Jeanette Gitobu on leading women in wind and shaping energy policy

Jeanette Gitobu spent 17 years in Cambodia as a missionary child. Now she is a director and policy advisor at the Global Wind Energy Council. She speaks to Kamogelo Motse about her role and career pivots.

When Gitobu explains her life growing up, she likes to refer to the quote: 'We learned how to plant trees under whose shade we will never, ever have the chance to sit under'.

The saying speaks to the idea of working for the future and for the benefit of others, especially when the work may not benefit oneself directly.

She credits that way of thinking to her parents and this way of life has manifested itself in her professional career as she seeks to advance both windpower as a climate crisis solution and the number of women working in wind energy.

Growing up in Southeast Asia, Gitobu was exposed to a different environment than Kenya, Africa, where she was born. That experience prepared her for the global environment that she now works in.

“I'm able to navigate cultural bridges and find ways to connect instead of ways to separate,” she says. This has served her well given her role in the women in wind programme. “I'm also able to navigate in a very diplomatic way how to bring together different cultures and identities and ideas as well to be able to use that now for the purpose of impact and a long-term legacy as well.”

From reports to leadership

Gitobu is a policy advisor for the Global Wind Energy Council. She is also director of GWEC's Women in Wind Global Leadership Programme.

The programme, which is executed in 21 countries in the global South, was founded in 2019 by GWEC in partnership with the Global Women's Network for the Energy Transition, or GWNET, to be able to meet a need that came directly from research that IRENA conducted for a report called Wind Energy: A Gender Perspective.

"The report highlighted three things: firstly, women make up 21% of the global wind energy workforce. Secondly, women make up only 8% of senior management positions in the wind sector. And thirdly, 65% of all women who were surveyed expressed that they had experienced gender-related barriers entering into the sector."

From that report, women highlighted three key areas in which they needed support. The first was around mentorship; having someone already in the sector helping them to navigate. The second area was around having networks that they would be able to leverage. Thirdly they said that they wanted to be knowledge leaders, "not because they are women but because they have the skills and the knowledge".

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Gitobu has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and has managed to pivot in her career. She has gone from working in finance to the oil and gas industry to now renewable energy. "Your twenties are for you to really experiment to make all of the mistakes to pivot as you need to pivot,” she says.

She was able to pivot because she understood that there are core skillsets that you have to learn and then there are those skills that you can learn on the job and that can be applied to other sectors as well.

“But the one thing I'd say through all of my pivots is every experience never goes to waste," she says. She gives an example: "If I had not learned how to do finance, I would not be able to understand how to use financing policy; if I did not learn how to develop projects, I would not be able to advocate for it effectively.

"If I did not understand supply chain, supply and demand, I would not be able to use those same principles in wind energy to be able to ensure that we are planning a just transition moving forward."

Investing in the next generation

Gitobu is also vice-chair of the board of Student Energy, an organisation that works with a network of 50,000 young people from over 120 countries to build the knowledge, skills, and networks they need to take action on energy.

“It's catered to young people because Student Energy recognises that we need to ensure that we are equipping the next generation with the knowledge and the skills to be able to navigate themselves in this climate crisis,” she explains.

But a crisis can also bring an opportunity. Gitobu says: "This is the time for young people to prepare themselves for the jobs that are going to come, because if I look at the World Economic Forum workforce report that they released earlier this year for the first time renewable energy engineering jobs are featured on that report and that shows the trajectory of where opportunities are coming from."