New Beginnings: CUB's Program Assistant, Ana, to Move on to New Position

Published May 16, 2019 It’s with a heavy heart that I announce that this will be my last month at CUB. I know, I know, this is all very confusing, because I just announced my new position with CUB last week. However, life moves fast, and a new opportunity presented itself over the course of the past couple of days. I can’t formally announce where I’m leaving CUB to work for, but I can say that my new position and workplace will take my career in a dramatically different and, for me, wanted direction. I’ll be leaving the Twin Cities and greater Minnesota policy advocacy community. Although new opportunities are bright, leaving CUB wasn’t an easy or an obvious choice. This is because of the sense of integrity and empathy everyone at CUB brings to their work. I first came to CUB because I believed in its mission. I stayed at CUB because of the people who work here. I spent my four years of college studying environmental policy and advocacy. Although I feel strongly about the need to transition to clean energy, lower carbon emissions, and do just about anything to mitigate the impacts of climate change, I felt a little out of step with my peers. This was because the calculi of many questions related to environmental policy were based on lower emissions and hard-to-quantify health benefits. Those are both good things; however, I wanted to know how we bring everyone along when crafting energy policy. CUB is not an environmental organization, but there are opportunities to transition to an energy system that benefits everyday people and is environmentally friendly. There is opportunity to achieve both and being at CUB has taught me how to align my values of environmentalism and inclusivity. I believe in CUB’s work, but CUB is also a good place to work. Once during an informational interview, a person told me that “doing an unpaid internship is your choice.” I’m here to say that it’s not. It’s not a choice for a lot of people. It’s not a choice for most people. So, first, thank you to CUB for seeing the value in paying workers and paying them enough to be able to live. Second, thank you to CUB for keeping me. They could have kicked me out after my three-month internship, but they didn’t. If that weren’t enough, they also recently offered to transition me into a full-time position with the help of a couple other nonprofits. The fact that Annie and Carmen have done all of this speaks volumes to them and the way they value the people they work with. CUB provided me with a safe environment that allowed me to grow and establish myself in my first months out of college. CUB is an exemplary nonprofit that should be the model for organizations. I’m not really supposed to do this in my goodbye letter, but if you can give to CUB, please do. CUB is this rare kind of place where the values behind the kind of work they do are reflected in the way that they do that work. I’ll miss working at CUB, but I know that the best is yet to come for everyone here.