The Business and Environment Initiative is constantly impressed by the dedication of our alumni in confronting the climate change challenge. In an effort to share the breadth of work being done, we are capturing career journeys of alumni who are leveraging their careers to tackle this critical issue.

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

Before HBS, I worked as an engineer at Ford Motor Company. I enjoyed working on projects and building things, but as I started charting out my career path, I realized that to become a senior manager or executive, I would need an MBA from a reputable institution. I was drawn to HBS because, beyond enjoying my campus visit, I was particularly excited about the inclusive partner culture, strong student section affiliation, and the case method. I enjoyed how engaged students were in the classroom from the case method, which was a refreshing change from the lecture-based instruction that I had throughout my engineering career.

When I was speaking with students or alumni, I felt like the things that they were excited about and the opportunities they talked about aligned with my own interests. It seemed like an exceptional place to reflect on where my career had taken me and where my career would potentially go moving forward. Additionally, I was drawn to the willingness of the faculty, administration, and groups like BEI to engage on climate and sustainability topics and think through how the School could continue to be a thought leader in areas that are becoming more important to business leaders, like climate change.

Tell us about your career journey since graduating. Were your roles always related to climate? If not, how did your journey lead you to pursuing a career in climate?

After graduating, I started at BCG as a consultant and I was fortunate to get staffed on some climate and sustainability focused projects, including tractor electrification, off highway charging infrastructure, precision agriculture technologies, carbon capture and sequestration as a business model expansion for a natural gas company, and most recently, an ESG strategy for an airport. This role has allowed me to see how different companies are thinking about sustainability and I enjoy helping executives think about the future roadmap of their sustainability journey. Clients come to us believing this is important but need help making an action plan that is both sustainable and profitable.

I've also become an official part of the climate and sustainability practice area at BCG. I’ve worked on internal thought leadership such as offshore wind market assessments for the US northeast, power utility strategy including strategic response to data center penetration as well as residential solar penetration. In my role at BCG, I also had the opportunity to attend a weeklong immersive training at Columbia Climate Institute in New York with other BCGers specialized in the climate and sustainability practice area.

Many students pursue a career in consulting after HBS and are interested in working in climate. How have you integrated climate into your role at BCG?

It’s important to remember that the words “sustainability” or “climate” don’t necessarily need to be in a case or job title to have an impact on these topics. I would encourage people to not get hung up on those words and think about how to work in industries that are important to impacting the future trajectory of the energy transition or the green economy, for example. Eventually everything will have a climate lens, and it's not going to necessarily say it in the job title. Don't get frustrated if you're not able to find things that are explicitly called “climate” or “sustainability.” Look at your skill set and your capabilities and find ways that you can apply that knowledge in industry to create an impact.

It feels like in the past year or two there has been a corporate shift away from an immediate focus on these topics, at least to some extent because supply chains have been so constrained, and inflation has been high. But if you look at the science behind climate and the tangible changes that we're seeing across weather patterns and the impact it has on people and the economy, climate change is clearly something that's critical to address for a healthy long-term global economy.

How has HBS helped you on your career journey?

HBS exposed me to many different career paths I hadn’t really known about before. For example, there’s a whole breadth of work that goes on in the finance sector related to funding of climate ventures and climate-related projects that I hadn’t really had exposure to before. HBS also opened my mind to the criticality of the intersection of business and policy. I believe businesses can be a huge change agent to solve many of the world’s problems– but only within the framework of the policies in which they operate. I've started to consider if my career path intersects with policy at some point which I hadn't really considered before going to HBS. Policy is such a critical piece to make sure this all comes into place.

What advice do you have for students pursuing careers at the intersection of business and climate change? Do you have any tips for students who are going into consulting who also want to focus on climate?

Be honest with yourself about what you're good at and what your capabilities are, then think through how those capabilities and skill sets can make an impact in climate. If you're going into consulting, work on projects related to your skill sets that are at least ancillary to climate, if not specifically in climate. If you're going into industry, you can ask yourself the same questions of where can I make an impact, where am I well suited, and what am I good at?

It’s important to recognize that career paths are long and winding, so be open to turns. You're not always going to be working on things that feel like they’re making a huge impact and that's okay, because you're going to keep building your capabilities. The way these problems get solved is going to change over time, the roles that exist today may be different tomorrow so be flexible and open to how the evolution of this occurs over time. There's a lot of work that needs to be done here and there's going to be plenty to do.