Our Climate Journey with Jason Hubbard
“To me, sustainability is about being informed, knowing what the right steps are and doing everything you can to take them.”
Jason Hubbard
Senior IT Manager
Jason Hubbard has been the Senior IT Manager at Zūm since 2022. He is a seasoned IT professional with 25+ years of experience, and prior to joining Zum worked in the medical device, industrial manufacturing, education, and luxury hospitality industries.
Jason has achieved several IT industry certifications throughout the years, and previously served on the DHS and FBI task force for the mitigation of the Stuxnet virus, a first of its kind for the time. In his spare time, Jason enjoys traveling the world, anything sci-fi, musical theater, and spending time with his niece and nephews; Maris, Mays, and Cal. He is originally from South Carolina and is a Gamecock fan at heart, but has adopted San Francisco as his home.
At Zum, we’re revolutionizing student transportation in order to build a green, sustainable future. What does sustainability mean to you?
I used to work for the U.S. Army, in the 1990s. In 1991, they announced an army-wide recycling program. It was more intensive back then: separating green and brown glass, for instance, not the streamlined process we have today. It included everything—vehicles, furniture, you name it. And I loved it. I’d grown up learning about greenhouse gasses, how we can harm our planet. So it was great to see an organization really putting in the effort.
That recycling program still exists today, and it has impacts that are both big and small. For instance, civilians on and near army bases use the same recycling centers as those in the military, and because military personnel move a lot, civilians can go use their moving boxes, upcycling that cardboard and making sure it gets used as much as possible. It’s a tiny thing, but in aggregate that makes a difference.
Seeing that recycling program has really affected my view of sustainability. I don’t just recycle plastics. I know where to take things like styrofoam, how to properly upcycle and recycle things as a result. To me, sustainability is about being informed, knowing what the right steps are and doing everything you can to take them.
I love working at Zum because it’s a company that takes the right steps. One part of my job overseeing I.T. is helping with the electrification of our bus yards. I’m making sure that we’re running charging conduits the right way, to be as economically and electrically efficient as possible, so we can best serve students, families, and school districts. In this job, I get to be a part of doing the right things. That’s sustainability.
Climate change is the single greatest threat to our way of life, but it can sometimes feel abstract, far away, a problem for another time. How has climate change affected you personally?
Okay, this is a crazy story, but it’s true and it perfectly answers this question. I live in California now, but still have a place in South Carolina, where I grew up.
Not too long ago, I heard a commotion in the backyard. I went outside to see what it was, and saw my dog chasing after what looked like a four foot long dinosaur. Turns out it was a Japanese tegu lizard. (Google it, they’re terrifying looking.)
These cold-blooded lizards aren’t native to South Carolina—they’re an invasive species, from places like Florida and Texas—but because it’s getting warmer, tegus are migrating north, taking over states like South Carolina. And they’re destroying the state’s natural resources. South Carolina’s Department of Natural Resources, and many of the local universities, are working hard to try and deal with the tegus because they’re threatening our food chains and wreaking havoc on our ecosystems. Meanwhile, native species, like the Venus Fly Trap, are being threatened by the warmer weather, and are now under protection in both North and South Carolina.
These aren’t that grand of issues on a bigger scale, but things like this are going to continue to happen the warmer it gets, and the worse the climate crisis becomes.
What can Zum do to be a leader in sustainability, to spearhead the charge in the fight against climate change?
We’re already doing quite a bit by electrifying transportation, but we can still push the envelope further. I’d love to see us, and other organizations, in both the private and public sector, take a more holistic approach to sustainability.
Companies can stop buying plastic water bottles. They can offer reusable aluminum coffee cups and wood coffee straws. They can implement company-wide energy management policies.
If every organization put being green at the center of their mission, we’d make more progress much more quickly. I’d love to see us lead that effort.