Resources

• Bain Sustainability and Responsibility
• Bain Further model
• Bain + Persefoni partnership (carbon footprint analytics)/li>
• Bain and Jupiter partnership (carbon risk and adaptation analytics)
• Global Methane Initiative
• Climate Rising episodes on offsets:
  • Strengthening Carbon Offsets: The Oxford Offsetting Principles
  • How Harvard is Going Fossil-Fuel Free
• Science Based Targets
• Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative

Guests

Climate Rising Host: Professor Mike Toffel, Faculty Chair, Business & Environment Initiative

Guest: Cate Hight, Expert Partner in Sustainability and Responsibility and Energy and Natural Resources practices, Bain

Transcript

Editor’s Note: The following was prepared by a machine algorithm, and may not perfectly reflect the audio file of the interview.

Mike Toffel:
Cate, thanks so much for being here. Let's start with an introduction. Could you tell us at a high level about Bain and what your role is there?

Cate Hight:
Yes, of course, and thank you so much for having me. It's always so fun to have these sorts of conversations. So, gosh, I came to Bain after a long career in the energy and environmental policy space, so not a typical consultant path coming to Bain. I worked for a long time in the US government. I was at the USEPA,, was part of the negotiating team for the Paris Agreement and the carbon market provisions. I went to University of Chicago, had a big geeky emphasis on emissions trading and carbon markets, so that's my jam and that's what I really love.

I had the opportunity to do some of that at USEPA. We didn't have, of course our own cap and trade program in the US but advised states,, and also had the opportunity to really meet a lot of forward looking companies as part of our work with the Global Methane Initiative and working with oil and gas companies, really thinking about how we reduce methane emissions.

So after that, I had an opportunity to work at Rocky Mountain Institute where I led their program on methane emissions reductions from Global Oil & Gas, and then worked on industrial emissions reductions as well. So during the last five years, a real emphasis on action by corporates as we were waiting for policy makers to get their act together. So coming over to Bain really enabled me to continue my own learning journey there and some of these problems that corporates are struggling with, but also bring some of that advocacy and regulatory flavor because solving carbon and energy transition in particular is a team sport where you really need to pull together government and corporates and finance to think through how you work together and make this possible.

Mike Toffel:
And then from RMI, you found yourself at Bain. How did that transition occur?

Cate Hight:
I was recruited. I had a funny experience when the recruiter reached out to me, because working in government, we did a lot of work in the public sector with some other consulting firms, but Bain doesn't traditionally do a lot of public sector work in the US so I wasn't super familiar with Bain. And the offer at Bain was, "Look, we're making a huge investment in trying to help companies execute on this transition and we need people from all parts of the ecosystem to help us execute successfully on that."

Mike Toffel:
Have you gotten an appreciation for the backstory of how did Bain get into sustainability and climate consulting from their more broad management consulting practice?

Cate Hight:
Yeah. Bain has been doing work on energy transition for 10 to 15 years with our energy and natural resources clients. I think that what we learned over time as we were doing that work is sustainability moved from what I think about as a compliance exercise. How are you reporting on your emissions? How are you being accountable for them to a strategic imperative for a company?

As we think about these value chains that are all connected, the ability of companies to think about sustainability and carbon as a core component of their strategic direction has really risen to the fore. So that's really why Bain is making an extra big investment at this point in time, because as a strategy firm, we see sustainability and associated issues as being a core component of strategy. It's not something that lives in the marketing department. This is something that lives in the C-suite with big decisions that are moving capital allocation.

Mike Toffel:
And when you talk about this being a strategy issue, is this focused more on risk management and risk identification or is it more on the opportunity side, or is it a hybrid of both?

Cate Hight:
I think it's a hybrid. For some companies, there's going to be more what we call shields, protecting the assets you have, making sure you can continue to function. And then for others, there are some pretty obvious swords, like how you can be a first mover in the new energy economy. And in the US, that's been accelerated by the Inflation Reduction Act and all the different tax incentives that are present, which make that value proposition much clearer for companies who may not have been as active in this space before.

