What were you doing prior to HBS? What made you decide to go to HBS?

Before HBS, I worked on TPG’s impact assessment team, Y Analytics, focused on energy, agriculture, food, and industrial deals. I learned to think deeply about measuring the impact of mission-driven companies. I enjoyed my role, but I was ready to transition from advisory work to a deal team. I decided to get an MBA to make that transition.

Many of the impact investors that I most respect are HBS alumni, and they spoke highly of their experience. I was also drawn to the large community of HBS students interested in climate and the school’s social impact coursework—including an amazing IFC to Denmark and the Netherlands focused on decarbonization.

Tell us about your career journey since graduating. Were your roles always related to climate and, if not, how did your journey lead you to pursuing a career in climate? What is your current role and what steps and tactics did you use to get hired in your current position?

During EC year, I focused my career search on impact investing roles. I was particularly interested in impact-first funds and growth investors in climate and food systems. I researched funds that had invested in my favorite startups and then reached out to HBS alumni at those orgs. A handful of these coffee chats turned into interviews. I ultimately decided on a Senior Associate role with Trellis Climate, a catalytic capital program at Prime Coalition that supports first-of-a-kind (FOAK) climate infrastructure—e.g., low carbon cement, green fertilizers, ocean alkalinity enhancement.

How do you see your current role and/or company having an impact on climate change?

For novel climate tech startups, it is incredibly challenging to finance first commercial-scale infrastructure projects. Ideally, these companies can fund their projects with project finance since that has a lower cost of capital than venture dollars. However, infrastructure investors typically prefer established technologies that are derisked and have highly reliable cash flows. Novel technologies often carry too much uncertainty for project finance risk appetite, leaving a capital gap for FOAK projects.

Trellis Climate was founded to help startups deploy their FOAK climate projects. In my role, I lead pipeline development, project diligence, and co-investor engagement. It's an honor to support innovative founders as they scale their innovative technologies.

Given your role at Prime Coalition, are there any trends in climate finance that you’re particularly focused on?

Climate tech startups currently face a few key challenges. Investors are increasingly focused on climate companies with a clear path to commercialization and profitability, due to the high-interest rate environment over the last few years. It’s particularly hard to fundraise for technologies with a green premium that need to reach large-scale deployment before achieving cost parity with incumbents. Similarly, investors are increasingly hesitant to invest in companies reliant on government funding for profitability—whether tax credits, loans, or grants—due to significant uncertainties surrounding these programs under the new administration. Lastly, we’ve also seen a rise in down rounds as companies that achieved record high valuations in 2020-2022 seek their next round of funding.

This environment creates headwinds for novel climate technologies as they fundraise for their first commercial-scale projects. While there isn’t a silver bullet to scaling these technologies, a few archetypes are emerging around how to cross the FOAK capital gap. Some companies fully finance their projects with venture rounds raised at the parent company rather than fundraising directly at a project-level SPV—particularly true for smaller projects. Others partner with strategics to create JVs. And others take the long road to stacking multiple capital sources including TopCo equity, project equity, grants, debt, and government support. There is no one correct approach on how to fund these projects. The uniting characteristics of projects that do successfully fundraise are a team and advisors with project experience and starting conversations with offtakers, strategics, engineers, and funders well before fundraising kicks off.

At Trellis Climate, we are singularly focused on this scale-up capital gap for climate. We created this resource guide to help startups prepare for their FOAK projects.

What advice do you have for students pursuing careers at the intersection of business and climate change?

Be creative in creating and finding opportunities. There are plenty of ways to break into the space, but it’s unlikely to be as simple as applying on a jobs board. First off, decide whether you’d prefer to build out your functional or sectoral expertise. Would you rather be the go-to person on project finance (functional) or on carbon credits (sectoral)? If the former, you might consider broadening your search beyond climate and first building out that skillset. If the latter, then go deep on one sub-sector and become the subject matter expert there whether formally through a paid role, or informally through volunteering and research. I find that the functional strategy is often the most transferable and leaves open the most options. But if you are passionate about a particular space, then that is absolutely a valid approach to your career hunt. Either way, it may take time, but with some persistence, you’ll find a way to incorporate climate into your career.