 Hi there, my name is Jason Klein, I'm the Director of P20 Initiatives at Northern Illinois University and part of my job is to support school districts, community colleges, other post-secondary institutions with helping students really engage in authentic learning and be prepared for college and careers. One of the things that school districts throughout Illinois have been doing a great job with is providing more and more job shadowing and internship opportunities. With our current shelter in place, those have all come to a stop. So we're excited to bring to you through this series, our Career Pathways Virtual Trailhead series, an opportunity to interact with work-based learning with a variety of people and a variety of different occupations while our students are learning at home. Today we've got a really cool kind of cutting edge field and position and a person who does all kinds of different things in his day-to-day role. So Brian, I'm going to let you go ahead and introduce yourself. Hey, yeah, so I'm Brian Pecron. I am in wind farm operations and generally what that means is I'm doing a lot of back office stuff to make sure that the wind farms that I manage continue to be profitable and keep my side staffs safe at the actual wind farm itself. So yeah, happy to help out with this, it's great. So tell us about what a typical day or week kind of looks like in your role. So it's hard because a lot of days or weeks are not very typical, but generally speaking, any knowledge or information that goes out the door or request for information that comes in from an outside party basically goes through me. So I'm coordinating with whether it be accounting teams or our energy off-takers and trying to synthesize a response that's reliable and I'm kind of like the last line of defense. So I just need to make sure that the data are always accurate. So it's from coordinating like getting a crane or parts to the site to fix a failed blade or something like that or something as simple as, hey, we have these quarterly deliverables to our investors, like what are the main points that we need to address? So you do everything from work on kind of the maintenance and operational side to working on the finance and accounting side. Is that correct? Yeah. Top to bottom. Yeah. Wow. So that's a lot of different things. So tell us about some of the skills, the top skills that are most important for you to be successful in your job. Sure. So I'm an engineer by training formally, so I like to think that my engineering background really helps me analyze a lot of the problems that come across my plate. They're always different. So I think that's always helpful, especially when we're trying to implement a new technology for a pilot program. I'm able to take that knowledge either from an internal or external source and then run it up the chain to get it off the ground. Kind of conversely, a lot of the really successful asset managers in my group are also accountants or economics majors. So the finance background also is valuable because we're not necessarily a technocracy with a lot of the ideas. It always comes down to cash in, cash out. So if you have a really good understanding of how you're able to make something profitable or how to analyze something's profitability, that's always a really valuable skill too. So let's go into your background. You said you started out as an engineer, you studied to become an engineer. Walk us through kind of high school, what you did post-secondary, those experiences, what made you choose to do that, and kind of what those steps were for you that led you to this position today. Sure. Yeah, it's been a journey, but it's been really enriching, I think, at least intellectually and personally. I've experienced a lot of growth. So high school, I went to University of Illinois following high school to study nuclear engineering. I got my bachelor's there, it was great. And then directly following that, I went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to get my master's in nuclear engineering. And actually while I was at Madison, the Fukushima disaster happened. Germany shut down all their nuclear power plants and that got me thinking, hey, I might need to really reevaluate my career trajectory if one accident can shut down an entire industry in a country. So I started to start thinking about that, but what I ended up actually doing was starting a company in a completely different space. We started manufacturing mixing nozzles for two component adhesive, and it's still a success, it's just one product of the year. Last year, but it wasn't scratching the itch that I was initially interested in getting into the energy industry for. So I recently made the transition to wind energy, and I'm back in the energy field and I try to brand myself a little bit as an alternative energy expert. Now with nuclear and wind, the only parts I'm missing maybe on my resume are like a solar and storage kind of thing. Right, but given that you live in the Midwest in North America, the fact that you've got wind is a pretty important one and arguably a more important one than solar depending on the time of year. So let's pause for one second. So you're doing, you're at U of I, you go to Madison, you're doing this nuclear energy stuff at these Big Ten schools, and then you started a company nozzles, tell us about that. Tell us everything you can about that that's so interesting. So yeah, so the company is, so we were initially trying to figure out like, oh, are we going to apply this for like, you know, big scale like chemical processing facilities, but then we decided, you know, it doesn't really make sense to take, you know, an unproven technology to, you know, these really big facilities. So we pivoted, we went to a more like a disposable thing and just, we just basically applied, you know, a fluid dynamics modeling through like just some coding to, sorry, I'm trying to simplify this a little bit, to actually model fluid flows in a space that hadn't had the opportunity to actually optimize it. So this is a pretty new technology. They were basically