Celebrating Earth Day 2022 with the HBS Business and Environment Initiative

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We are honoring Earth Day by sharing stories from the HBS Business and Environment Initiative blog that highlight HBS community members and business leaders who are dedicated to environmental sustainability and inspiring innovation at the intersection of business and environment.

Lessons Learned from My HBS Career Journey in Environmental Sustainability

By Aditya Desai

I began my HBS admissions application essay with the following sentence: “I aspire to help build organizations that are advancing sustainability and addressing the issue of climate change.” I was doing this before HBS; I was an engineer at Tesla, where I worked in manufacturing and design engineering. I loved my time there and am proud that I played a small role in helping drive the automotive industry towards electrification. Most importantly, I learned about the power of an organization to develop technology and execute business strategy to bring positive change in the world. Read More >>

Short Intensive Program (SIP): Opportunities in the Plant-Based Economy

By Sutton Guldner & Monika Berankyte

In this weeklong HBS session, a classroom of students passionate about the plant-based economy discussed its growing role in society. We were lucky to be treated to a group of highly accomplished speakers within the industry from a huge array of functions that explored the growing space from all angles. High level areas included cellular agriculture, alternative proteins, human health, and animal rights. The speakers were just as varied, from vegan Olympian Seba Johnson to prominent documentary director of Game Changers, Louie Psihoyos. Read More >>

Advice from My HBS Career Journey in Renewable Energy

By Alsey Davidson

There are so many different resources at HBS, from the faculty and classes to fellow students, Career and Professional Development, and the Business and Environment Initiative. From the beginning of my RC (first) year, I got involved in the Energy and Environment Club where I helped plan the annual conference. Through those planning efforts, I met alumni and practitioners working in different businesses in the clean tech space. One of the most valuable resources are the other students that I met. A lot of the job and internship opportunities I got through those student connections. In my first year, I was also a Student Sustainability Associate, which connected me with like-minded individuals who are interested in sustainability on campus. Read More >>

Career Advice: Transforming the Energy Industry

By Amrit Jalan

In the short term, I’m committed to helping big companies decarbonize because we desperately need them to move today. Long term, I want to use my skills and experience to reduce the friction that tough-tech ideas face on their path to scale and bring new technologies to the world, both as an investor and operator. I’m a technologist at heart, but if there's one realization that has stayed with me it's that solving the technology problem is just the beginning of the journey for businesses in the climate space. That journey involves convincing customers, investors, and governments to adopt these solutions and take them to a global scale. If I can occupy those three circles and enable symbiotic collaborations between them then I would have done a big service to mankind, so that's my ultimate ambition. Read More >>

Climate Stories

By Jacqueline Adams & Lynn Schenk

Researched and written by Jacqueline Adams (MBA 1978) and Produced by Lynn Schenk, Director, Business and Environment Initiative, the Climate Stories series tells the unique stories of the business leaders–CEOs, founders, advisors, and more–who are enabling climate solutions to thrive by seeing new business opportunities and focusing on the people who make those solutions both necessary and possible.

Read Climate Stories Episode #1 with Kameale C. Terry >>

Read Climate Stories Episode #2 with Sam Steyer, Greenwork >>

Read Climate Stories Episode #3 with Keith Kinch, BlocPower >>

Keep up to date with the HBS Business and Environment Initiative by visiting the website and blog.

The views and opinions expressed in the MBA Voices blog are those of the authors. Any political views shared by students are their own; HBS does not endorse a particular party or candidate.