to remind us that it's time to get back to our interview.

Nic  
All right, sounds good.

[Interview with Dr. Ricardo Calvo Starts]

Laura 
Welcome back to EPR. Today, we have Ricardo Calvo, partner at ERM, Environmental Resource Management on the show. Ricardo participated in the Crew Development Workshop at the last in person NAEP Conference in Baltimore. And he had so much great advice to share then I'm really looking forward today's interview with you. So welcome, Ricardo.

Dr. Ricardo Calvo 
Thank you. I'm really happy to be here.

Laura 
Awesome. So we've been really excited to have you here with us today. And it was a real challenge to come up with the questions for you that we could only ask in our little bit of time because you have so much experience and so much interesting experience. And so I think we just want to start with maybe your early years and find out, I'm interested to know if you were always a nature lover, and how did you embark in your career early on?

Dr. Ricardo Calvo 
I am from Venezuela originally. And I got my degree in Biology at the Universidad Simón Bolívar and I was lucky enough to be able to come to the US and do my doctorate in biology at the University of Miami. I always thought that I was going to be a scientist. So when I was about to graduate, I sent all kinds of applications for academic jobs and to realize that it's really hard to get into the academic world. So I started sending applications for consulting firms, and I have done a little bit of consulting. So I started working with a small two person company in Miami, doing wetland delineations and wildlife inventories and whatever else they asked me to do. And from there, you know, I kind of began to show I guess, some aptitude to do project management and deal with people so then I went to another company and spent 10 years with them, kind of progressing into project management and then group management, doing a lot of international work. And then I went to another firm for another 10 years and he was very different because I was doing business development and marketing around not only biology but other disciplines. And they now have joined ERM as a partner for the last eight years, and then back to international work doing all kinds of different work. So perhaps the one comment I'll make about the career is that wherever you plan early on, you're going to keep an open mind because your career may go somewhere else.

Laura  
Right. It's definitely a recurring theme on the show. So that just sparked so many things. So it's obvious for you listening, why it was so hard to find, pick our questions, because that's so much great stuff. I'd like to know a little bit more because I get this question a lot about I know it's been a while now but making the switch from Venezuela to the US. Would you have any advice or what was the key to your success in making that happen? Because I know I know things are a little bit different now but it might be helpful for someone to hear maybe a few little tidbits on like how they could make that transition if because we do have international listeners too.

Dr. Ricardo Calvo 
Yeah, I would say that the main thing that comes to mind is you never know when the opportunity is gonna knock. Right and when it does, I would say be bold. Take it. There is an expression I use a lot with my team and the people that have mentored my career, which is you know, knocking on the door doesn't mean that you're going to walk in, but when you do not knock on the door and the door never opens, then you don't know what was on the other side. Right. So my career is a little odd in that sense and that, for example, when I got the opportunity to go to the University of Miami for my PhD, it was because I met a professor in Panama and they had an open positioning. He had seen my research and he said hey, this is really good. I have an open position like I cannot feel anymore because I don't have time you're good enough if you want to apply, do it. And you know, there's only like, one week for the deadline. So that threw me out for a loop and I ran around. I got my application in so I got in, right. And then later on when I was in the Ph.D program, I have an idea for my thesis and that he wasn't working out. And then I was giving homework to do and I did the homework kind of came up with an idea. My professor said, Hey, this is really good. You could probably develop this into your dissertation, and I did, but I didn't know Right. So I think that's very important that not only moving from one country to another but progressing in your career, that when you see the opportunity take it. The worst that can happen is that it doesn't work out. But if it does, it can just change your entire outlook and your entire preparation in your career.

Laura 
That's awesome. I love that knocking on the door. You don't have to walk through it. And so are you doing much field work now, or have you advanced out of that kind of work? Or are you doing more office stuff?

Dr. Ricardo Calvo 
I did a lot of field work in my early years. I've been doing this now for 32 years. So let's not start calculating my age please. But certainly I don't do it anymore for several reasons, mainly because now I do program management and other kind of management things. And really, this basically is because my rate is too high. So I'm not gonna be out there doing the fieldwork However, even to this day, I have the opportunity to travel to exciting locations with natural sensitivities that allow me to stay in touch with the reality of in this case biodiversity issues and social issues. In remote areas would be in Mexico and other countries in Central America or Peru and Colombia. So while I do not quite do like the wetland studies and wildlife inventories, I still have the opportunity to visit sensitive areas and try and make a difference in the projects.

