Talking About Climate Change in the MBA Classroom
Cause or solution? Risk or opportunity? How business leaders should own up to and tackle climate change is at the forefront of the MBA classroom at Harvard Business School. Students from around the world with varying perspectives debate at the intersection of business, government, and international policy.
Alumni Tackling Climate Change
In recognition of Climate Week NYC, check out these stories of seven HBS alumni who are dedicating their careers to environmental and sustainability efforts.
Alisa Gravitz (MBA 1980), president and CEO of the Washington, D.C.–based nonprofit Green America, leverages the economic power of consumers, investors, and businesses to create systems-level solutions. “On climate, it’s simple,” says Gravitz, “Stop putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and draw what’s there back down.”
FUNDING THE EARTH’S NATURAL INFRASTRUCTURE
Pat Coady’s (MBA 1966) lifelong love of the outdoors and career as an investment banker have led to such projects as the conservation of almost 4,000 acres of an historic Northern Virginia peninsula and the creation of a “sponge tax” in the prairies west of Houston to mitigate the environmental impact of development through investment in conserving water-absorbing grasslands.
Synthetic Genomics Inc., a private biotech company co-founded by Juan Enriquez (MBA 1986), is at the forefront of the scalable production of algae biofuel, both a clean energy source for heavy transportation modules (trucks, planes, trains, and ships) and a carbon-catching technology.
A MARKET-BASED APPROACH TO SOLVING THE WORLD’S WATER CRISIS
Jennifer Tisdel Schorsch (MBA 1992) is president of Water.org, a Kansas City–based nonprofit dedicated to bringing safe water and sanitation to the world through market-driven initiatives such as household-level financing.
INTO THE LIGHT
Nicole Poindexter (MBA 1997), cofounder and CEO of Energicity, is combating “energy poverty”--and improving health outcomes--in rural Ghana by bringing solar power to communities where highly flammable kerosene and expensive flashlight batteries are the primary sources of light.
CAN FARMING SAVE THE PLANET?
Don Wiviott (MBA 1984) is cofounder and partner of Sustainable Farm Partners (SFP), a farming operation and private equity group that acquires high-production conventional farms in Iowa and converts them to organic, thus reducing reliance on petroleum-based fertilizers and sequestering large amounts of carbon dioxide in the ground.
LAUNCHING A CAREER IN CLEAN ENERGY
Heather March Takle (MBA 2006), cofounder of pathZERO Energy, is leading an effort to help businesses transition to cheaper, cleaner, more reliable energy solutions through improved efficiency, better data, and optimized pricing. In this blog post she talks about how she embarked on a career in clean energy.