This article was written by 2022-23 Sustainability Club co-presidents. Reach current leaders of the Sustainability Club here.
This year, we will be highlighting the work of social enterprise related student clubs at HBS. In this blog, hear from 2022-23 Sustainability Club co-presidents: Angela Son, Erin O’ Malley & Meghavi Talati (all HBS ’23).
What are the mission and activities of your club?
The Sustainability Club is a place where all students, regardless of background or experience, can come to learn about how to integrate sustainability and climate into their careers and lives. We aim to provide opportunities for academic learning, connections across the broader Harvard sustainability ecosystem, and real-life opportunities to interface with sustainability-related systems. We also aim to provide the most diverse view of climate solutions – starting with energy, but also including other approaches like ocean-based solutions, heavy industry decarbonization, renewable materials, and more.
What are your backgrounds, and why did you decide to take leadership roles?
Angela Son: I spent my years before HBS building and scaling a deeptech company for AI development. I came to HBS with a desire to continue pursuing entrepreneurship with a renewed focus on climate and when I came to campus I was pleasantly surprised to find sizable communities of people who were also passionate about sustainability and climate like me. My goal as a club leader this year is to help further build those communities and also provide career programming that helps people find their own paths at the intersection of climate and business. My wish for future HBS grads is for a career in climate to be a no-brainer because of all the connections and infrastructure we have built as a club and a community.
Meghavi Talati: Before HBS, I had exposure to sustainability at McKinsey and through Pepsi’s Beyond the Bottle. I joined the Sustainability Club because I felt that I had only scratched the surface of the sustainability space and wanted to delve deeper into climate. I also wanted to join this close-knit community of people who care about how we can leverage business to create a more sustainable economy. My goal as a leader is to continue to cultivate a strong community of students interested in sustainability, create forums for discussions on sustainability-related cases outside of the classroom, and help curate professional opportunities for students to pursue long-term careers in climate.
Erin O’Malley: I’ve spent my career chasing impact, starting with manufacturing sustainability when I lived and worked in Shenzhen, China, continuing with my pre-MBA role at a solar tracker startup, and most recently at a pre-seed industrial decarbonization company. Co-leading the Sustainability Club allows me to help others explore where their career aspirations and sustainability overlap, and nothing brings me more joy than increasing the number of people working in sustainability-oriented roles.
How do you hope this club will add to the HBS experience and to the broader community?
We hope that the club will be a welcoming place for those who already know and are passionate about sustainability and climate but also for those who want to learn about how this almost existential topic affects all of our lives and careers going forward. We hope to achieve this by creating spaces for continued conversations after heated case discussions about sustainability, for students and alumni to help each other reach their goals in climate, and for relationships that last beyond this institution.
To find out more:
Get in touch with any of the co-presidents Angela (ason@mba2023.hbs.edu), Erin (eomalley@mba2023.hbs.edu), or Meghavi (mtalati@mba2023.hbs.edu).