Laura 
Wow that's great. I'm gonna ask you one more question before I pass it over to Nic to talk. I'm still curious. So I want to know, when you grew up in Venezuela, what was it that brought you into your love of nature? Any particular thing or it's just part of how you grew up?

Dr. Ricardo Calvo  
Yeah, well, I'm gonna do a plug for Venezuela. Venezuela is a small country in the northern end of North or South America with a long coastline along the Caribbean Sea, and it has everything he has everything from deserts to the high Andean mountains with permanent snow, an ecosystem that we call tropical Alpine. We have Amazonian jungles, we have the Tepuis, we have the Venezuelan flatlands. There is so much right so I was able to you know, when I started going into a biology degree in school, I traveled quite a bit. I got very interested in the high Andean mountains. So I did my thesis is my undergraduate pieces studying these plants that are endemic to the high mountains of Venezuela. I also got up same time interested in orchids. So I was you know, we will go out you know, like any given weekend and collect orchids, and I had a collection of about 100 plants at home. And it was beautiful. I love that. So orchids have a very interesting pollination in biology and reproductive biology. So that was all fascinating to me. And then again, as I mentioned before, I had this lucky moment that connected me to the University of Miami. So when I got there, I enrolled in the tropical biology doctorate program and wanted to continue to work in the high mountains. That didn't work out. So then I ended up doing my dissertation on orchid evolution. So very different today was a big change from the high mountains to orchids

Nic 
so cool. I don't think there's a single Hill in Florida, let alone mountain.

Dr. Ricardo Calvo 
That's right. To this day, I still miss the Venezuelan mountains.

Laura
Oh, I bet.

Nic 
Yeah, so it's really a nice segue to our next series of conversations here. Like how has bilingual being bilingual influenced your career?

Dr. Ricardo Calvo 
I would say being bilingual, doubled my career. Let's put it that way, right. Because I can operate equally as effectively doing work in the United States, and for many years. In the last 10 years in the middle. All my work was in Florida. So I was operating purely in English but when I joined ERM, going back into international work into Latin America was very easy. And basically I had been able to have almost two careers because I had the bilingual capability. So it doubles your opportunity. Doubles the pleasure as they say.

[International Careers]

Nic 
Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's interesting to talk about all the international work that you do, and we haven't had a chance to really talk about international environmental documents. So you've worked on environmental impact assessments throughout Latin America. So what are those and how similar and different are those documents we see in the state?

Dr. Ricardo Calvo 
Very interesting. Different countries from Mexico to Argentina and in the Caribbean have very different levels of regulatory structures right and requirements. Some are quite demanding and sophisticated. Others are more still evolving. A lot of the work that I have done through my career and look in America has been around international financing of development projects in different sectors of infrastructure. So when either a country a
government or a private company wants to do a development project, be it roadways or power plant or a hydropower project, if they're getting this financial support from international institutions, then there is a whole other set of international requirements that the financial institutions apply to make sure that they put money into projects that will be well managed. That creates a whole world of what's different between the country regulations and international standards. And we operate and I have operated in my career a lot within that interface of making that connection and helping projects come up to meet international standards to be able to qualify for financing. And it's huge because we're talking about projects 800 million, 1 billion. So it's what we do in helping reduce the environmental and social risks of these development projects, both for the project for the country, and for the financial institution. That is footing. The bill is very interesting and exciting.

