Meet Our EIP Team: Joice Pereira, Senior Engineer

Each EIPer brings a unique background, experience, and story to our organization. In our employee spotlight series, we’re shining a light on the people behind the scenes who make EIP a trusted partner in the energy industry.

In this employee Q&A, you’ll get to meet EIP Senior Engineer Program Development, Joice Pereira. Joice has over a decade of experience leading industrial energy efficiency, decarbonization, and sustainability projects. She is currently completing her PhD in Mechanical Engineering, specializing in energy and sustainability. At EIP, Joice develops and implements energy-saving strategies for commercial and industrial facilities.

What led you to this industry & role?

I remember my professor from high school was teaching about nuclear energy and I thought, this is fantastic. Then in the second year of high school, I started to get interested in oil and gas. My dream at the time was to work on this big platform in the middle of the sea, then I started to learn about the environment and how we need to take care of the environment.

When I first went to college, I was studying environmental engineering but two years in, I found out there was a new course in Brazil called energy engineering and I thought that's what I would like to do. I changed my degree and it was amazing. It was the best decision that I have made in my life.

What brought you to EIP?

I moved here from Brazil a year and a half ago. Since I didn't have experience working in the United States, I was concerned about finding a job even though I had been working in energy in Brazil for the past 10 years. But in the end, I didn't find EIP, EIP found me. A headhunter got in touch with me through my LinkedIn. I felt that EIP was a great fit for me because of its diverse and inclusive environment, and I couldn’t think of a better place to begin my career.

In Brazil, the energy industry can be quite traditional, and people working in the field often come from similar backgrounds. As someone from a background that is less represented in the industry, finding an environment where different perspectives and experiences are valued was especially meaningful to me. At EIP, I have the opportunity to work with people from a variety of backgrounds, cultures, and nationalities. I feel very fortunate to have found that kind of environment, and I’m truly grateful for the experience.

How do you explain your role and what you do at EIP to someone outside of the industry?

When I was in college, people would often confuse energy engineering and electrical engineering. They thought that energy is electricity. So, I developed a way to explain what the difference is because energy is about so much more than electricity.

I like to explain my role using a medical analogy. Think of me as a doctor, but for buildings instead of people. Just as a physician diagnoses a patient and prescribes a path to recovery, I diagnose a building's energy performance. I identify what's underperforming, where energy is being wasted, and what's driving those inefficiencies.

Once I have that diagnosis, I prescribe the right treatment. This could be energy efficiency upgrades, better energy management systems, or renewable energy integration, depending on what the building actually needs.

I don't just treat one patient at a time. Part of my work is designing programs that apply this same approach at scale, across multiple buildings at once, similar to a public health initiative rather than a single consultation. To do that effectively, I also develop tools that make the diagnostic and treatment process faster and more consistent, so we can help more buildings without sacrificing quality of care.

The end goal is simple: buildings that use energy more efficiently, which translates into real environmental and financial benefits, both for building owners and for the surrounding community.

In the end, the cleanest energy is the one that we didn't use at all. Energy efficiency is the cleanest, cheapest energy source. That's the problem that our program addresses. We reduce unnecessary losses by helping these buildings to use energy more intelligently. We are not just helping cut costs. We are directly addressing the climate crisis.

What is one of the biggest challenges you come across in your work? How do you help overcome the challenges?

Energy metrics are increasingly being converted into carbon metrics, and we're starting to see real penalties designed to force reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. In this context, energy efficiency and electrification have gained significant ground as decarbonization strategies for buildings, alongside renewable energy adoption.

But these approaches require new technical knowledge, and most clients don't have that expertise yet. Most of our customers face the same underlying problem: they know energy costs, or now carbon penalties, are too high, but they don't know why their building is underperforming or what to do about it. That's similar to someone feeling sick but not knowing which doctor to see or what's actually wrong. That's really the challenge my work addresses.

In short, we help customers move from uncertainty, and now regulatory risk, to a clear, actionable decarbonization plan with measurable results. Beyond the technical work, diagnosing, prescribing, and implementing, my role is also about translating complexity into clarity, using reliable, accessible information so both customers and utilities can see real results build over time, not just from the measures themselves, but from a genuine shift in behavior.

This is also why education is such a core part of how I try to design programs for utilities. It's not enough for a program to just deliver savings on paper, utilities need to see a real, lasting shift in how their customers think about and use energy. When customers understand the "why" behind their energy decisions, they don't just implement one project and stop, they continue making better energy choices over time, and that attitude change is what sustains results.

What part of your personality helps you do this work well?

I'd say curiosity is the personality trait that drives everything in how I approach this work. I'm naturally curious, I like learning, facing new and different situations, and I think that curiosity is what keeps me engaged with a field that's constantly evolving, from new technologies like electrification, to new regulations, to new financing mechanisms.

That curiosity is actually part of why I find working here so exciting. Moving here from Brazil and seeing how different countries approach the same fundamental questions, energy efficiency, decarbonization, customer engagement, but through completely different regulatory systems, market structures, and cultural contexts, has been incredibly stimulating for me. It constantly challenges me to rethink assumptions I once took for granted.

That curiosity also fuels creativity. Every building, every utility, and every customer has a different context, different constraints, different priorities, so there's rarely a one-size-fits-all solution. I enjoy that challenge, having to think creatively to design a program or a recommendation that actually fits the specific situation in front of me, rather than just applying the same solution everywhere.

I think that combination, staying curious enough to keep learning, and creative enough to adapt what I know to new problems, is really what allows me to do this work well, especially in a field that keeps changing as fast as energy and decarbonization does.

Is there a hobby or personal interest that reflects how you approach your role?

Two of my favorite hobbies reflect exactly how I approach this work: reading and solving puzzles.

Reading keeps me constantly learning, which connects directly to the curiosity I mentioned earlier. It's how I stay current with new technologies, regulations, and approaches in this field, always looking to expand what I know rather than relying only on what I already do.

Puzzles, on the other hand, reflect how I actually approach a project. When I look at a building or a program, I see a system with different interconnected pieces, and my job is to figure out how they fit together to reach the best possible outcome. But unlike a purely mechanistic approach, where you break a problem down into isolated parts and analyze each one separately, I try to break things down without losing sight of what makes them a whole. That's essentially what solving a puzzle is: breaking down a complex problem into its pieces, but always keeping in mind how those pieces connect and influence each other, since that's ultimately what determines the final picture.

I find that same satisfaction in solving a technical challenge for a customer as I do in solving a difficult puzzle, it's the process of working through complexity until everything clicks into place.