Mike Toffel:
Great. And we're going to get into some of the actual client engagements in these different areas, but before we do, I wonder if you can help our listeners understand, what's Bain's take on consulting, and climate consulting in particular? How does it differentiate itself from other companies in this space?

Cate Hight:
So Bain has a generalist model, so you come into Bain as a consultant and you have the opportunity to work with any number of different types of companies. We have a huge presence in the private equity space so the consultants get a lot of reps in with a lot of different kinds of companies earlier in their careers at Bain. I think the way that Bain really differentiates itself is this idea of embedding carbon, sustainability, ESG into all of our client engagements, and this is really best executed through a generalist model. You build those through those early reps in a bunch of different industries, you build a lot of empathy for the clients and what they're going through, but you also build a real toolkit to be able to communicate with clients on these different kinds of problems.

So you're not going to be someone coming in waving this green flag and saying, "Look, you got to do this because it's an imperative for the globe," which it is. You're doing it coming in and saying, "Yes, it's an imperative for the globe but it's also a strategic imperative for your company to be able to compete in this changing world."

Sometimes, the advice is, "You have 10 more years of running this business until it needs to go away. We need to work with you to determine how you structure your new businesses to participate in what is coming." And this has all sorts of flavors according to resilience of operations where you're citing your things. Where are populations moving because of climate constraints? So it's not only a carbon constraint but it's adapting to this world that is changing rapidly because of the carbon that's been going into the atmosphere over the past 100 years.

Mike Toffel:
Great. Well that's a good example of combining that risk assessment as well as an opportunity lens as well. So you mentioned you bring tools in a toolkit. Can you give some examples of what you mean by that?

Cate Hight:
Sure. So we have this one metric that we use that is all the different levers that one can pull as a company to decarbonize. Energy efficiency could be a lever, making your product in a different way using different materials could be a lever. Another lever could be completely re-conceptualizing what you're offering to the customer. So starting with that toolkit and having those frank conversations with companies about this I think is a really important value add.

One of the coolest cases I think that we have done on this, it's really a company transformation but an operations point of view. So it's with a tool maker that made mostly pneumatic tools powered by diesel. So they made these tools, they gave them to their customers, their customers used diesel generators mainly to power them. So in doing the assessment of the carbon footprint of the company, they looked at,, what we call scope one, scope two and scope three emissions, scope one being what comes out the stack of your company, scope two, what's associated with the energy you're procuring, mostly electricity, and then scope three being all the upstream stuff, so what's coming in on your supply chain to make your things? And then downstream scope three is what is the carbon footprint from once your stuff gets out into the world?

What this tool maker found was that it actually had a pretty good handle on its scope one and scope two emissions, but scope three was the biggest bucket. What they did is they transformed themselves into an electric tool company, so rather than these tools running on diesel pneumatics, they're running on electricity. So I think that's a really cool story of transformation where it delivered value to the client, they're now differentiating themselves,

Mike Toffel:
And so you bring together multidisciplinary teams then to bring to bear on these projects?

Cate Hight:
That's right. So most of the partners at Bain grew up at Bain and they grew up as generalists, so I like to think that we have a lot of flex capacity and partners understand how to work together and it's not a real siloed operation. But we do have partners that build expertise in different things. We have partners who are experts in manufacturing processes, partners who are experts in supply chains, partners who are experts in energy procurement. And one of the things that I have been really impressed by at Bain is this idea of teaming across the company to bring the best talent to bear on a problem. I like to call myself the carbon lady in the Americas and so I often am the first stop for people. "Okay, Cate, I have this incoming on decarbonization. Who should we talk to?"

And I say, "Oh, great. You should talk to the supply chains expert. You should talk to this utilities expert," et cetera, So it's really building that community of practitioners who will be able to execute this over the long term.

I like to set myself the goal of making myself obsolete, so coming into Bain as someone with an expertise in carbon and energy transition and being able to work with partners who may not have had that deep experience but they have deep experience in other things, giving them those tools to be the ambassadors for sustainability and transition in their own practices, that's great. That's my end goal. If I can step away and they can be the engines of change, that's what I want.