Nic 
Yeah, and I think it's really interesting. I don't think a lot of people understand international banking and how that influences these projects. So can you dive in a little deeper on like, Why do those banks have such a large role in this type of work,

Dr. Ricardo Calvo 
Speaking more for Latin America, which is what I know best, you know, getting financial support from multilateral institution and by that I mean, institutions that are funded by governments from around the world and you have, for example, the World Bank bank, and the private side of the World Bank, which is the International Finance Corporation. Specific to Latin America, you have the Inter-American Development Bank, which funds governments and government projects and then you have the private side of IDB, which is the IDB invest. So there are two sides. There's the public sector and the private sector. And for a government say, the government and Central America they want to have a development program. around improving the roadway infrastructure. Sometimes their local national budget cannot handle that, cannot handle the big investment in a short time. So they apply for funding from the IDB and then IDB provides good conditions, you know, interest rates, payment terms that are favorable for the country. And then they say, Well, if we're going to give you money for this, you have to make sure that your projects align with our requirements, and their requirements can be more strict. around things like land acquisition, in Latin America and sometimes, if the project has to relocate people, involuntarily. Basically, the lender law, the local law says, we'll pay you X and get out. Under international standards to have do more than that. You have to be able to restore the livelihood of the families you have to ensure and track the fate and the success of the relocation and things like that. So that that again, is what makes all this work so interesting. It provides the opportunity for countries in the region to do more and faster than they could do under their own national budgets and their own regulations. Using these international financing options.

Nic 
Yeah, yeah, that's really fascinating. And so you mentioned you know, that you've done environmental social risk management for these institutions. So what are you providing them when you go through these types of risk? Is this related to these challenges between the two groups that are working together?

Dr. Ricardo Calvo 
They um, I'm going to use the example of the most widely used framework of international standards, which is the IFC, international finance, corporation, environmental and social performance standards is a set of eight standards. Number one is a broader umbrella standard that establishes the requirement that projects have an environmental and social management system, that they have a system to identify inputs and a system to ensure stakeholder participation and their standards through to eight are specific to is about labor, three of our environmental topics four about health and safety of the communities, five of our land acquisition, six about biodiversity, seven about indigenous peoples, and eight cultural resources. So any project would have to make sure that they cover all these topics. And at the end of the day, they have a system to ensure that they're covering all the topics and then for each particular performance standards that they are taking care of labor issues like non discrimination, ensuring gender equality in Job opportunities. If we're talking about indigenous peoples, then there has to be a process of free, prior and informed consent from the indigenous communities to align and accept that the project will occur in their lands for example. So I could go on each one of these performance standards for hours. Many times we do because one of the things I do a lot it's do capacity building and training to both companies and governments around all of these standards. We can do another podcast

Nic 
It does sounds like a pretty incredible host of logistics that you have to understand just to even start working on these projects. So how do you other companies that say, oh, I want to work internationally, it's like, well, that's great, but you need to have all of these other things lined up. How does a company start with doing international work?

Dr. Ricardo Calvo  
You mean companies that are applying for financing or consulting companies that wants to get into this wants to get into it?

Nic
Yeah. That want to get into it.

Dr. Ricardo Calvo
All right. I would say that there are two sides to it. You can work on the side of the lenders. Or you can work on the side of the project proponent. Be it government or private and they the lender side. The lenders have a specific set of steps that they take to make decisions on whether they're going to finance the project. And there's a whole banking sequence of events from origination to due diligence, to the contractual side of the loan document, to the monitoring, that looks at marketing issues, financial issues, can the client pay back all of that right? And then there is also the environmental and social. So typically when we work for the financial institution, we get involved early on in a key step which is the environmental and social due diligence. We evaluate the project, we look at all the documentation that they have in terms of environmental impact studies, whether they have the capacity, mainly the staff and the budget to do things, whether they have addressed the issues along all of these topics that I mentioned before. And then we write a report. We go to the site, we interview stakeholder who interview workers, and then we write a report for the banks that says they're doing pretty good, but they have some gaps in this and that and to cover those gaps. They will have to hire two more people, increase the presence in the community and enhance their Biodiversity Action Plan. And then the lenders will look at that and say, okay, we can live with this. And we can impose these additional requirements. To close the gaps. And based on that, we can do the financing. And of course, the final decision comes from all of these other aspects, right financial marketing, but also environmental and social. So then the loan document would say we're going to give you a 600 million to this project. And on the environmental and social side, you have to do this, this this and that prior to financial close prior to first disbursement, prior to end of construction, whatever it is, and that becomes a contractual requirement and then we the consultants can continue advising the lenders through the process, through the life of the financing, which can be 10,15 years. If we work on the developer side. Then what we do is we advise the developer how they will have to navigate both this process and sometimes we sit on the table or across the same lenders who we worked for it to go there. But always the ideas that we come in with the mindset of we're not auditors, we are advisors, and really where we want to see is that the financing goes through that the project is done. Well done. So that's what we try to do.

