Ilias Bartolini

Ilias is an engineering manager at Ecosia in Berlin, a privacy friendly search engine that plants trees as you browse the web. Ilias has worked all over the world over the last decade: Brazil, England, Spain and India. What is constant in his story is a commitment to social justice.

Great to have you on a call with us today, Ilias. I’d love to start with where you are now.

Currently, I'm working as an engineering manager in Ecosia, here in Berlin. I started six months ago – just one week before the beginning of the pandemic. As a kid, I was passionate about computers so I started studying computer engineering, and became a developer. I was lucky that my passion became my career. Eight years ago I decided that I wanted my work to be more meaningful. That’s why I’m here now.

My moment of awakening was when I was at the Occupy Movement in 2012. They made a global activist call in London so I went down to St. Paul’s square and found myself, with my camera, immersed in this diverse social movement. I took some photos which turned out to be useful for the movement. After this experience, I started informing myself about inequality, the history of colonialism, social justice.

So your journey started with inequality and injustice, how did it bend towards climate?

In one of my previous jobs, I have to confess, I worked on a project for an oil and gas company. It was a company that was connected to the Keystone pipeline in the US. At that time, my climate knowledge was limited. I wasn't fully aware of the consequences of a warming world. During that project, a couple of colleagues and I became concerned and started questioning what we were building. It became uncomfortable and we raised awareness about the impact of the project.

Three months later we had this moment of empowerment when the contract got canceled. It was a big loss economically for the company, but I felt proud of how those involved came to that decision. This motivated me to learn more about climate. I took an entire course online on climate change from the University of Melbourne. 

One year later, I was in Paris during the COP21 Paris agreement. I got involved in movements in Germany and Spain: Ende Gelände and Extinction Rebellion are well-known ones.

It takes a lot of moral fortitude and courage to be in a company and say, we shouldn't be doing this work. I’m deeply impressed by your integrity. What was that experience like for you, within the company?

​One thing that I learned from that experience was that the context in which you exist, and your surroundings, affects your perspective, and that in turn affects your decisions. Not all of my colleagues supported the decision. I totally trust my colleagues that came to a different conclusion, they had a different perspective thinking about the economic stability of our company and whether the cancelation of a project would actually have any impact.

I learned that building bridges across different perspectives requires a lot of patience, especially in discussions on moral and ethical issues. I learned that I shouldn’t expect to change someone's mind quickly. Just as I have my opinion, so do they.  My own perspectives and views have changed over years, so it takes time for someone else to change.

I also learned that when it comes to social injustice it’s important to go to the place where it happens and speak to the communities. It can be uncomfortable, but that’s how you learn what is actually needed.

​One thing that I learned from that experience was that the context in which you exist, and your surroundings, affects your perspective, and that in turn affects your decisions.

So what happened after this experience in Brazil?

I came back to Europe a year later and got involved in climate activism. I met someone who had demonstrated at Heathrow airport in London and I promised myself I would stop flying. It was a process of meeting people and then getting to the next stage. I went to Paris where I met students from Nigeria whose family cannot farm anymore as a result of climate change.  Meeting all these people built up my picture of what is happening and motivated me to do more.

I think that’s one of the most powerful things, once you start going in a direction so much opens up step after step. For someone starting this journey, it’s hard to see what will open up.

Your climate journey was strongly influenced by your activism. When did you decide you needed to change your job to be aligned?

The company I was working with, was actively working in supporting social movements. So I got involved in that first. Over time, things changed, the company was bought by a private equity firm and slowly started drifting, focusing more on profitability. And I was shifting more and more in the other direction, deconstructing privilege and caring less about comfort.

I tried to influence my company and also took a sabbatical in between, where I tried to start a new idea. Then I started looking into social businesses and nonprofits, until I found Ecosia which is where I am now.

Was it challenging or easy looking for work as an engineer in that space?

I'm very lucky because tech and engineering is probably the easiest industry to find work in. There's technology everywhere. And being an experienced consultant, I have experience in lots of industries. I started by shortlisting which tech companies worked in healthcare, privacy, digital rights, and climate. 

One of the things that has been driving me for some time is something a former colleague said to me: “What is the most important thing you can do in the world right now? And if you’re not doing it, why not?”. 

“What is the most important thing you can do in the world right now? And if you’re not doing it, why not?”

That's an interesting perspective. I've heard from software engineers that they see things like energy grids and stuff, and they're like, I don't know if I have the skills. What can an engineer do here? Do you think there are a lot of engineers who find it hard? 

Yeah. When I was trying to do something alone during my sabbatical, I had the same questions. I think these questions come when you’re thinking of doing something alone. To solve these problems, we need to work with others.

I'm now working in Ecosia, and many of the people who started the company and who I work with are experts in planting trees and reforestation and ecosystem restoration.  I still don’t know a lot about this topic but I work with people who do.

It sounds like you’ve hit a place where your day job and your activist work have aligned so that you’re spending your time on what you think is most important. What is that like?

Before I was in alignment I had this tension that grew and grew. The feeling was making me really uncomfortable. One day I was going to a protest in Madrid – blocking the street in front of the minister of environment in Spain. The next day, I was going back to my company contributing to a project that was actually harmful for the climate. The tension became too much. There were a couple of these instances that told me I couldn’t keep doing business as usual.

Now I am in alignment, honestly, sometimes I forget because the day to day becomes routine. There are normal technical challenges and conflicts between people. Once every couple of weeks though I go back and watch a video from a tree planting farmer in Kenya or something that connects me back to the impact we make. I take a moment to reflect and get energy, like taking a little sip of water.

What advice do you have for someone making this change?

The time to act is now, we don't have many years ahead to do this work so make that shift. There is a lot of opportunity and the key to finding it is networking and meeting people. For me, motivation came from the people around me. Connect with people in the climate movement. We are everywhere in the world right now. So look in your neighborhood, join a local campaign

I think as an individual, each of us should become more aware of social injustice and make ethical choices. We should be thinking of the work we do, the food we buy, the way we travel, and so on – all that can make a great difference in our perspective and decisions. 

And we should learn to be brave and be kind at the same time.