Admiring the View: Big-Picture Project Takeaways

As my time at SIPA draws to a close, these past few days have slowly shifted into a period that is simultaneously reflective and pensive, as well as exhilarating. I think back on how the most important things I have learned this semester don’t just include my newfound knowledge about the field of sustainable investing and climate change. Rather, I see how drastically my working mindset has shifted as I reflect on the many implications of this semester’s project in the real world (on forestry, accelerating investor action on climate change, renewable energy, agriculture, and carbon sequestration) as well as my own development as a professional in a consulting project.

I reflect on how complex and multidisciplinary this topic of sustainable investing and ESG is. It branches into ethics, systematic change, policy reform, public sector development, financial empowerment, and conservation. While brainstorming with my team on the implications of our project, it is clear that change in this sector will come from pivotal information at the beneficiary and community level. Addressing root problems on environmental, forestry, and energy issues must be paired with grassroots level data, private sector and investment action, as well as significant policy intervention.

I see how our client's work, as well as our specific project, reflects this initiative to trigger effective change and engagement with public policy to properly fortify the sustainability of the U.S. forestry sector. Part of the reason this project was so rewarding and challenging was that we had the flexibility to use our negotiation and communication skills to craft a project that would be mutually beneficial to the client’s goals, as well as our own personal and career development goals.

Our generation has a lot to fix, so my fellow peers must take care to focus on the long term in our careers, not just the “crisis du jour,” or “crisis of the day.” We will begin to find solutions if we listen to each other and the vulnerable communities we serve. This course has taught me that it will not be individual choices, but rather collective and larger scale systemic action that will actually be the catalyst to change in this field.

I find myself extremely humbled by not only my time in graduate school, but also in my first consulting project experience. As I reflect on the work my team and I have completed, I find that I have become a more pragmatic, yet flexible, young professional. Though lots of people come to graduate school for different reasons, many students will naturally be drawn to the field of sustainable investment as I was. I encourage future students at SIPA, and those who will become involved with the SIRI community in the coming years, to open their minds to more than just learning a new skill or building a new network. Practical projects in consulting are an intense and rich experience that can provide the perfect opportunity to think deeper about how one operates under stress, what time management tools work in different situations, and how to be an active listener. Teamwork and people are at the heart of sustainable investing, and I encourage future students to give themselves room for self-growth simply as students and young adults, not just as professionals, to become effective and empathetic leaders in sustainability.