Clean Energy MBA Pathway

Clean Energy Transition Continues Purposeful Work for MBA Army Veteran

Sarah Arney — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 19:37:01 +0000

Clean Energy Transition Continues Purposeful Work for MBA Army Veteran Sarah Arney Thu, 10/03/2024 - 13:37

Julie Waggoner

After a ten-year career serving in the Army, Ethan Subra (MBA’25) came to Leeds last fall to pursue work in the clean energy transition, an area that would let him continue to focus on creating a positive impact through his work. He was attracted to Leeds by the program’s Pathways in Clean Energy and Sustainability, alongside the location in �鶹ӰԺ.

We recently sat down with Ethan to discuss how the skills he learned in his military career serve him as a rising business leader, what excites him about working on the Clean Energy Transition, and his summer internship with Scout Clean Energy.

CESR: First of all, thank you for your service in the Army. Can you tell our readers more about that experience, and how the skills you learned translate into the business world?

Ethan Subra: Serving in the Army was very formative in terms of shaping my leadership style and helping me learn how to be professional in any environment. At the age of 23 being put in charge of a group of 40 people from a wide range of backgrounds forces you to grow up fast. That helped me to learn about some personal weaknesses and humbled me early on. Learning how to manage people from diverse backgrounds and orient them to pursue a common goal, particularly in times of high stress and challenge, was a significant learning experience for me as a leader.

In the Army, you change jobs every year or two as you grow in rank, so that constant change helped me to become adaptive and willing to tackle things head-on, to accept failure and learn from it, then eventually succeed. Over the course of 10 years in the Army, I had to do that over and over in different environments.

Another skill I developed relates to handling risk. The experience of assessing threats and adversaries in the Army helped me understand how to view, accept, and mitigate risk. That has paid off in my experience in the business world so far. It relates to the due diligence process, which was my focus in my internship this summer.

CESR: Tell me about your experience as a veteran at Leeds, and the community of other veterans in the MBA program.

ES: The Veterans Club has added a solid core of individuals with shared experiences of serving in the military, which has been helpful now that I am very far away from that environment. Leaving the Army feels like quitting something cold turkey after 10 years. School is very different; the internship was very different. It has been good to be a vet here because there is a high percentage of other vets, and there’s a strong support system in the Leeds School. Doug Bennett supported the veterans club and is a well-respected businessman. Heather Adams has taken over now sponsoring the club. Both are veterans as well. There’s a lot of appreciation and community that’s fostered between vets through that faculty and student connection. I appreciate the diversity in my personal community at Leeds of both veterans and non-veterans.

"I don’t want to just add more money to a company’s balance sheet with my time, energy and skills. I want to leave a better planet for the next generation and generations beyond, and through that work generate value for a company."

CESR: What makes you excited about the clean energy transition?

ES: What gets me excited is two-fold. Number one is the intrinsic value I derive from pushing the clean energy transition forward. I got a lot of intrinsic value out of serving in the Army, so I knew that I needed to find that same value in the work I did next. I’ve found that to be the case in the renewable energy transition writ large. Finding an MBA program that had a strong curriculum and opportunities for renewable energy and climate tech was a priority for me. CESR and the Clean Energy and Sustainability Pathways were some of the biggest things that drew me to Leeds.

I don’t want to just add more money to a company’s balance sheet with my time, energy and skills. I want to leave a better planet for the next generation and generations beyond, and through that work generate value for a company.

The second piece is that it’s a growing industry. Every week you read a new article about how there’s a looming shortage of energy period, and how there’s a lot of work to be done to meet our climate goals but also to grow the grid and the capacity enough to meet the demands of the growing economy and technology. I see job security there, opportunities for growth, and a demand for skills that I am developing here through the program, and through my internship. Looking ahead building skills for the clean energy transition seems like a sound investment.

CESR: What has been the impact of the Clean Energy Pathway (and other programs from CESR)?

ES: The impact has been huge so far, because the first year of the program is so dense on fundamental MBA courses. To not just work on the skills, but also the network and my industry awareness, the Clean Energy Pathway has added specificity that I wouldn’t have gotten if I had just gone to class. The CESR Newsletter and opportunities that come out of that, the networking events, and the Clean Energy Finance Bootcamp provided phenomenal exposure and helped me get the internship I wanted. I was able to market those things to employers in my interviews, and that helped me to gain traction and set myself apart.

