How will the Booth MBA help you achieve your immediate and long-term post-MBA career goals?

The Booth MBA poses the ideal pairing with my professional experience to achieve my career interests, both in my short term goal to work in ESG consulting and in my longer term goal to lead a company in providing sustainable solutions to help industries around the world achieve net-zero carbon emissions. To prepare myself for these roles and fill my knowledge gaps, Booth would perfectly lead me to achieve this through their academics, ideology, and resources. Fortunately, I have been able to drive positive environmental impact in my professional career as a natural gas pipeline engineer. The gas pipeline systems I have worked on constantly emit methane to the atmosphere through leaks in aging cast iron pipelines. Throughout my roles as a pipeline engineer, I have been able to directly drive emissions reductions, first by designing pipe replacement projects and then by generating the risk models that specify optimal replacement order. In short, each day at work I make positive environmental change by minimizing methane emissions from pipelines. In the future, I want to enhance sustainable operations and reduce emissions across multiple companies and industries. While my current role allows me to reduce fugitive methane emissions, the transportation of natural gas still leads to carbon dioxide emissions from customer combustion. I intend to provide solutions that not only cease the emissions directly related to a company’s operations, but also eliminate the waste at the hands of the customers and suppliers. Long-term, I will strive to provide solutions that help entire industries achieve net-zero emissions. To achieve these long-term goals, I need to better understand business operations and business case for economically eliminating carbon emissions. Serving as an ESG consultant would allow me to explore the problems that businesses face in sustainable operations across multiple companies and industries. In recognizing roadblocks in business, I could better provide solutions that would generate as much impact as possible. I would most effectively gain the knowledge and skills that I need to succeed in the future by serving as a consultant for an ESEG firm immediately following my MBA. Booth provides an ideal path to gain business literacy and knowledge of sustainability in business through their academics, opportunities, and ideology. In Booth’s curriculum, the flexible coursework would allow me to pair my fundamental business and management education with courses that improve my knowledge of sustainable operations and responsible practices from organizations around the globe. Booth’s focus on action would prepare me to succeed in my goal of moving to sustainability consulting through Booth’s wide variety of labs such as Energy Policy Practicum and Scaling Social Innovation Search Lab. Booth’s renowned faculty also ensures that whatever topic I study, I would learn from the very best. Without a doubt, the coursework and teachers at Booth would benefit me in achieving my goals. The ideology and resources at Chicago Booth would also uniquely prepare me for my future goals. With the Chicago Approach, Booth’s focus on teaching “how to think” instead of “what to think” resonates deeply with me as an engineer. I would thrive with the teaching philosophy at Booth, using evidence to drive decisions. Additionally, every student and alumni that I have spoken to shared the “Pay It Forward” approach from older students and from alumni the recruiting process, networking activities, student organizations, and academic advice. During my MBA, this community would provide the support to succeed academically and immediately generate professional impact. Following my MBA, I would love to have the opportunity to pay it forward as I work through my career and maintain the powerful force of the Booth community. The Chicago Approach and the community resources from Booth provide preparation beyond formal academics that would prime me for success throughout my career. With my past experience and my direction for the future, an MBA ideally prepares me for my future through general management education with a focus in various ESG planning and sustainability topics. The opportunities and support that Booth provides would undoubtedly provide the best path toward these immediate and long-term goals.