Mike Toffel:
Right. That's super interesting. So Cate, I wonder if you can tell us at a thumbnail sketch level, what's the difference and how do you describe strategy, operations, customer value and transformation, the four areas that you're engaging in your sustainability work?

Cate Hight:
Sure. So maybe I'll take the last three first and we can build up to strategy, because essentially, they're all part of strategy.

Mike Toffel:
Great.

Cate Hight:
So transformation is you are running your company a certain way now and you're making things in a certain way. In response to market conditions, your competitor's position, new value creation opportunities, how might you think differently about how your company shows up in the world? Is the path that you're on right now the path you need to continue on? Or are there exogenous factors that may be informing how you need to transform yourselves into a new type of company moving forward? And a lot of the things associated with transformation of course would be what's the business plan for the new business? How are you moving this forward? But also, how are you actually going to execute this? How do you get the new talent in the door? How do you make sure that the people who are existing in the company are landing in the right roles in the new direction you're taking things? So it's really a 360 degree look at how we transform a company and it's really a long term engagement.

On the customer value side of things, at Bain, we think of this in a couple of different ways. So first, are you giving the customers what they want? So a lot of market research. Are there gaps in the market? Are there new things that they need? Is there something about your product that isn't hitting home and you need to change that?

And the second part of customer value after you've done your market assessment is, okay, how are you going to reorganize yourselves or how are you going to make good on the promises that you want to make? Or do you want to make some new promises? Do you want to make a sustainability promise about your product? And how do you show up for that authentically? What do you need to change in order to show up for that authentically? You might want to say that you have a net zero jug of milk, for example. What does that actually mean? Customers are smart and they need to have the real data that goes behind the story that you're telling.

On operations, how do you make the things? And how do you get the talent who's able to make the things in the way that you want to make them? So operations is really where the rubber meets the road. Okay, you have this idea for how you want to transform your company into something else. You're thinking through the management structures whereby you're going to do that, but who exactly are the bodies that you need, the equipment you need, the inputs that you need? What does your supply chain look like in order to execute on that?

And then all of this really boils up into strategy, and this is why we talk about strategy as being the bread and butter of what we do at Bain, because each of these different components of business eventually is going to boil up into how you are showing up in the world as a company. What is your strategic vision for the next couple of years? What is your purpose? If in 10 years, you kept on as business as usual, what would that mean for the planet? If in 10 years, you disappeared, what would that mean for the planet? What is the gap in the world your company is filling and why are you the best at doing it? And why should everyone want to come to you instead of someone else?

Mike Toffel:
It would be helpful if we could make these a little more concrete, perhaps by walking us through a client engagement or two on each of these areas. So why don't we start with strategy, which I guess is what Bain's best known for.

Cate Hight:
Some of the projects that I think resonate with me the most are some of the work that we've done with oil and gas producers. I think sometimes, people think of energy transition as being the cool opportunity to think about how you get more wind and solar in the world, and yes, that is part of it. The other part of it is helping those companies that are currently providing our energy today to participate in that transition and to continue to provide the energy that the world needs as we're executing,. So we worked with several companies on what we call net zero strategy,. And net zero strategy for an oil and gas company, as will be no surprise to anyone, most of an oil and gas company's emissions are scope three, when their customers use their product and combust it.

There are a lot of fingers that are pointed at oil and gas companies, but if you drive a car that has an internal combustion engine or if you have a gas stove, you are a consumer of these products. So we need to think about those through the lens of, okay, how do we enable them to provide the energy that's going to enable us to participate in this new energy economy? So working with a major US oil and gas company on what their scope one and scope two reduction strategy is is a really important first step. How are you going to minimize methane emissions in your operations? How are you going to fabricate products in a way that you are minimizing emissions along the value chain

How are you thinking about, even while consumers are continuing to demand your product, but when combusted, reduces emissions, how are you thinking about your investments in the other side of the climate equation, which is the, carbon sinks? What is your offsetting strategy? How are you making sure that you are procuring for your customers who want them the highest quality carbon offsets that exist? So that would be just one example, thinking through how do we have a plan for reducing those emissions that are within our control? How do we have a plan for helping our customers offset emissions associated with the fuels they're combusting? And ultimately, how do we transform ourselves into a company that offers decarbonization solutions to a lot of the industries, let's take steel and cement as two examples, who are going to continue to be big oil and gas demanders until such a time as we have, for example, hydrogen widely available?