"I see job security there, opportunities for growth, and a demand for skills that I am developing here through the program, and through my internship. Looking ahead building skills for the clean energy transition seems like a sound investment."

CESR: What did you do this summer for Scout Clean Energy? What did you learn?

ES: I worked on their Mergers & Acquisitions team as an intern. I helped my manager, Dan Witt (MBA ’20), one of the senior managers on the team, on an acquisition proposal for an energy project that ultimately got approved. It consisted of building on a brownfield site on top of a closed coal mine. I helped to prepare Dan on some very niche parts of that deal that were unique to Kentucky, where the brownfield site was. I was responsible for understanding the tax implications, how much money we would save over time, and the siting approval process.

I also got to work on developing a financial model, which is what I wanted to do this summer. I was exposed to it through some finance classes and the Clean Energy Finance Bootcamp. I got to get deep in a very complex financial model that will help us look at aging wind farms and how we could turn a profit on acquiring those over time. It’s part of Scout’s long-term strategy of growing the wind pipeline, and it opens a whole new category of acquisition projects, vs. acquiring empty land. I led meetings with wind manufacturers like GE, Vestas and others to begin the due diligence and fact-finding process in support of the broader project valuation I was developing.

I’ll be working part time with Scout in the fall as well. My goal is to stay on with them and keep that initiative moving.

"So, say “yes” to as many things as you can within the healthy boundaries you set for yourself. The more you put yourself out there, the greater your chances of finding that thing you’ve been looking for."

CESR: What advice do you have for students just starting the program?

ES: If you don’t know the industry that you want to go into, cast a wide net early on and give yourself many opportunities to discover what intrigues you and what your strengths are. Give yourself the opportunity to say no to many things on your way to finding something you really want to commit to.

Also, realize you never know where that special connection that leads to an opportunity is going to come from. It could be a connection from a lunch n learn, or an alumni happy hour, or from a professor. You might think that the connections happen at official “networking” events, but it can happen anywhere. So, say “yes” to as many things as you can within the healthy boundaries you set for yourself. The more you put yourself out there, the greater your chances of finding that thing you’ve been looking for. That’s the approach I took, and it paid off for me with my internship, but it’s also for paid off for my classmates in other ways. Don’t discount any events.

Learn more about upcoming sustainability and social impact events, as well as the Clean Energy and Sustainability MBA Pathways.

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Energetic Edge: Leeds MBA Team Earns Second Place Award in Prestigious Duke Clean Energy Case Competition

Anonymous — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 07:00:00 +0000

Energetic Edge: Leeds MBA Team Earns Second Place Award in Prestigious Duke Clean Energy Case Competition Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 11/28/2023 - 00:00

It was important to create a solution that would benefit people, not just make a profit.

So, when four Leeds School of Business MBA students began creating a model for a prestigious case competition, they started with the true need: how to work collaboratively with farmers and community members to provide consistent, affordable energy sources and cold storage to communities in Nigeria.

“We realized early on that if we did not create community buy-in from the ground up that no matter how good the tech was, the business will fail,” said Erik Coler, one of the team members. “We decided to create a model that would work with local community leaders to run a cold storage business and provide consistent, affordable electricity to people's homes all being run entirely off a solar grid. The model also gives local farmers the ability to store their food and increase their incomes while providing affordable, better-quality food to their communities.”

Their model, and work to promote it, won the team a second place award in the annual International Duke University Energy in Emerging Markets Case competition on November 7, 2023. All students in the Clean Energy Pathway in the Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility (CESR) at Leeds, Mary Boling, Richard Swistara, Nathaniel Reynolds and Coler beat more than 60 teams to get to second place.

“Participating in this competition was exhilarating, offering us the chance to engage with and learn from other top MBA programs while tackling a case that realistically modeled renewable energy implementation in emerging markets,”

said Swistara.

In the final round, they competed with the best MBA programs in the world: IESE, third highest ranked global MBA according to FT; Northwestern, the second highest ranked MBA program in the United States; York University, the highest ranked MBA program in Canada; and Cambridge University.