invented in the 70s, optimized once, maybe in the 80s. And so we use, you know, a lot more powerful modeling technology to do some really iterative processes to generate a geometry that mixes fluids far more efficiently than already exists. And yeah, I mean, you use them for installing a countertop, you use them for, you know, putting a filling in at the dentist, they're all over the place. So how did you know that this, that this was, I mean, you were studying nuclear energy. How were you like, oh, there's this little thing that we need to help make adhesives better. And that's a room, there's a room there for innovation. How did you know that? So, so my co-founder, he was, he was in a polymers class and his, his professor like talked about how this was an issue. And then he just got to think and he had the initial idea for the concept. Just like this, this different geometry. And then we spent years optimizing it and running, running the simulations in a lab. So where did the money come, like, where did you get money to be able to do that? So we, it's, it kind of grew really organically. So we entered a lot of engineering competitions and won those. That helped fund, you know, like kind of like this early stage research. Then we, we want to grant for what's called discovery to product. It was UW-Madison's grant program. They were super helpful. So like, not only, not only did that help us, you know, continue our, our funding at the lab at University of Wisconsin-Madison, but also they, they provided a ton of feedback for, for startup companies about how to like, how to just how to build a business, a business model and, you know, make an effective like market, market entry. And after that they, we were able to get in touch with some investors in Wisconsin as well and 29 partners. And from there, they, they, they cut us the check to, to get us off the ground. Awesome. So yeah, I mean, for students watching this, there is so much in that, in that one question that we could do a whole nother video on unpacking in terms of that process of, of creating something novel and then, and then taking it from something novel to something that makes money and is being used in workplaces. And so that, well, that's a very short answer. And there's a lot of buzzwords in there. It's awesome for people to at least start to go, wait, what does that mean? And be able to unpack it further. The one other thing I want to mention to students as they watch this, Brian brought up fluid dynamics. So not that any of the students watching this care. At one point in my life, I was a bicycle racer and I know still being interested and passionate about that. Fluid dynamics is, is being used heavily in, in road bicycle design in particular right now to create more aerodynamic parts and do it without having to go through the same process of creating a prototype, going into the wind tunnel, modifying the prototype, going back to the wind tunnel because the wind tunnel is expensive and it takes a lot of time. And fluid dynamics is making that, Brian talked about the iterative process, which is a phrase we've heard in other videos or phrases like that makes that iterative process much faster and more efficient. So my point with that is anything you're passionate about, there's an angle for you to pursue a career that's tied to that passion and, and just that something to be considering and looking for and thinking about why a physics class might help you or why a chemistry class might help you or whatever the case is. So Brian, that's awesome. Thanks so much for sharing that. So in your work, what, what is like the most exciting kind of thing that you do day to day? Um, so I'm really lucky that the company I work at gives me a ton of latitude to kind of take a project and run with it. Um, it's really nice because it's, um, it's a private company. So there are less, there are fewer, there are a few people in the chain that, you know, we, we may need to run the idea by. So what I get to do is I get to propose an idea, um, whether it's for, you know, a different, like a different technology to implement or a different process to work with, like, or like one of my, like a company that I'm interested in, I can somehow finagle, finagle, you know, a potential partnership. And, you know, as long as I can make the business case for it, uh, my company lets me just run with it. So similar to, you know, startup company, you don't know, you don't even know where you're kind of headed or what questions are going to come up. So I get, I get to kind of get a taste for that, uh, you know, much more secure and also relaxed environment than than an actual startup company. So I really, I really love doing that. Just fun, fun, interesting projects, implementing, you know, those pilot programs that I was talking about, get to flex my engineering muscles a little bit. That's always a really great. That is awesome. Um, in all jobs, well, one of the things that students, as they're thinking about jobs are often thinking about is kind of the glamorous part. So for example, we had an attorney in a previous episode who just kept saying it doesn't look like it looks on TV over and over again. So in all of our jobs, there's things that either people don't like to do or they're just super routine and mundane and other people might not know about them. What's something in your job that either you or people like you either don't like to do or just find super routine and mundane, but it has to be done that you think other people should kind of know about just so they have a full picture of what the work looks like. Totally. Yeah. Um, I mean, I'm in operations. So I have, I have monthly deliverables. I have quarterly deliverables. And, you know, they're pretty, they're pretty much the same every time it's taken, taken data from all these different sources and compiling them into the same report every month or quarter. And it's frustrating, but I've kind of taken it upon myself the way I kind of cope with that is it's instead of like doing the same thing, you come up with, you know, a process that