Q&A with Sabel Taylor, project manager

Tell us a bit about yourself.

I went to college at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and majored in marketing and entrepreneurial management. I was also in the army for nine years: I enlisted in 2017 and was commissioned as a logistics officer, managing all the logistics for an aviation unit as an executive officer. I've also worked in a few marketing agencies spanning multiple industries — gaming, fashion, health and wellness, spirits, things like that — and also at a production agency that did film and video production in the entertainment industry. That all lends itself very well to being a project manager. 

I also have a real passion for sustainability. My fun fact is that when I lived by myself for a year and a half, I used 11 bags of trash — total. So I figured out how to get really savvy with recycling and recycle just about anything. I’m very excited to be working on addressing climate change and helping to make the planet better.

Where did your interest in the environment come from?

From a leadership standpoint, I like to use what I’m passionate about at work. Many industries I’ve worked in think of sustainability either as an afterthought or something to get to if we have extra bandwidth (which we rarely did) — I found myself swimming upstream more times than not. I like working on solutions in a new industry, rather than trying to implement change in “the way we've always done it.” That's what drew me to sustainability as a career pivot — if you can call it that, since it's just switching industries, but I’m still using the same skill set that I've used throughout my career.

In this role, I'm not going against the grain in the same way anymore. While we need people who will challenge the status quo and go against the grain within their respective industries to help the planet, I'm excited to now be swimming with the stream and working with the current, versus against it. But I did my time there, and now I'm going to do my time swimming with the stream, working with the current.

What are you most excited about working in the renewable energy sector?

I'm no stranger to going into industries that are new for me. I know a lot about renewable energy and sustainability solutions, but I’m very excited to learn more. There’s also something to be said for how I view things as an outsider: I come from the entertainment realm and from the Department of Defense realm, which I see as a strength. There are many great people working in sustainability already, but I get to bring a different perspective from those who have only been in this field. I'm very excited to lend my expertise to a new industry but something that I'm also very passionate about, too.

Why did you choose to work with DG+?

If I could have written my own job description, it would have been exactly this one. I have a really strong record of managing projects, and coming from strictly more of a logistics realm, I wanted to get back into marketing. When I was looking for new opportunities, I hadn’t seen many roles that were specifically marketing agencies with a project management role; it seemed to be only in-house positions. I was craving the wide variety and depth throughout the sustainability industry that an agency role would bring. When I looked at the DG+ website, my values also aligned with DG+’s mission. 

What do you hope to accomplish while on the DG+ team?

I have a lot of confidence in myself as a project manager. I like it when I can be free to play in the grey area, but it's very hard for me to get to the grey area when the black and white is messy. So I would really like to be able to tighten the black-and-white details so that I can also start to contribute some of my background in marketing, PR, and other areas to the team’s work.

I’m excited to get all the projects that I'm responsible for to be really airtight, so that everybody has a clear common operating picture. The more clarity we have, the more our team is able to deliver better, more creative output for clients.

Near or far, where in the world would you want to travel to next?

Before this, I was actually thinking about going to Southeast Asia, maybe Vietnam, and then I also looked at Peru. I’m going to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania in September with one of my friends from the military, and I can’t wait to explore a new part of the world.

What's your favorite way to spend a day off?

I'm a pretty active person, and I love finding new places and meeting new people. I’m usually someone who plans my days a week in advance, but if someone asks me to do something, I'm canceling my day and I'm saying yes to that. Even if it's not even something that I would want to do, I'm up for new plans and new experiences.

As for sports, I played lacrosse in college, and I still play with friends sometimes, but it’s more so to be social. It's very well known that I'm the loudest one on the field.

I’m also not a runner, but I have run three marathons (Bataan Memorial Death March; Madison, Wisconsin Marathon; Run for the Lakes Marathon in Brainerd, Minnesota). I pop my headphones in, I have a playlist that's like gas on the fire, and it's like, “I'm on my world tour. Don't talk to me — I'm headlining every stadium in the U.S.!”

Tell us something fun or maybe unexpected about yourself.

Singing songs and playing guitar in the confines of my apartment, it dawned on me two years ago that I could also do that in public. I became a little pro bono marketing manager for my own music career in Minneapolis, MN. I like a wide variety of music, from folk to pop, rock, and acoustic, and I love discovering smaller artists, too. When it comes to promoting my shows and my music, I’m a one-person team.

All of my friends say I'm a great storyteller, so I like to think I have an eye for artistic things. I'm really interested in music and audiology, but I've always had this internal narrative that I'm not a great visual artist. I recently picked up watercolor paint, and it turns out if you have the audacity to believe you’re the 2020’s Picasso, you can get pretty close!

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