Five Ways to Launch your Climate Career in B-School
Originally published on the Center for Energy, Development, and the Global Environment (EDGE) blog, from the Duke University Fuqua School of Business.
It’s an exciting time to be getting an MBA, especially if you are passionate about climate. The beauty—and, admittedly, sometimes the challenge—of embarking on a climate career right now is the variety and diversity of career opportunities available to students—from clean energy to sustainable agriculture, carbon removal, sustainable aviation, corporate climate strategy, and more. Opportunities for students to use their MBA skills to work on climate solutions can be found in almost any industry as companies adapt to a changing regulatory environment, invest in new technologies, and evolve business models to respond to the need for decarbonization.
As the program lead for ClimateCAP, a business school collaboration designed to educate MBA students about climate risk and opportunity, I’d like to offer 5 tips to incoming MBA students who’d like to prepare for climate careers while in business school.
1. Get up to speed on climate basics.
Students come into their MBAs programs with different levels of climate expertise, but in this rapidly changing business environment, everyone can benefit from a refresher on climate issues when they begin their programs.
I always recommend checking out the ClimateCAP MBA Academy virtual learning series recordings to check out the keynote level conversations we have with entrepreneurs, business executives, and thought leaders, on climate and business topics. Other recommended resources include Sustainable Career Pathways, which provides in-depth information about different climate-related career paths, as does the Work on Climate community (which also has an active slack channel). For MBAs, MBA EDGE provides primers on skillets, careers, and issues that every MBA should know. A few newsletters that provide helpful ongoing news are Climate Tech VC, Canary Media, and The Gigaton. GreenBiz Group also has numerous newsletters that focus on different aspects of the climate and you can sign up for as many, or as few, as you like. Podcasts such as Degrees, My Climate Journey, and Climate Rising are very helpful to gain additional context on climate issues and opportunities. When you are ready to start looking at career opportunities, the Terra.do job fairs are a great option, as are the job boards at Climatebase, Greentown Labs, and Greenbiz.
2. Use extracurricular and experiential learning experiences to build skills.
The climate landscape is moving quickly, and the best way for MBAs to add experiences to their resumes is through extracurricular and experiential learning opportunities. One example, of course, is the annual ClimateCAP MBA Summit, an MBA conference that explores the intersection business and climate risks. The 2024 Summit covered topics as diverse as: climate equity, FOAK to NOAK venture scaling, corporate political responsibility, AI for climate and more, giving MBA students an opportunity to dive into many new ideas.
There are many ways for students to build their expertise in climate science and climate tech industries beyond the classroom. For instance, fellowships like the Mosaic Fellowship, a program of the ICM Institute, give students the opportunity to work on an impact investing team, many of which are investing in climate tech and environmental justice projects. Many MBA programs also have student-consulting opportunities, like the Fuqua Client Consulting Practicum or the Fuqua Sustainable Impact Student Investment Fund here at Duke, which allows students to build skills working on real business issues. Joining clubs and competing in national case competitions like the Kellogg-Morgan Stanley Impact Investing Challenge can also build skills.
3. Go interdisciplinary.
MBA students benefit from interdisciplinary exposure to different climate topics during their studies, regardless of where they intend to work post-graduation. Climate is a complex systemic issue, and students tend to under-appreciate the interconnectedness of climate drivers and impacts in the business world. Being able to connect the dots between traditionally siloed functions like financial reporting, supply chain, marketing, and corporate responsibility gives students a leg up during the interview process, and also serves them well as they enter the workforce and put those skills to use on real business problems.
For students, the Smeal College of Business's Center for Business Sustainability at Penn State recently released Major Sustainability, a web platform that shows how different business majors all have a role in sustainability. The Drawdown Labs Job Function Action Guides highlight specific, high-impact climate actions employees in common corporate professions can take at work, and give context to the interdisciplinary requirements each function needs to have to make each job a climate job.
4. B-school is the perfect time to experiment.
Many students come into the MBA programs with an idea of what they want to study and pursue professionally, but through broader exposure in both academic and external experiences, they often end up shifting their expectations and ultimately are better prepared to decide where they want to work post-grad.
In the ClimateCAP MBA Fellowship, Fellows work on a climate-action project, in which they seek to answer a question, understand a complex idea, or experiment with a new business. Sometimes these ideas turn into real ventures, and sometimes they lead to introspection and reprioritization, but in all cases, these experiences provide students with additional data points from which to make more informed career decisions.
For students who think they might like to start a climate tech venture or join a startup, business school is the perfect time to pressure-test an idea. The structure of the MBA program creates a safe space for students to experiment. Students can use their time in grad school to work on business plans while they have a relatively low-risk environment, as well as an ecosystem of expertise and support.
5. Find your climate circle.
MBA students frequently cite the importance and power of finding their "people" and building their network. While student interest in climate topics and careers is growing, it is still often a small group, as compared to some of the more traditional MBA career paths. Students may come into their MBA programs with intention and vision for a climate-focused post-MBA career, but if they don’t find support and community, it’s easy to get swept into career paths like investment banking and consulting.
Students might find their community at their home university through a club or class, but external opportunities such as case competitions and conferences provide opportunities for these passionate groups of students to meet peers at other schools. It’s hard to overstate the power of being in a room of 400 other students who have similar interests and passions as you, as we see happen annually at the ClimateCAP MBA Summit, especially when you are used to being the only voice in the room.
The power of these networks does not disappear at graduation, as the climate & business community is a close-knit and fluid, and the connections that students make during their MBAs will serve and support them throughout their careers.
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MBA students with climate expertise will find many opportunities to find a fulfilling and impactful career. The students who are best prepared to enter the workforce are those who have taken advantage of these opportunities and developed a solid base of knowledge and experience during their graduate studies.
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Want to go deeper? Watch the ClimateCAP video with recommendations from business school educators on “Integrating Climate into your MBA.”