“We loved how this competition allowed us to use our creativity and business acumen to address a real-world problem,” said Boling. “We are very grateful to Duke University for creating this opportunity to not only develop a solution but also get feedback on that solution from industry leaders.”

Clean Energy Pathway prepares students

“CESR offers an MBA pathway in clean energy linked to recommended courses, experiential learning opportunities, networks and jobs,” said Kathryn Wendell, executive director of CESR. “We are proud of our students for competing among many highly regarded business school programs and landing in second place. This demonstrates not only the high caliber of our MBA students, but also the significance of our pathway in preparing students to drive business solutions to environmental and social challenges.”

Back in September, Julie Waggoner, director of operations at CESR, introduced the MBA students to each other. She suggested they’d make a great team for the highly competitive Duke competition that features three rounds of competition to find the most innovative business-based solutions to a real problem faced by Okra Solar, a company that makes mesh-grid products to bring affordable and reliable energy access to all.

“I’m not aware that a Leeds team has ever participated in this competition before, so it’s very exciting to see them go so far,” said Waggoner.

And according to Coler “it came down to the razor wire for the judges who extended the original time for scoring.”

Wendell said it’s clear that sustainability is an important focus at Leeds today. More students are interested in sustainability. More faculty are integrating sustainability themes into their research and teaching, and there is increasing collaboration on sustainability initiatives across CU �鶹ӰԺ and with the private sector.

She said CESR would like to support more students in participating in case competitions like this and, to the extent possible, help offset costs so financial constraints aren’t a barrier to students’ participation.

“Each team brought innovative and unique perspectives in solving impactful real-world energy issues,” said Reynolds. “What a great opportunity to think deeply about complex problems and meet amazing people.”

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Propelling the Energy Transition Forward: Career Advice From an MBA Alum

Anonymous — Mon, 25 Sep 2023 15:33:42 +0000

Propelling the Energy Transition Forward: Career Advice From an MBA Alum Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/25/2023 - 09:33

Sena Kavi

Mike Hilgendorf (MBA ‘20) is a Leeds Alum currently working at FTI Consulting as a Director in the Power, Renewables and Energy Transition group. During his time at Leeds, he became the president of Leeds Social Impact Consultants and the Net Impact Case Competition. Mike has played an impactful role in helping develop the Clean Energy MBA Pathway, and is a frequent industry speaker at CESR events. He recently joined CESR to talk about his position and reflect on the skills and resources that led him down the path of working in energy transition consulting.

CESR: What does your day to day look like within your current role?

Mike: There is no typical day-to-day in consulting. I always tell students and people who are looking to go into consulting: if you are looking for a standard 9-5, you certainly will not find it with consulting. It is all over the place, fast-paced, and dynamic, which is exciting in a lot of ways but does not lend itself to a stable routine. In my role, I’m constantly juggling different projects with different clients, so there’s really not a day-to-day that I can speak to. That being said, in general it is working with clients, having meetings internally and externally, working through different problems, and working towards whatever deliverables that we may have on a given project.

During my MBA at Leeds, I first and foremost wanted to focus on gaining the hard skills – corporate finance skills, Excel skills, as well as general [energy] industry knowledge.

-says Mike Hilgendorf

CESR: What do you think are the main skills that make you successful as a consultant?

Mike: Specifically for FTI, the Power, Renewables, and Energy Transitions group is nestled in the Corporate Finance division. Corporate finance skills are really heavily utilized, as well as Excel and financial modeling through Excel. Other relevant skills that we use daily are related to presentations, business writing, and similar skills to communicate with clients. It is also important to have a general foundation in energy industry knowledge. Industry knowledge is critical for the work I do and part of how we screen for potential applicants.

CESR: What steps did you take to bring yourself closer to getting hired in your current position?

Mike: During my MBA at Leeds, I first and foremost wanted to focus on gaining the hard skills – corporate finance skills, Excel skills, as well as the general industry knowledge that I mentioned earlier. Outside of the classroom I had a heavy focus on extracurriculars. I was not a consultant before my MBA, so I tried to take advantage of extracurricular consulting opportunities. That includes Leeds Social Impact Consultants, or helping with the Net Impact Case Competition; involvements that can show you are interested in the industry but also help to develop the relevant skills that you need in the industry. Finally, I focused on networking, talking to industry professionals, and trying to figure out what jobs are even out there so that I could line up those classroom skills and extracurriculars to meet the job descriptions of jobs I was interested in.