Mike Toffel:
So let's take a quick detour into the comments about offsets, because that's always an interesting topic to me and we've had a couple of episodes on that in the past. And this is your area with carbon markets, and offsets are an important part of that play as well. So what type of advice are you and Bain giving to companies in this somewhat murky offset space, how are you advising them on quality?

Cate Hight:
So this is a very rapidly evolving space but one I have a lot more confidence in over the last two years than I have had before. The things that give me hope in what we've talked to our clients about a lot is we're really scaling this era of rapidly available data on what's actually happening on the ground. So for nature based offsets in particular, let's think forestry, wetlands, et cetera, we have a lot of quite granular satellite data that enables us to actually check against commitments that offset providers may have made to make sure that those are still existing, so data I think is a really important thing.

one of the Rubicons that we have crossed also in the past couple years is both the scientists and the advocacy community are saying there has to be a role for carbon offsets in the future of solving climate change. It's no longer a mitigation only conversation. It is a conversation of offsets need to be part of this, we need to have nature based offsets, we need to have offsets based on technologies that are actually drawing carbon out of the atmosphere, but we still have no rules for what makes a quality offset.

So you may have discussed in your previous conversations, there are a couple of quasi regulatory bodies that are being pulled together with civil society actors and people who been working in carbon markets for a long time - the Voluntary Carbon Markets Initiative, the Integrity Council and Voluntary Carbon Markets, which may have another name now. They're trying to set the terms of engagement for what makes a reasonable claim on the kind of project you're providing, and then also what makes a reasonable claim from the buyer side, from the corporate side on, "I'm using offsets as X part of my decarbonization strategy and that's an acceptable amount."

We at Bain do work with the Science Based Targets Initiative, which is really the gold standard of corporate target setting and ambition, acknowledges that offsets need to be part of your near term strategy and even need to be part of your long term strategy in a limited way. We've moved past this time of offsets or no offsets to offsets, yes. Let us please think about some creative ways we can make it better for everyone so there can be more confidence in the market and more projects get funded, and we really start building up the sinks in a major way that we have not done yet.

Mike Toffel:
Yeah, that's really interesting. So let's talk about operations. So what's an example or two about some of the work you're doing in operations in the climate space?

Cate Hight:
Some of the ones that are the most interesting right now are in the chemicals sector. Chemicals are something that really undergird pretty much everything we do all the time. And there are a lot of very discreet and unique inputs that go into making chemicals, and it's this interesting area where they're using a lot of petroleum feedstocks, but they're also using a lot of bio-based feedstocks. They are the main consumers of hydrogen in the economy today. So I think chemicals companies have this unique opportunity, especially in light of the Inflation Reduction Act, to think about how they change their processes to take advantage of some of these decarbonized alternatives.

I'll give an example of a recent conversation that we've been having with a client that has a chemical process that uses a bio-based feedstock to go into it, but what happens in that chemical process when they use that biobased feed feedstock is there's a lot of carbon dioxide that they emit. So what they would like to do is they would like to sequester that carbon dioxide, or they would like to reuse it to start to make additional green products including green ammonia. So one of the things that we're doing with them right now is stepping through, what are those exact operational processes that you are doing and how can we look at some of the tax incentive provisions, production tax credit, investment tax credit, some of the loan programs that are available through the Department of Energy to help you really accelerate your work in those areas?

Mike Toffel:
So you've mentioned several times how the new Inflation Reduction Act is helping to focus clients on the opportunities and risks of climate change, and it strikes me that this is simply the flip side of a carbon tax in a sense. Which has been politically unpopular, but it's still trying to give an economic boost to decarbonized approaches. And are you engaged with companies on their policy stances in terms of their lobbying for or against climate policies? Is that part of the portfolio, part of the conversation, or is that viewed as separate?

