"What gives me satisfaction is the feeling of going in the right direction and working with people who care about things that I find important." - why a robotics geek and engineers get involved with sustainability and how family matters.

Charlie Hargroves, Project Coordinator, The Natural Edge Project & Nick Palousis, Operations Coordinator, The Natural Edge Project, Adelaide, Australia

One of the personalities that impressed us most on our travels, Junko Edahiro from Japan, recommended enthu-siastically that we need to meet The Natural Edge Project people when we visit Australia. Now we know why.
A group of passionate young engineers established an incredible network of leading edge sustain-ability professionals in Australia and around the world. They first wrote a book, The Natural Advantage of Nations, and now educate Australians in the field of sustain-ability. They create university courses, government education material and much more.
Charlie and Nick, Cheryl Paten and Michael Smith whom we met before, are all highly educated professionals in the scientific area. Not totally satisfied with their traditional careers, they did not try to dump them in disappointment and do something totally different, but rather formed them in a way they want them to be done and they constructively cooperate with the respective industry bodies, e.g. Engineers Australia. Charlie is an engineer and co-founder of the organization while Nick joined later but not with less passion.

Enjoy reading selected thoughts and statements from our discussion with Charlie Hargroves and Nick Palousis in the quotations below. You may be able to read more about their diverse and yet focused initiatives in our book “MyImpact”.

Charlie Hargroves’ selected quotations:
"My engineering jobs were kind of frustrating, there was no room for decision making and I thought there had to be more to it."

"I met Michael Smith and he told me about all these sustainability thinkers and their books - Amory Lovins, McDonough, etc. and I thought - maybe that's where engineering is going to go to in the future."

"Since there was no postgraduate course in the sustain-ability development area at the time, the writing of our book was our academic experience before getting into practical stuff. It was like a non-institutional PhD for two people, a research exercise."

"It is great now, being at the forefront of change. Having an enterprise is difficult, however. What makes it even more difficult here, is that the downside and consequence is not a missed business opportunity but that you can’t drink water anymore, that there are no forests anymore - in our case it has real visible consequences for a lot of people.”

“The last 12 months have been an amazing experience. Working under the wing of one of the worlds leading sustainable development experts, Hunter Lovins, has been truly life changing.”

“I am really looking forward to the further development of our organisation. The focus for the next year is to develop educational material based on the book for various target groups, such as government division, industry, university departments and schools.”

Nick Palousis’ selected quotations:
“I guess the most important thing to know about me is to know what's most important to me: my family and people I care about."

"From early on I had two main passions: people and math/problem solving. I have a degree in mathematics and computer science and I have intensively studied robotics engineering."

"During my study of robotics I would work for 6 months on a tiny piece of movement and refine it endlessly. In a way it seemed a waste of time, it did not solve any real problems."

"I got quite good in computers and robotics but that was too far from my biggest passion: the people I care for. There was a strong tension between me, who was doing all this stuff, and between me, who I wanted to be."

"I did not really know what my alternatives were when I met Charlie and heard about his work. Getting engaged with his ideas of sustainability was like an excuse to invest in what I actually care about."

"A time of parallel development came up. On the one hand I kept talking to Charlie and reading about sustainability, on the other hand I got engaged in robotics education for very bright kids. It was amazing how these super-intelligent children actually were underdeveloped in 90% of life's areas: communication, social behaviour, speech, etc. I enjoyed showing them these parts of life and seeing parents cry because their kids actually started talking to them instead of using computers for everything."

"After graduation I had the options to do my PhD at Cambridge, to work for a robotics company or to join The Natural Edge Project. Against advice of others, I decided to join TNEP and ever since I have been working here and learning every day. It's the exactly right thing for me to do."

"When people have an idea and are passionate, they are willing to spend time talking about it and sharing their experience, as well as learning new ideas. That's how we are able to build a strong network of professionals."