Laura 
I love the sound of everything that you do. So much fun.

Dr. Ricardo Calvo
It's never a dull moment that I can tell you.

[ESG]

Laura 
Yeah, it's so helpful for people to get that outside perspective and see, here's what you need to do to get to this point it just have that roadmap laid out for them. We kind of touched on this before we started recording on the podcast, the term ESG I don't think the work that you're doing is new. But ESG has become a hot topic lately. Is that evolving, changing and since you've been doing this such a long time that how you're approaching your work?

Dr. Ricardo Calvo 
Yes. And one of the things that is becoming a topic of conversation in the industry, among others, right there maybe, but among others, is that a lot of what I have described in this conversation so far, is what we say when we call E&S risk management. Where mainly we're trying to reduce the risk of the transaction, the financing the project itself. We have ESG and the terminology and the approaches around ESG. That is coming more from the side of building value, becoming a good citizen of the overall community as a company, right. And now we're talking about how really these are two sides of the same coin, right? So one of the things that I'm working on now is merging those two angles and say, okay, both for a financial transaction or for a project or for the operation of a company, you minimize risk on one side and build value on the other side on the minimization of risk. You're walking more around compliance. somebody's telling you what you need to do to be able to be there and reduce your risk. And the other side is more voluntary. You're doing good things because you are convinced that that's good. It's good business. And now it's all kind of permeating the mindset of the financial institutions being you know, private equity or commercial banks or multilaterals. Because they also now are thinking we want to put money in enterprises that are good, because at the end of the day, that mean good, will have financial value will increase the value of the company, the investment, ultimately, the communities where we are located and all that. So it's evolving. Very fast. This other side of ESG there is a proliferation of standards and opinions and ways to report. I think we've set we still have a ways to go to get to a one set of a set the industry wide standards. We're moving in that direction as an industry.

Laura 
That's fantastic. I love that. Reduce risk on one side and increase value on the other. That's just very to the point. I always see that ERM is hiring. I think I've seen you either post or like hiring posts for ERM on LinkedIn. What advice do you have for people, especially young people who are just graduating and they're, you know, they want to get into ESG or they want to get into sustainability? I know that it's very challenging for someone to just be graduating and then come walking into a consulting role.

Dr. Ricardo Calvo 
I would say that this is the moment. The industry is going crazy. Okay, so if anybody has that interest, graduate and apply. There are more positions in the industry than people applying for that. There is also much competition people are moving from one company to another. Now the companies like ours you know, we are emphasizing the value of supporting the growth of our professionals. We are emphasizing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion we are emphasizing working conditions that are promote growth and involvement. So, for a young professional right now, this is as hard an industry as any out there.

Laura 
That's very encouraging.

Dr. Ricardo Calvo 
Very much, very much. And if you know of anyone, send them my way. We're looking for people.

Nic 
Absolutely awesome. In your current role you also travel quite a lot which is something Laura and I both love to do. And we love asking this kind of question like What do you see as the pros and cons for travel? Are you do you just love it all?

Dr. Ricardo Calvo 
I love it all. And I miss it because since Covid we don't travel anymore. I think this is a good moment to bring one overarching topic in everything that we do, which is health and safety and commitment, both in our company and in the industry to protect our workers, our clients and our communities. Travel as I mentioned before, sometimes we end up going to high risk areas where there may be social conflictivity. We go to remote areas where access is hard. We sometimes go to construction sites where there are many, many things that could harm you from simply tripping and falling to you know going on a confined space. So travel is very exciting because of the cultural opportunities because of the exposure because of the opportunity to translate knowledge and capacity building across countries and organizations. But it's also a major commitment to keep your people safe. So we in particular ERM, safety is first in everything we do. And only after we have taken care of that and we are comfortable that we have managed, identified and develop measures for securing our safety when we travel. Then we travel and do all the stuff that we do, but safety always first.