Cate Hight:
So we don't do any lobbying. That is certainly part of the conversation, especially as we're thinking about how do you create value for a company from energy transition. The truth is that you can only go so far on your own. To go really far, you need a coalition of companies who are traveling that same pathway with you and you need pretty major policy support. So it's not an accident that the provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act were so incredibly precise on changing the economics of producing some of these things.

I think you characterized it exactly right, that it's reverse carbon pricing. In my mind though, having worked in this field for a number of years, everything is some version of a corporate tax, every single climate policy. It's just a matter of how pretzelized and triangulated it is. There are two things I find incredibly refreshing and exciting about the Inflation Reduction Act. So one is this reliance on mostly carrots, to incentivize and stimulate participation in the new energy economy. The second is this focus on good paying jobs in the new energy economy, jobs located in places which traditionally have not had those jobs or jobs in places that have traditionally had those jobs but they have been fossil jobs.

So this is in essence an industrial policy. This is betting big that America becomes the new industrial hub for green energy, and the two things that are the most mind blowing in the IRA in terms of how it changes the dynamics of global trade policy on energy transition are the incredible subsidy for green hydrogen, which now makes it cheaper to make here than anywhere else, and then two is on solar panel manufacturing. We are now to be competitive with China on this,

I'm excited to see coming up at the next UN Climate Conference coming up in November how and whether other countries take cues from this carrot based policy approach and use it as well in their countries. It is an all of the above approach. It's not energy stopping and then starting with something new. It's being able to provide energy and maintain people's quality of lives, maintain the industrial operations while you're also moving over to green resources.

Mike Toffel:
Right. So that brings me to your transformation work. You talked a bit about transformation in the context of the tool manufacturer. Is there another example or two you can provide on the work that you're engaging in in the transformation area?

Cate Hight:
Another example of transformation I might cite is some of the work that we do with fertilizer companies. You can make fertilizer with natural gas as an input. You can also make fertilizer with bio-based feedstocks as an input. So thinking through how can you do that? How can you do that at scale? What kind of biobased feed stocks do you want to integrate into this? Where are you sourcing them from? What are the second and third order impacts of changing your supply? These are all really key considerations. Also thinking about some of the biobased pieces, there's a really interesting opportunity here to near-shoring, localizing your supply as well. Recently, we heard in the news the rupture in the gas pipeline as a result of the Ukrainian war. There's some pretty major infrastructure risks. We have the biggest gas pipeline network in the world in the US. So think about if you were able to procure some of your supply from more local sources. That puts you in a better position for resilience moving forward.

Mike Toffel:
Great. That's a really helpful overview of these four areas. So Bain is pretty well known for its work with private equity, and how is climate showing up in your work with private equity clients?

Cate Hight:
Working in private equity, those are very short engagements with clients. They typically want diligences on a company in a matter of weeks, and so it really enables our consultants to come in and get a lot of reps in, exposure to a lot of different weird things that you've never thought about even existing in the world,. But we're working with a really diverse group of our investor clients on this topic. The broader private investing community is recognizing the importance of sustainability as a mission and is grappling with how to address it. Are there value creation opportunities for private equity in the timelines that private equity demands? These are pretty short time horizons when they're acquiring these companies and then selling them again.

So we're working in, I guess you'd characterize it as three different areas with private equity. one would be decarbonization strategy at the fund level. What should be my fund's ambition? What commitments should I make? Are there certain types of companies that I should never consider investing in? Are there others that I should over index in? What are the capabilities that I need to make sure that I'm able to onboard the right kinds of companies into my portfolio? So strategy would be one of the core activities we do with private equity.

