What is your name, current location, and current occupation?
Jonathon Brearley, Brooklyn, NY, Sustainability Engineer
What was your affiliation with MIT?
I recently graduated from the MArch and SMBT!
What was your thesis title?
Taming Torridity: New Housing Forms for Heat Resilience
What are you doing today?
Today, I am settling into my new life in New York, and getting used to not being a student for the first time since…preschool?! I work for Transsolar KlimaEngineering, a sustainability consultant based in Germany with a small (but growing) office in New York.
P.s.. We’re hiring so check out the website and send your resume if you think you like our work and think you might be a good fit!
Do you think your career path has been unorthodox or nontraditional?
Maybe, yes. Still early days in terms of my career, but with my undergraduate degree in architecture and then going to MIT for the M.Arch, I never necessarily thought I would be working in sustainability consulting…see next question.
How did your time at MIT affect your career path?
MIT really transformed how I think about the future and shaped my interests with regard to the built environment. I always found building technology to be super interesting, although I never had a real chance to dive in and explore. Faculty and peers presented so many ways of thinking creatively and innovatively about integrating quantitative methods with studio design projects. All this led to working toward a concurrent SMBT and provided a lot of direction for what I was looking for when I graduated.
What are you excited about in your career field today?
I’m really excited about how many quite traditional design-focused architecture firms are excited to do better, and even go above and beyond with regard to sustainability. I think many are realizing that being carbon-neutral or even carbon-positive is equal parts creative design as it is engineering.
What is advice you would give to a new alum coming out of MIT?
Always support your peers.
What are you trying to learn right now?
Being more patient and not feeling guilty for not working all the time.
How can fellow alums reach you if they want to speak further?
Brearleyjonathon@gmail.com