Nic 
Yeah. So how do you do due diligence in areas like you have to do that in areas you're familiar with, you're comfortable with? How do you do that in like if you're gonna go to a different country. For example, how do you do that? When you don't know you may not know exactly what are the risks?

Dr. Ricardo Calvo 
We have a network of people, we have offices in different countries. We also subscribe to a couple of safety consultancies that provide country profiles and things like that. So what are ways to gain an understanding of where you're going to be before you get there. And then we also engage our clients and our hosts in the region to work with us to make sure that the safety protocols are put in place. So again, there are we do the best we can to be well prepared before we get there. And then we have ways to once we are there if situations change. We have a chain of command and flow of information. Where we can make decisions on the spot if we need to get out of an area or change the itinerary because of X or Y situation and believe me it happens and it has happened to me personally where we get to a country and then there are demonstrations on the street, then we have to change our plans. But we have systems to do that effectively. And again, it's an evolving field and we want to be always at the at the vanguard of it.

[Life Advice]

Nic  
Yeah, that's really excellent to hear. That makes a lot of sense. So you have a story like that that you want to share. I don't want to ask if you don't want to but like a story of you having to adjust on the fly, where you were like, Oh, we had a plan and now it's now it's changed.

Dr. Ricardo Calvo 
Yes, I do have a story.  I will not name names to protect.

Laura
Yeah. Please don't.

Dr. Ricardo Calvo
This was many years ago. And I have to say that what happened back then disorder did create conditions for the entire company to change safety protocols. And this was back in the 90s and since then I have I mean, the things we did in the 90s, my goodness. We will go we will go anywhere. It happened like that anymore. But you know we were in the Amazonian jungle. flying in a helicopter looking at these areas for a development project. The maps were not very accurate. And so you know when you're flying around and two things happen in that same day. We landed in a small open patch of forests that have been cut down, but helicopter pilot was able to land between stumps of trees that have been cut. So that in itself was probably something we wouldn't do. We get out of there and start walking around and we had landed because I had seen that the understory of the forest didn't look right. It just didn't seem right. It seemed too flat, too uniform. So we learned to go in there and start walking into the forest and before right now we're in the middle of a cacao plantation. Oh, and wasn't quite sure about this. I think there were some booby traps. So it's like okay, ok we're out of here. Yeah, we can. We can flying around. And then at the margin of this one river we see a like a camp with buildings and stuff. And we thought it was the camp from our client company that had hired us to do the work because we were looking for that. So we started approaching and before it was too late. No, It was already too late. We realized that there was an Army encampment. Better the army than the other side. Right, right. Yeah. But by the time we realize this, there were a few soldiers looking at us and kind of half pointing their rifles at us. And I told the pilot, just keep coming in and land very gently because we're not going to turn around and go. So we landed the Colonel that was in charge of the of the camp basically said who are you and what are you doing here? Oh, well, we're biologists doing stuff. And he said, Well, the only people who come here unannounced are bad people. But we saw you flying around yesterday and now today and nobody can be that stupid. So we knew that you were not the bad people. It was crazy. I ended up sitting, a few of us ended up sitting in the Colonels quarters, having a beer with him and chatting and he was so happy to have visitors. But looking back, that was crazy. But yeah, the profession has evolved. Especially aspects around health and safety have evolved and become much more strict. And for good reason. Things like that. At the time I've been I was like young and inexperienced. And it was not so exciting. Yeah, but looking back, it's just crazy.

Laura 
yeah, that's fantastic. You must have so many stories and I know you have lots of good advice to share with people. I've heard you tell it at the Career workshop. And I know that when we had that career workshop it was very, you're very enthusiastic about joining and in wanting to present there. So is that something that you do also, I mean, you make mentoring part of part of how you operate and and how do you feel about that? I guess?