And then diligence. I mentioned diligence is one of the things that every young consultant at Bain comes to do. So what is the carbon footprint of the asset that we're considering buying as a private equity firm, and how does that footprint compare with peers? And this is where all the indexes come in and there are some questions about using these different indices as a proxy, but it's the tools that we have right now. As part of the diligence, you're really thinking about, okay, so I see where this company compares to this competitor set. Can this asset really decarbonize, and how would it? What are the initiatives that will be required? Is there an upside to those initiatives? What are the investments that are required here? Or really, what's the balance of value in considering that type of investment?

The last one is probably going to be what we would like to term decarbonization value capture. So this is at the individual portfolio company level. How are these companies changing themselves to become more attractive assets moving forward? An example of this is right now, we are working with a portfolio company of one of our private equity clients that is a telecommunications firm. They basically put in the telecommunications cables which are made out of glass. Glass is a very carbon intensive material to make. They have very highly articulated decarbonization ambitions. They've set a science based target. So we're working with them right now to catalog all the levers they can pull to decarbonize their operations, to decarbonize their inputs, and to really deliver value to their customers in a way that enables them to capture value from the investments they're making in decarbonization. I'd say the strategy, the diligences and the value capture are really the three pillars of the work that we do with private equity in the decarbonization space.

Mike Toffel:
And all those sound like ways that Bain differentiates itself from other management consulting companies, few of which have this private equity lens in their house. Is that right?

Cate Hight:
That's right. Right now in carbon land, there's a lot of pressure being put on financial institutions to work with the companies they invest in, the companies they loan to to decarbonize, this whole idea of a net zero financial institution, and we're supporting science based targets right now as they develop their guidance for what net zero looks like for a financial institution. The big question mark everyone always has when you're talking about financial institutions is, okay, I get it. With these big public companies, you can hold them accountable, but what's to say that that capital launches, they'll shift to private equity? There's always going to be someone willing to make money off of things that aren't decarbonized. And I think that is really the magic of how Bain is showing up here.

We're working with some of the leading private equity companies to help them think about how they show up in the world on this topic. It's going to become a more and more important part of how they show up moving forward, and so at Bain, I feel like we're really on the cutting edge of helping those companies provide solutions outside of the public finance space.

Mike Toffel:
You talked about the generalist model that Bain has always embraced, and yet, some of these areas are technical and require some technical expertise. How are you building that expertise amongst your consultants, either through training or through new hires? How are you thinking about upskilling your folks to help them propel all of this climate engagement work that we're talking about?

Cate Hight:
Well, we're doing it along a number of pillars. So first, we just announced, we have a partnership with MIT Sloan to provide training to all of our staff in all of North America and South America where we have our operations. And this is empowering staff not only who are the consultants who are working with clients, but also our business function staff as well. Those who for Bain do things like M and A, the different companies that we acquire over time, our administrative staff who are really motivated by doing good work on this. So we are really making a pretty substantial investment here to make sure that anyone who wants to at Bain has access to this curriculum where they can really go deep.

The second piece is on partnerships. So we at Bain, we're a smaller firm than our competitors, and while we want to grow over time, I don't know if our growth is going to be just adding a whole bunch of more Bain bodies. A lot of what we're doing is trying to think about who are the best actors in this space on the different pieces that are necessary for decarbonization? So for example, emissions accounting. We don't have a bunch of emissions accounting expertise, but our partners at Persefoni certainly do. We don't have a lot of expertise internally on climate modeling, on physical risk modeling, but our partners at Jupiter do. So we're really thinking about how we can inform these strategic partnerships to help us accelerate the work quickly rather than building a deep bench over time.

And then a third piece would be considering how we bring in talent from outside to Bain, which is one of the reasons why I'm here. I'm not a career consultant. And something that I've observed at Bain that's very cool is as we bring in these new team members who come from discrete industries, so we are now bringing in expert partners who come from deep years in the procurement space, deep years in the manufacturing space, deep years in the digital space, and really making sure they're fully integrated with their teams. That's a lot of what I spend my time doing. Sometimes, I almost feel like a consultant to consultants. Have you considered this from this angle? Have you considered how this might go down with this group? Have you considered how if this company partners with this NGO, they can go further and faster and get the policy outcomes they want?

