In the past decade, Sustainable development (SD) has taken much importance in the life of (western middle class) individuals. Sustainability for some has become personal; something to justify changing practices of everyday life, one’s diet, consumption or mobility. This contribution though argues that applying SD in a work-related context, handling it as something professional includes additional complexity. Indeed, making sustainability a priority in one’s working life comes with much (re)negotiations about one’s initial vocation and related competencies, one’s professional ambitions and one’s understanding and relationship to work in general. This paper will present results of an investigation interested in the diverse ways of learning, understanding, and implementing sustainability in one’s professional activity. The empirical research is based on semi-directed interviews with individuals in western Europe as they prepared, were in the middle of, or had conducted a professional transition in the context of SD. Career transitions are favorable life course phases for rethinking and reshuffling life priorities (Ebaugh, 1988), for learning to (re)adjust, (re)position, (re)assess oneself with regards to the constantly evolving job market. These individuals are drawn to deliver a personal story about how and/or when to make sustainability something important in their lives, how this change manifested and how it is turned into a professional project. They all seem to agree about wanting a more sustainable society, but the ideal destination, the way to get there and the things that have to change differ grandly. To counter the highly individualized narratives and seemingly individualized career life projects, this research uses a practice theory approach (Reckwitz, 2002). Through this theoretical lens, human and non-human participants, sayings, doings, artifacts, and affects are equally appreciated (Schatzki et al., 2001) and used to describe practices. The interviews were analyzed using the Documentary Method (Bohnsack, 2010), from which emerged four ways to approach sustainability through work. Three types that range from abandoning a previous profession to practice sustainability in a highly committed way (Exemplary approach), to repurposing competencies of a former profession and make them shine under a new light (Indispensable approach), to juggling between former professional aspirations and new ecological values (Interposition approach). Finally, with Sustainable Development at the heart of this investigation, precise learning experiences embedded at the intersection of work and sustainability emerge that can inform about the way adults are currently navigating and negotiating their professional paths.

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