Srikant Datar, dean of Harvard Business School, speaks with MBAs in the new summer course “Business and Climate Change.” The course was offered to all first- and second-year MBA students at HBS, and 44 people enrolled. The Dean attended a special dinner for students of the course. Provided photo
Since receiving her law degree from the University of São Paulo, Sabrina Montbanelli has had a long-term goal of working on the energy transition to tackle climate change. She felt that Harvard Business School was a perfect fit for her MBA dreams.
The school’s wide selection of second-year electives – including “Cities, Structures and Climate Change,” “Tough Tech Ventures” and “Energy” – aligns with her interests, as does HBS’s wide range of extracurriculars. I was there. She is part of the Energy and Environment Group’s leadership team and organizes events such as climate symposiums. Not to mention HBS’s vast network of sustainability, energy and climate change leaders.
Sabrina Montbanelli, MBA ’26
Before stepping into a classroom at HBS this summer, Montvanelli took her first lesson. She was one of 44 current HBS MBAs to complete the new five-week course “Business and Climate Change” offered by HBS Online.
“Given that the first-year MBA at HBS consists of only a mandatory generalist curriculum, we saw this course as an opportunity to dive into this important topic from the beginning of the MBA,” said the 26-year MBA. Montvanelli tells Poets&Quants.
“I wanted to bring insights to the section discussion on climate change, examples of companies implementing business solutions, how to assess the impact of climate stress, and gain skills that I could apply to future classes. I wanted to connect early on with professors who work in the climate change field to help me choose my second-year elective curriculum.”
The optional online summer course will be offered to all first- and second-year MBAs at HBS, and organizers see it as a model to disseminate similar content to MBAs and business schools around the world.
Business and climate change
“Business and Climate Change” was developed by two distinguished professors at HBS. Mike Toffel, Senator John Heinz Professor of Environmental Management, and Forrest Reinhardt, John D. Black Professor of Business Administration. In fact, groundwork began about five years ago. The two were thinking about how to bring more business and climate change content to people around the world, not just HBS students, but also working professionals and students at other levels and institutions.
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Most of the HBS online courses at the time were arrangements of existing classroom courses, either as electives or as part of the core. But there were no classes like “Business and Climate Change,” so the two started building content from scratch. They interviewed about 50 people, including faculty from Harvard and other schools, NGOs, and managers from a wide range of industries.
“We wanted to understand how they treat and perceive business and climate change, and that shaped the structure of the course,” said Reinhardt, co-dean of the course. Mr. Toffel, who serves as the
The course was first offered to business professionals, entrepreneurs, and investors through the HBS online platform in fall 2023. This course is a 25-30 hour self-paced course and is open to anyone who wishes to take it. The next five-week section begins November 6th and costs $1,850.
This summer, the MBA program and HBS’s Business & Environment Initiative (BEI) partnered to offer this course to all first- and second-year MBA students. Approximately 44 people, at least two from each of HBS’s nine sections, took up the offer.
Lea Turrini, MBA ’25
Leah Turrini, a second-year MBA student, was one of them. She saw this course as an opportunity to increase her electives in the climate field. She previously worked at Shell, where she led grassroots employee efforts to accelerate the company’s energy transition. She was part of the Innovation & Performance team responsible for identifying disruptive climate technologies and sustainable business models.
Mr. Turrini is also president of the HBS Energy & Environment Club, where he used insights from the course to engage with the community and attract new members. Many of her first- and second-year classmates are pivoting to the climate change field, motivated to tackle what is considered one of the planet’s biggest challenges.
“Understanding the magnitude of the impact[of climate change]was eye-opening, but also inspirational,” Turrini, a 25-year MBA, tells P&Q. “One of the most interesting modules was on adaptation and how societies must prepare for the risks posed by climate change. There are many things that need to be assessed and predicted to support our societies. This will create new business opportunities as we need to plan and build.”
Science, economics and climate change mitigation
“Business and Climate Change” is divided into three sections. The first week provides an overview of the science of climate change and the economic and policy environment surrounding it. For example, why haven’t markets or governments been able or willing to solve this problem?
The second section focuses on adaptation, focusing on the physical changes and challenges posed by climate change, such as excessive heat, drought, hurricanes, and sea level rise. This course examines how companies are recognizing and addressing these changes. Please deal with them.
The third covers decarbonization, or mitigation. Case studies examine how companies actively working to tackle climate change calculate their carbon footprint and reduce it through internal operations, product design and supply chains.