We have a pretty sophisticated internal sustainability operation as well and a growing sophistication of our DE&I practice as well, diversity, equity, and inclusion. I think we as Bain have a really exciting opportunity to be able to export some of those learnings and those muscles that we're building up to our clients as well. So that's something I'm looking forward to moving forward, is as we build a deeper bench, as we get more intelligence from these partnerships and are able to leverage them better, that we really are able to show up better for our clients as well.

Mike Toffel:
And so is that the Further Model that Bain has described recently?

Cate Hight:
Yeah, that's right. So the idea of Further is bringing together three things. So the stuff we do at Bain, our own sustainability and DE&I operations; the stuff that we do with our clients, helping them with decarbonization strategy,; and then what we call our social impact investments. So we made a $1 billion commitment to invest pro bono Bain teams with different organizations that are really accelerating some of the key solutions that need to come into the world. We act on that in a number of different ways but we have a very active environment pillar. And I think Further is one of those things that it's this flywheel of learning. By being able to make those pro bono investments, we understand what some of these underfunded, mostly NGOs are grappling with and trying to set the terms of engagement for what good looks like on these issues we care about.

With our internal staff, we are being practitioners and using ourselves as guinea pigs for what good looks like on these topics. And then as we show up with our clients, we're able to combine both of those learnings and say, "Hey, have you thought about it in this way? Here's a strategic consideration that may not have been on your list before." But since we have lived it, we're really able to deliver a better product to our clients.

Mike Toffel:
Interesting. So in a sense, you're using the work you're doing internally, to help build your knowledge base that you can deploy at clients.

Cate Hight:
Exactly.

Mike Toffel:
Interesting. Great. Well this has been a really interesting, wide ranging conversation. I want to close by asking you a question we ask all of our guests. Many of our listeners are considering where they can plug in in a career way into the business and climate interface. Where do you see the big opportunities and what advice do you have for such folks?

Cate Hight:
Oh, so many opportunities. So my career advice is always do more of what you like and less of what you don't, and to not be afraid to try a bunch of stuff out to come to that understanding. So I have had a career in government, in civil society, in academia and then in consulting, and I have drawn something unique from each of those flavors of things. So I think that when you're thinking about the intersection of climate and business, don't only think about business. Think about the enablers of business. So there's a famous quote, "Look for the helpers." Look for the helpers, and to really accelerate this transition, we need helpers from every angle. We need helpers in government, both the politics of government who are setting the terms of engagement and the career staff who are executing and making the playing field so that we can really move the transition forward.

We need helpers who are consultants to help businesses pick through the morass of all of these things. We need helpers inside the business who are advocating for this as a core strategic priority. We need helpers in finance who are unlocking investments and the new technologies who are helping push their clients to decarbonize their operations. For someone interested in this topic, the world is your oyster. I encourage you to experiment with a lot of different parts of this system because energy transition and decarbonization in particular, as I said before, is a real team sport, and being able to have empathy for the direction that each of these different actors is coming at it from is a really important part of being successful.

Mike Toffel:
It's amazing how much the world has changed in the past 10 years, because I think 10 years ago, this conversation would be totally different. This really was an edge area. There were activists pushing, there were companies resisting, there was policy makers not really sure where to move. And now, the world you're describing is much more optimistic and lots more opportunity.

Cate Hight:
I think that's right. I was having this conversation with my partner just last night and he was like, "Cate, you're getting to do the thing that you said you wanted to do when you got out of graduate school in the early 2000s."

And it blows my mind, Mike, that I now work for one of the biggest consulting firms in the world and this is a key pillar of what they do, so that is just a perfect encapsulation of the journey that we've been on over the past 10 to 15 years.

Mike Toffel:
Yeah, I feel the same way. Well thank you so much, Cate, for spending time with us here on Climate Rising. It's been a really interesting conversation and I appreciate every time we get to chat.

Cate Hight:
Well, thank you for having me. I hope I can come back one day and talk about all the progress we're making in this space.

Mike Toffel:
That would be terrific.