"The major challenge [to transition away from fossil fuels] is intermittency and the inability for solar and wind to have a consistent supply of energy generation, because the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow."

-says Mike Hilgendorf

CESR: How do you keep up with news on the energy industry and energy transition?

Mike: We have job-specific trackers that we use internally at FTI. Besides that, in my free time, I listen to a lot of energy podcasts and energy finance podcasts because that’s what I’m interested in – that’s what I do. It’s nerdy to some people but I enjoy it, so podcasts are my go-to. You can listen to them and learn from them while you’re doing something else; I like being productive in that way.

CESR: What do you see as major opportunities and challenges in energy right now?

Mike: I’ll start with a challenge in the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy, because that will lead into the opportunities. The major challenge is intermittency and the inability for solar and wind to have a consistent supply of energy generation, because the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. Grid operators are having a tough time balancing that intermittent generation, which is scaling up rapidly.

I think there are a couple of opportunities that arise from that, the most obvious being battery energy storage. We have made a lot of progress with that but there is a long way to go to span the duration that we need to solve the intermittence issue. The other big opportunity I see is advanced nuclear energy with small modular nuclear reactors, which is the smaller next generation of nuclear power that can provide a baseload of carbon-free electricity to the grid.

CESR: What type of work did you do before coming to Leeds?

Mike: I was actually in the legal industry – first as a paralegal, and then later as a project manager. I thought that I wanted to do environmental law and that was the way to effect change. I spent a year or two in the legal industry and quickly figured out that that was not where my skill set thrived. So, I shifted my focus more on business and finance and using those tools to propel the energy transition forward. That’s how I ended up at Leeds.

CESR: How did you use resources that were provided to you by the MBA program and CESR to help you while making a career pivot?

Mike: The underlying interest that I had was the same: propelling the energy transition. The way of effecting change is certainly different. Coming into CU, I knew I needed energy industry and finance knowledge to end up in a job that I wanted. The fact that Leeds allows you to take Masters of the Environment courses outside of the business school during your MBA was really attractive to me – that has since become its own Clean Energy Pathway. That opportunity was pivotal in my career switch.

All of the networking and extracurricular opportunities that Leeds and CESR offer were also great. I was able to do a project with RMI through Social Impact Consultants, and the Net Impact Case Competition supported by CESR was an incredible experience that helped me meet a lot of amazing people. Additionally, the different mentorship programs allowed me to meet energy industry professionals and leverage Leeds’ network, ultimately helping me navigate where in the energy industry I wanted to end up.

"At the end of the day, Leeds has a great network throughout �鶹ӰԺ, Denver, and the energy industry – you can have endless conversations with different Leeds Alumni."

-says Mike Hilgendorf

CESR: Do you have any advice for current students who are seeking to break into the field of energy and energy transition?

Mike: Learning about the industry academically is key. The base knowledge can put you far ahead of your peers or other job applicants. It’s also important to really focus your extracurriculars on things that are energy-industry related.

Demonstrating your devotion and eagerness to jump into the industry is going to be crucial when you start the application process for jobs and it is a real differentiator especially for people coming out of undergrad – there’s not a lot of other opportunities that you have other than your coursework and extracurriculars to set you apart.

I would also recommend networking and speaking with industry experts who have been where you are and can talk to you about what they are looking for in applicants coming out of graduate and undergraduate programs. Industry professionals can also be great to learn more about the types of jobs that are out there. One problem I had when I started my pivot from the legal side to the business side was that there are so many jobs– it seemed like the more I looked, the more different types of jobs there were. Talking to people in the industry and trying to narrow my focus based on how my skill set applies and how my preferences for a job apply to find the right fit was really beneficial. At the end of the day, Leeds has a great network throughout �鶹ӰԺ, Denver, and the energy industry – you can have endless conversations with different people Leeds Alumni.

Definitely take advantage of the opportunities for advancement that Leeds and CESR have to offer.

Mike will be a part of CESR’s Careers in Sustainability: ESG Consulting panel on October 5; register to attend the panel, meet Mike, and learn more about sustainable consulting.
Learn more about the coursework, co-curricular options and network-building opportunities offered by the Clean Energy MBA Pathway.

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