Should BMW, for example, declare a phase-out or “all of the above” strategy as it transitions from internal combustion engines to battery electric vehicles? How New Belgium Brewing’s Fat Tire Ale earns the carbon neutral label What was needed? And on the adaptation front, how does leading reinsurer Munich Re assess and manage climate risks?
“Regardless of which industry they enter, all MBA students will confront issues of climate adaptation and climate change mitigation during their careers. We need to understand what options we have,” Toffel said.
HBS Professor Mike Tofel, faculty co-director of the new course, will address MBAs at a special post-course dinner and community-building event. Provided photo
To be sure, there are many ways a Harvard MBA can address sustainability. For example, the HBS online course on sustainable investing and business practices includes content on climate. Similarly, the second-year MBA has many electives, covering everything from the energy transition to tough technology entrepreneurship – startups tackling extremely difficult problems that require substantial research and development. It’s covered. HBS also offers climate-related sprints and SIPs (Short Intensive Programs). But no introductory science and policy textbook covers both adaptation and mitigation quite like Business and Climate Change, Toffel says.
This course is also a differentiator for HBS itself. Toffel knows of no other school where MBAs can learn so deeply about business and climate change before they even arrive on campus.
“We’re primarily trying to attack students at the moment they arrive so that we have this information available to them as they move through the core,” Toffel says. “So we have at least a few students in each section who are in accounting, strategy or operations, ready to ask questions and provide perspective from a climate change perspective.”
dinner with dean
The HBS Business & Environment Initiative (BEI) was launched nearly 15 years ago as a central hub for climate and environment-related activities at Harvard Business School. This includes collaborating with faculty as they expand their research, aligning faculty with each other, supporting course development, and identifying student demand and where gaps exist in the curriculum.
We also work closely with the Career Development Office to advise students on careers and help them understand what employers are looking for, especially as companies increasingly seek skills related to climate change issues. We help you understand. “We are partnering with the Rock Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Lab to connect students with entrepreneurship opportunities,” said BEI Director Lynn Schenk.
In this vein, BEI has subsidized the cost of the HBS MBA course and plans to continue to do so.
A group photo of Harvard MBAs taking the new Business and Climate Change course over the summer. The course gave students the opportunity to connect with like-minded climate and sustainability-interested students before arriving on the HBS campus for fall classes. Provided photo
Schenck also sees the course as a way for like-minded MBAs to find each other and bond before in-person coursework begins. A private dinner was held with 44 students and Dean Srikant Datar.
“The dean stayed for hours, networking and engaging with students. He was the last one to leave,” Schenk says. “So, part of the positive feedback was not only about the content of the course itself, but also about how it helped build a sense of community. Students interacted with each other even before they arrived on campus. We were able to connect and realize that we share a common mission.”
Ultimately, Schenck and Toffel hope to make the course available to more people, including working adults, business executives, and students from other schools. Schenck is working with other business schools to explore ways to incorporate more climate content into the MBA curriculum and overall experience. She has already shared this course and what she has learned with her network.
“I think it’s really important to have the ability to get this content in front of every MBA student at some point. This was a valuable testing phase. It comes from a true belief in ability. This course has a wide variety of potential audiences and learners,” says Schenk.
“My goal is to get this knowledge in front of as many people as possible who will one day hold management positions in the business world.”
“A fundamental threat to the world”
For Isaac Hendrick Kim, MBA ’26, an unexpected benefit of “Business and Climate Change” was that it provided a crash course in HBS’s case method before coming to the in-person classroom.
Kim graduated from West Point in 2016 and served eight years as a UH-60 Black Hawk pilot and Army Aviation Officer. He was also the chief of staff executive of Joint Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR), which is responsible for ensuring the continued defeat of ISIS. He decided to join the Army 23 years ago after his father survived the Sept. 11 attacks on the Pentagon.
Isaac Hendrick Kim, MBA ’26
“Right now, I think climate change is a fundamental threat to the world,” he told P&Q. He would like to someday work on sustainability from a strategic and operational side, or in impact investing.
He has already gained an advantage in summer training. This fall, in one of his first-year core courses, Kim applied the lessons he learned during a discussion on electronic debt accounting methods for accounting for all Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions. I’ve figured out the answer.
“I think all business leaders need to understand the basic concept of climate change,” Kim says.
“As I progress through my career, the lessons learned from this course will provide me with a foundation, but more importantly, an understanding of the complex and complex relationships that exist ecologically, politically, and economically. Curiosity that continues to deepen and deepen our understanding of climate change and business.”
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Summer School: Inside Harvard’s new online course to teach the MBA The Business of Climate Change appeared first on Poets&Quants.
