Behind Green Steps: Richard Nortey

Green Steps Team is international and diverse. You can meet some of us during our events. Others maybe are working behind the scenes, or even in another continent, but we all play a part to succeed in our mission. This is possible thanks to individuals and their hearth, which is something that goes beyond their job description.
To make you all feel closer to our community, every month we post a short introduction to one of our Team Members, to celebrate the people behind Green Steps.

Green Steps’ Team expanded at a fast pace between Spring and Summer 2020. When you scale from a bunch of people meeting every day to a structured team with many tasks, the organization is crucial to avoid wasting time. A young man from Ghana helped us to keep all members on track with the growing set of digital tools to handle: Richard Nortey.
How should we call you?

 Reeshahr, because it is French for Richard 

You could think that Green Steps is all about the outdoor, but it is thanks to you that everything works smoothly between Nature Guides as well as across all departments in GS Office. Let’s explain your role!

I work in Green Steps as tech Support. I work behind the scenes to ensure that all communication equipment used by the team and partners work smoothly. I propose and implement IT solutions to ensure the effectiveness of the Team. I also have good interpersonal and social skills to balance.

In fact, if you get to know him, Richard’s smile is contagious even when it is hidden by a chat interface. What is there that we cannot see of his life when he is off?

I always go for runs in the morning and one extraordinary thing I like to practice daily is to stand in front of the mirror and say good things to myself to boost my self-esteem and self-worth. In a state of chaos and negativity, I always see the good out of everything through this practice.

Working in an international team is stimulating, and Shanghai is a global metropolis. Everyone has a special story to be told: how did you end up where you are?

 I am from Ghana a country on the coast in the Western part of Africa. I came to China in 2017 to get my Masters’s degree in Engineering. I was not sure whether to stay in China to work or moving somewhere else in the World, but right after graduating from Shanghai Donghua University, I got the opportunity to work as an intern with Wicresoft, a joint venture company with Microsoft. My cousin and I all got the opportunity to work as Office 365 support engineers. After work on the 7th of May 2020, my cousin sent me an ad post from Green Steps for the position of Support Tech. This was because He knew my interest in nature and wanting to do something different that might cause an impact on the world regardless of how small. I then applied and went through the interview process and successfully landed the job. Working for Green Steps has been a memorable and unforgettable experience ever since.

What work of art would you use to tell others something deep about yourself?

I really like the Shakespeare story, Macbeth. I read this as a teenager and I would recommend it to anyone.

We want people to know Green Steps Team members better. But each of us also knows he is contributing to a bigger picture: working on the present to change the future. How does that picture look like in your mind?

 I know our efforts to connect people with nature will not be in vain but will yield a cascading effect of awareness of how important it is to root ourselves in the knowledge of understanding various parts of nature to the development of our platform. I am sure this legacy will live on for generations to come especially in this age of technological addictiveness.