By Jessica Wingert, Associate Director and Program Lead, ClimateCAP Initiative
It’s an exciting time to be getting an MBA, especially if you are passionate working on climate solutions. The beauty—and, admittedly, sometimes the challenge—of embarking on a climate career right now is the 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 the latest climate issues and data. I (of course) recommend checking out the recordings in our ClimateCAP MBA Academy virtual learning series, which include interviews and presentations from entrepreneurs, business executives, and thought leaders on climate and business topics.
For anyone starting from scratch, a good place to start is Project Drawdown’s Climate Solutions 101 series, along with Fuqua’s MBA EDGE platform for primers on skillets, careers, and issues that every MBA should know. Then, a few newsletters that provide helpful news are CTVC by Sightline Climate, Canary Media, and The Gigaton. GreenBiz Group also has numerous newsletters, each with a different angle; 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. Other recommended resources include Sustainable Career Pathways, which provides in-depth career resources, as does the Work on Climate community (which also has an active Slack channel). 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. The annual ClimateCAP MBA Summit is designed with this in mind. 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 other ways for students to build their expertise in climate topics 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 allow students to build skills by 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. Be interdisciplinary.
Climate is a complex, systemic issue, and students tend to under-appreciate the interconnectedness of climate drivers and impacts. Being able to connect the dots between traditionally siloed functions like financial reporting, supply chain, marketing, and corporate responsibility, as well as the basics of greenhouse gas accounting and climate policy 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. 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 pursue professionally, but through exposure in their academic and extracurricular experiences, they often end up shifting their path. Business school is a great time to explore new possibilities. In the ClimateCAP MBA Fellowship, for instance, 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, interested students may still be a small group at any given business school. Students may come into their MBA programs with intention for a climate-focused post-MBA career, but if they don’t find a community of support, it’s easy to get swept into alternative career paths like investment banking and consulting.
Students might find their community at their business school through a club or class. External opportunities such as case competitions and conferences provide opportunities for 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; the climate and business community is close-knit and fluid, and the connections that students make during their MBAs will serve them throughout their careers.
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.”