might improve the efficiency. So you're spending less time on the stuff that is boring and you can really focus your energy, your efforts to kind of like refresh yourself to because, because every job does have its boring aspects, as you said, you kind of refresh yourself with the good stuff to make sure you can just have your baseline and, you know, like maintain like the function of your job, like the core, the core pieces of it. So. So wind energy, I mean, I remember 12, 13, 13 years ago, being out in California riding my bike and riding through a wind farm, and it was so unique and unusual. And now when I'm driving around Illinois to different school districts or community colleges, I might see wind turbines all over the place. What are the drop job prospects like for someone who's like, oh, I might be interested in that and something related to wind energy or alternative energy more broadly. So for solar and wind, specifically technician jobs like on-site field workers, those jobs have been the fastest growing positions, I think, in the United States for the past like two years or something crazy like that. It's pretty wild. So tons of growth in that space. We install more equipment. More people need to be around to manage them. But as for, as for like something more back office, like what I do, there's a ton of growth, right? We need developers kind of knocking on doors to sign up land to get these projects papered up with whatever regulatory bodies or potential off-takers for the energy. You need people like me that once they go in the ground to make sure they maintain smooth operations, renewable energy is absolutely a booming field. With storage just kind of getting off the ground too, it's definitely a huge place for growth that you'll see that a ton in the coming years along with solar too. So really, really a ton of growth in this space. So how do you feel like your work on a regular basis makes the world a better place? Oh man, I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about it. You know, I was always hoping to be like green energy, which is why you need a high base load. So I always love the nuclear power, but now that I'm directly tethered to kind of renewables in the space, I feel like, you know, I'm doing my part to, you know, just reduce carbon emissions. It feels really good. And in my first year of working, I started tracking all the major component repairs that I was personally responsible for. And I actually returned enough capacity to service in my first year to power my hometown. So like that felt really good to kind of make it tangible that way. I calculated it all after I finished that up. Yeah. So I know I'm making an impact. And you know, if I can get a wind turbine back up like a day earlier or something, you know, it has an appreciable downstream effect. If I can do that. So that is very cool to be able to quantify it. Exactly. Yeah. See the results of your work. That is something that's very hard for me to do in my work but very, very cool. So my last question, thinking about like a 14-year-old, a 16-year-old, an 18-year-old, or a 20-year-old. So they might be anywhere from middle school to high school to in a community college or university, saying they're trying to figure out what they want to do career-wise. And obviously we've heard from you that in your career, you've already done a bunch of different things. But what advice, what kind of general advice would you give someone, a young person who's trying to figure out kind of what they want to do career-wise? I think the advice that I would give is just try all sorts of different things out. You're not going to know if you like or don't like something unless you actually get down and do it. Otherwise, if you can't necessarily do it, you don't have the access to something, try to read about it. Try to read about people who have done it or try to read about or watch videos about people who have done it. Because that exposure will kind of give you, like if you have somebody giving you an honest answer about, yeah, I have monthly deliverables. It's boring. It kills me. And that turns out to be most of the job. It might not be for you. So getting out ahead and trying to like, I don't know, learn about all these positions that you're working on, getting out there, that's a great place to start. But yeah, I mean, just read, watch, learn, listen, those are absolutely my go-tos for figuring out what you want to do. Well, that's awesome. That's exactly what we're trying to do in high schools and community colleges and even in middle schools throughout the state of Illinois is give kids more and more of those opportunities and to see workplaces in action and really be able to experience that. Well, we want to avoid for our students having them go get their four-year bachelor's degree, have a whole lot of debt that is piled up, and then find, you know, I don't really like this thing that I thought I was going to like. And so while we don't want to force people to make decisions younger than they have to, we want to give them those opportunities so that when they do make decisions, they can be more informed. So that is awesome advice. Well, you are doing really, really important work and we really thank you for giving us time to kind of get this angle into that work and for being here with us today. So thank you. No, thank you. I really appreciate it. And also, look, it's really easy to talk about myself, so I'm happy to take this opportunity. Appreciate it. Awesome. For those of you watching, remember, you can connect with us on Twitter at p20network. That's at p20network. All one word. We want to hear from you. What questions should we ask? What occupations should we explore? Is there someone particular that you'd be like, hey, that person would be a great interview? I'd love to know what they have to say. Just message us there on Twitter. Connect with us there and let us know. And we will get to work on trying to do that in our next episodes of Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads. Brian, thanks again for being with us. Thank you.