"I have this vision that I can now use the time to learn more, to become effective enough as a professional. Then, I want to use a lot of time to have kids, watch them grow and learn from them. Then, I want to come back to the job and be even more effective."

"I guess I want to have enough money to not have to worry about it. In a way it is something that challenges my fears rather than a primary focus. With TNEP we want to demonstrate that money can be made in the area of sustainability and in that sense we are business people."

"What I would like to master even better is to use judo tactics in work life, to use someone else's energy and redirect it."

Some background on Charlie Hargroves:
Karlson ‘Charlie' Hargroves was born in Murray Bridge, South Australia, and is an Engineering graduate of the University of Adelaide. He has practiced for two years as a Civil and Structural Engineer, before moving into sustainability-related areas to co-found The Natural Edge Project and co-edit the publi-cation The Natural Advantage of Nations (Earthscan 2005).
Charlie and his TNEP colleagues have contributed to a variety of private and government sustainability initiatives in Australia and internationally. Charlie has been an active member of Young Engineers Australia as a past President of Canberra Division and member of the National Committee. He was selected as a member of the Commonwealth Engineers Council delegation to CHOGM 2002 and undertook a visiting scholar trip to the Engineering Department of the University of Khartoum, Sudan in January 2004 representing the World Federation of Engineering Organizations and Engineers Australia.
Charlie and his wife, Stacey, have recently undertaken a 12 month stay in Boulder Colorado, for Charlie to take the position of visiting scholar at the University of Boulder Colorado, USA in 2004/05.

Some background on Nick Palousis:
Nick was born to a traditional Greek immigrant family and he grew up in a small Australian town close to Adelaide. He spent his first years doing sports, especially martial arts, soon discovering his passion and talent for science. Nick has received his Bachelor in Mechatronic Engineering, and Bachelor in Mathematical and Computer Science from the University of Adelaide and has recently being awarded the prestigious Southcott Scholarship, enabling him to undertake postgraduate research at the University of South Australia on the development of a benchmarking and solutions optimisation tool to assist the electronics manufacturing industry respond to mandatory European Union regulations, using the Sustainability Helix framework co-developed by TNEP and Natural Capitalism Solutions.
During undergraduate studies Nick was employed by the State Government to teach robotics to high school students, and initiated Bot.on, the State’s first robotics teaching program for technically gifted children.
In 2002, Nick was one of 12 selected to represent Australia in the prestigious Ship for World Youth, an international exchange program coordinated by the Government of Japan and the United Nations, aimed to foster international collaboration between young professionals of over 60 countries. In 2003 Nick was the SA Chapter President of Young Engineers Australia and selected to represent Australia at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Abuja, Nigeria.
Nick joined TNEP full time in January 2004 and is responsible for the co-ordination of several of the organisation’s projects as well as keeping up the network of sustainability professionals.

Some background on The Natural Edge Project:
The Natural Edge Project (TNEP) is a non-profit sustainability think-tank partnership driven by a team of early career Australians. The secretariat team receives mentoring and support from a range of experts and leading organisations in Australia and internationally. The mission of The Natural Edge Project is to contribute to and succinctly communicate leading research, case studies, tools and strategies for achieving a sustainable future across government, business and civil society.
At the commencement of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005 – 2014), they are focused on the following actions, to make sustainability relevant to this and future generations:
- Engaging in and facilitating discussion on best practice in sustainable development.
- Engendering cooperation and collaboration across sectors, disciplines and qualifications to accelerate the transition to a sustainable future.
- Identifying knowledge gaps and undertaking original research on how to operationalise sustainable development.
- Communicating existing and emerging concepts to a contemporary audience, raising awareness and understanding about sustainability issues.

If you would like to engage with the work of Charlie Hargroves & Nick Palousis or get to know more about The Natural Edge Project please visit www.naturaledgeproject.net, or, for more specific opportunities, contact joanna.stefanska@myimpact.ch or wolfgang.hafenmayer@myimpact.ch directly.