SIRI Practicum Student Reflections
In their own words, students share their reflections on their SIRI Practicum experiences!
Energy sustainability, climate finance, and carbon markets remain core themes within the global energy sector. After over a decade of contributing to diverse projects in the energy industry, I now recognize the critical importance of aligning energy initiatives with peacebuilding objectives, a convergence that is increasingly prioritized by policymakers. The opportunity to consult on projects centered in Africa, aimed at deploying renewable energy solutions in conflict zones, reveals the vast potential to address endemic energy shortages while supporting regional stability.
This is the reflection of a skeptic tasked with building a framework for a paradigm that runs countercurrent to her deepest financial assumptions. This semester, I’ve immersed myself in the nuanced and often contentious field of system-level investing through a hands-on practicum. My team's charge is to develop a novel framework for measuring how institutional investors grapple with systemic risks.
The garment industry is woven into my personal story - quite literally. With my Pakistani background, and a family business in the textile and medical uniforms, I learned supply chains not from business books but from walking factory floors...
The project I am working on is situated within the financial sector, with a specific focus on the emerging sustainable finance landscape in Armenia. This involves examining how domestic financial institutions—such as commercial banks, insurance companies, pension funds, and microfinance organizations—are beginning to integrate sustainability considerations into their activities, and how regulatory frameworks, taxonomies, and capital market infrastructure are evolving to support these efforts.
This semester, I am working on a project that sits at the intersection of corporate accountability, supply chain transparency, and international development, specifically examining sustainability reporting practices within the textile and apparel industry. The project focuses on understanding how large garment retailers' sustainability reporting influences or fails to influence the reporting practices of smaller companies throughout their value chains, with a particular emphasis on labor-related impacts in South Asia, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and India.
While I was applying to SIPA back in 2023, I remember I had written in my application essay that I want to work for ensuring labor rights in global supply chains of multinational companies. This passion comes from my experience of working in civil society and partnering with the private sector and government for labor rights in India. When I finally came to SIPA, hardly a semester had passed and the development landscape in the US and consequentially in other parts of the world changed drastically...
The finance sector plays a defining role in shaping the trajectory of our world. By deciding where capital flows, assessing risks, and setting investment priorities, finance ultimately determines which ideas take root and which opportunities fade. Increasingly, however, finance is being asked to go beyond profit maximization and risk management. A growing movement seeks to align capital with positive social and environmental outcomes, a shift embodied in the rise of impact investing.
When initiating a project, it can be intimidating to hear “look for examples, but you likely will not find any, because no one has ever done this before”. Upon first meeting my team’s client for SIRI Practicum, this was some of the first information we gleaned. While initially daunting, navigating a completely unique project in a team has proved to be informative and exciting...
Around the world, populations are ageing faster than ever. According to the World Economic Forum, more than one in four people now live in countries where their population has already peaked. By 2050, approximately 1.6 billion people will be aged 65 or older. Could this demographic shift be reframed not as a looming crisis, but as a catalyst for systemic change?
As our consulting project reaches its conclusion, I’ve taken some time to reflect on the...
During my participation in the Sustainable Investing Research Consulting Project at SIPA...
Private equity’s growing footprint in healthcare is no longer a quiet trend—it’s a structural...