Dr. Ricardo Calvo 
Yeah, I think in in the question or I feel for the for the podcast, I mentioned that. Besides all the technical aspects and business aspects of what I do. I have a particular affinity and love for training, coaching, mentoring, helping Junior professionals grow and I just love that. I don't do as much of that as I used to do in some other moments in my career. But it's something that you know, as I move towards retirement in a few years, I would love to go back to that and really, you know, give back as much as I can. That new generation of professionals in the professional services industry.

Laura 
That's great. Well, you're giving back just by being here. So thank you so much for that.

Nic 
Yeah, and before we end the interview, we'd love to ask some fun things about you too. And you mentioned that you if you could do anything else other than what you do now, you might want to be a soccer pundit.

Dr. Ricardo Calvo
Yeah,

Nic
Hilarious. I love that. I love it. I would do genuinely love to be able to do something like that. So do you want to would you be calling Premier League games and do you have a goal call or is it just a

Dr. Ricardo Calvo 
Do I have a goal call? I don't think I'm gonna do that. But I do.

Nic
I knew I knew you did.

Dr. Ricardo Calvo
Okay, my wife would tell you that I can be quite loud watching the games. But yeah, I do. Follow the Spanish league and my Real Madrid.  I follow the Premier League and right now and just obsessed with the Champions League in Europe and looking forward to the final May 28th between Real Madrid and Liverpool. So that's gonna be great. One of the things that happens and I'm also a fan of boxing and now with my son, he has made me a fan of UFC. One of the things that happens all the time and even since I was like 20 years old, is that we're watching something and we make a comment about this strategy about what's going on about Oh, these guys should go more uppercuts or they should attack more from the left and a southern man. Yeah, literally. This has happened 1000 times. Literally within three seconds. The commentator said oh they should attack from the left oh Hmm. Pay me, pay me to do this. That's what I say. I want to be a pundit and somebody who can pay me to do that. That would be great.

Laura 
Start a YouTube channel, Ricardo,

Dr. Ricardo Calvo 
I know I may do that. And I can do it in Spanish and English.

Laura 
Yeah, I'll listen to it because I can you know, for my whole life keep trying to learn Spanish fluently. So that'll give me something else to listen to. So I can learn.

Dr. Ricardo Calvo 
Great. I'll let you know when I set it up.

Laura 
Well, this has been so much fun. We're running out of time. Is there anything else that you would like to touch on that we didn't get to talk about today?

Dr. Ricardo Calvo 
 Perhaps there's one message that I give to my teams to my junior professionals in my company and other presentations I give. I think it's a simple concept about your career growth, which is your career is not your job and your growth if not doing your job well. Not even that. Your growth will come from the increase in your multiplying effect. And that can be many different things. You can grow your multiplying effect in your company in your job by being really good at marketing. And that makes you bring a lot of money into a organization or you can meet the best project manager and then all clients want you to be in their projects, or you can be the technical expert, and then you can mentor people and that grows your multiplying effect. Or you can be good at a variety or a combination of those things and then you end up becoming the CEO of the company. The multiplying effect trying to make your contribution ripple beyond your immediate vicinity that's what is gonna grow your career and that's the one message you want to leave for whoever is listening to this podcast.

Laura 
That's awesome. I love it. Nick hit this out. You know you got the new sound machine, add that in later. Thank you so much. I appreciate those words. I know Nic does because he's managing people and we talked about all the time. So we really appreciate you being here. Last Last thing where can people find you if they want to get in touch with you?

Dr. Ricardo Calvo 
Yes. As you mentioned before Laura and my partner at ERM, Environmental Resources Management. My email address is Ricardo.calvo@erm.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn. Just look for Ricardo Calvo and probably you'll find me there.

Laura 
Yes, he's Ricardo Calvo, PhD. Remember that. And that's your email address until you retire and then people pay attention because that's another open seat at ERM.

Dr. Ricardo Calvo 
That's right. And, you know, thank you very much for this opportunity. It's been really fun. You know, we could do another one. Some other specific aspects and some of the things we talked about today.

Laura
That would be awesome.

Dr. Ricardo Calvo
I'll be game for that.

Nic
Absolutely.

Dr. Ricardo Calvo
Thank you guys.

[Outro]

Laura 
That's our show. Thanks, Ricardo for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. Bye.

Nic
See you everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai