Zero Hour Binghamton and the Network for a Sustainable Tomorrow (NeST), two environmental justice organizations, held a career fair on Monday in collaboration with the Fleishman Career Center, for students looking for opportunities in the environmental and sustainability fields.

The fair, held midday in Old Union Hall, featured three rows of tables where employers highlighted their organization’s role in promoting sustainability and environmental work. A total of 13 employers from both public and private sectors were in attendance — including staff from Volunteers Improving Neighborhood Environments (VINES), the United States Department of Agriculture, Raymond Corporation and Keystone Environmental Services. A total of 119 students attended the event, looking for internship opportunities and a chance to build connections.

Jaden Beck ‘23, kicked off the job fair with a speech describing her path toward becoming a Clean Energy Project associate at BlocPower, an environmental technology company. She used her job-hunting experience in the clean energy sector to assure students that obtaining employment is possible.

“Job fairs can have a lot of nervous energy where you have to approach somebody and know your pitch,” Beck said. “[The organizers] wanted someone who had just gone through a job search to kick it off with a note of ‘anybody in this room is capable of finding a job that really fulfills them.’ It’s all about the mindset, so just go into it open, go into it knowing what you want and that the person on the other side of the table has a lot that they want to achieve as well, so shared goals is really big.”

Zero Hour, a youth-led movement formed to promote environmental justice and urge elected officials to take action on mitigating climate change, co-hosted the event for students to expand their professional network and learn more about advancements in the sustainability field. Stephen Corbisiero, the organization’s president and a senior double-majoring in environmental studies and geography, said that they “strive to unite the students and facilities of the university with the residents and community of Binghamton to show that there are doable solutions to the climate crisis.” He said the job fair was inspired by a similar event — a clean energy career summit — that was hosted by NeST last semester.

“We saw that and wanted to work with them to take those incredible jobs and bring them directly to [students] for easy access,” Corbisiero said.

NeST, a Binghamton-based nonprofit involved with several different energy and environmental justice sectors, focuses on helping people in low- to moderate-income housing. Through installing heat pumps and solar panels, they provide services allowing people to make their homes more sustainable and energy efficient.

Throughout the event, students went to different tables and engaged with employers, while some students took the initiative to hand out resumes for different jobs and internships.

“I think [the event] is really nice,” said Preston Long, a first-year master’s student studying geology. “There is a really diverse spread of employers here and a lot of networking opportunities. This is a really good opportunity for a lot of people … It handles a lot of different fields, a range from engineers to environmental [studies]. So, it’s a really wide range of opportunity.”