From early in his career, Ron Gonen '04 felt a growing desire to build a successful business addressing problems related to climate change and sustainability. But when he would share his dream, he sometimes encountered blank stares or more-pointed skepticism. How could a business with a climate mission make money?

Committed to his vision, he pressed on, leaving his role as a consultant at Deloitte in 2002 to enter Columbia Business School and learn the skills necessary to become an entrepreneur. He would eventually found Recyclebank, a company that promotes recycling, and Closed Loop Partners, an investment firm that's working to scale up the circular economy.

“I've never doubted the opportunity,” Gonen says. “If you start from a place where you feel this is your cause, you never waver from what you're trying to accomplish even as you go through trials and tribulations.”

Like Gonen, the CBS alumni profiled here are among a new generation of climate leaders who have – often against the odds – managed to build businesses and careers on answering the call to solve this global challenge.

Of course, coming to grips with a problem as massive and multifaceted as climate change will require input and solutions from a broader swath of alumni within the CBS community than those we were able to include in this issue, and from a much wider variety of industries and forms of expertise.

These alumni are demonstrating just how that can be done, whether as an entrepreneur, a philanthropist, an investor, or the CEO of a Fortune 200 company.

The Turnaround Artist
Satish Selvanathan

Satish Selvanathan has a knack for a dramatic turnaround. During his time at Columbia Business School, he enrolled in a class on turnaround management and promptly fell in love with it. “That’s the only thing I’ve done since I left,” he says.

Today, Selvanathan channels this passion into his fourth-generation family business, Goodhope Asia Holdings, where — as executive director, based in Malaysia — he has been responsible for the turnaround of its businesses in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Selvanathan is among the first generation in his family to have studied and worked outside of Southeast Asia. After spending the first 16 years of his life in Sri Lanka, Selvanathan graduated from Oxford University, earned his MBA from Columbia Business School, and worked in private equity, management consulting, and investment banking in New York and London.

Upon joining the family business in 2018, Selvanathan brought with him an acute understanding of the negative reputation in the West surrounding the palm oil industry — a significant portion of Goodhope’s business. He’d noticed that when he mentioned his ties to the palm oil industry, roughly half of the responses he received were characterized by curiosity and thoughtful questions; the other half, horror and avoidance of the topic. He wanted to do what he could to start to shift entrenched perspectives on — and practices within — palm oil production, the longtime lightning rod of the edible oils industry.

“About 240 million tons of oil are produced every year, of which 80 million is palm oil,” Selvanathan says. “That’s a third of the market! We have to have this conversation.”

In his role overseeing the turnaround of Goodhope’s business, Selvanathan prioritized improvements to its sustainability practices. He has pushed for investments to improve the efficiency of the company’s mills, to achieve full traceability of its agricultural raw material and to capture methane from effluent ponds on its properties, which can then partially replace diesel generators as a power source on remote sites. He hopes that within the next few years, this process can help bring the company’s diesel use down by 70 to 80 percent.

The investments in sustainability are good from a business perspective, too, he emphasizes. “I’m not going to pretend that this is done entirely for altruistic purposes,” Selvanathan says. For one thing, the investments in decarbonizing will translate into lower energy costs long term, and improved sustainability credentials enable price premiums. But beyond that, they mean that Goodhope’s palm oil companies are honing a competitive strength: Although the companies aren’t poised to compete on size or scale, they do compete on sustainability.

“I don’t think there’s a choice that needs to be made between doing well and doing good,” Selvanathan says. “I think you can do both. And in fact, I will go as far to say that you can do better by doing good.”

Taking these steps in turning around the business led Selvanathan to consider other areas where his turnaround skills might be needed. This led him to the environmental conservation space.

In June 2019, Selvanathan co-founded, with Ben Goldsmith, a nonprofit called the Lanka Environment Fund. The organization has spent over $500,000 (including institutional grants) to support environmental conservation work in Sri Lanka, Selvanathan’s first home and one of the world’s 35 biodiversity hotspots. The grants have funded marine and terrestrial conservation, improvements in waste management, and responsible tourism initiatives.

“I felt that this was an opportunity for me to inject commercial rigor into how conservation was being done,” Selvanathan says.

In co-designing the nonprofit, he emphasized a need to conceive of specific environmental targets, define clear steps to get there, and measure outcomes. In other words, he was seeking to bring a turnaround not only to ecosystems that needed healing, but to the world of philanthropy, too.

“It’s very easy to spend money,” he says. “It’s less easy to spend money effectively.”  

The Reimaginer
Nili Gilbert

After leading in the sustainability field for over 15 years, Nili Gilbert is now embracing the opportunity to influence change in the global economy on a larger scale as vice chairwoman of Carbon Direct.

Carbon Direct, founded in 2019 by Jonathan Goldberg (who sits on the advisory board at Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy), is a carbon management company dedicated to making climate science actionable through two separate businesses: The first assists clients (mainly companies and municipalities) with their decarbonization goals, and the second invests to build up the industry of companies that can help them do so. Both businesses are supported by a team of over 30 carbon scientists.

Before joining Carbon Direct, Gilbert spent 10 years as co-founder and portfolio manager of Matarin Capital, an investment firm that became one of the larger women-owned asset management firms in the US.

During her time at Matarin and long before it, Gilbert had been a proponent and a practitioner of ESG investing, which takes into account environmental, social, and governance factors. By 2020, however, she was harboring persistent doubts that even the explosive popularity of ESG would be sufficient to push the changes necessary to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the goal of the Paris Agreement.

“What we really need to do is reimagine and rebuild the whole global economy in a way that pushes toward net zero emissions, while also addressing the longstanding social inequities that our high-emitting economy is built on top of,” Gilbert says. “And this is not a work of tweaking around the edges; we’re talking about a deep redesign and deep rebalance from something old into something new.”

She’d noticed that even investors excited about adopting an ESG lens were still sensitive about their portfolios’ performance against the most common market benchmarks — “but the benchmark itself is dirty,” Gilbert says. She discovered that if she were to take a snapshot of the broad market indexes as a proxy for the global economy, the world would be set to warm by around 4 degrees Celsius, significantly above the 1.5 degree goal. “We need to do something completely different to get to where we need to go,” Gilbert says.

For a year before joining Carbon Direct, she worked within the UN system, and still serves as chair for US policy of the UN-convened NetZero Asset Owner Alliance and as chair of the Advisory Panel of technical experts for the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, crafting the standards for financial institutions that have pledged to decarbonize.

Even as she did this work, a question still nagged at her: As the economy transitions away from fossil fuel dependency, what is it transitioning toward?

“A lot of time and energy goes into managing the old economy out of its current state,” Gilbert says. “I saw the need for much louder, bigger conversations around how we’re going to build the new economy that’s going to replace it.” In other words, to quickly transition away from an economy that relies on carbon-emitting fossil fuels, an array of clean-energy solutions will need to scale up quickly to lay the foundation for a new green economy.

Seeking out and investing in such solutions is exactly what Gilbert now does on the team at the independent investment firm Carbon Direct Capital, by scaling “negative emissions” and other carbon management tools and companies.

“We have all these corporations that have pledged net zero that now need to buy products to support those pledges,” Gilbert explains. Such products include carbon capture and removal technologies for heavy industry, like carbon recycling through utilization, as well as green fuels like green hydrogen or sustainable aviation fuels.

Carbon Direct Capital makes growth equity investments in such technologies. Gilbert says that in deciding whether to take a stake in a given technology or company, Carbon Direct Capital begins by screening for investments that address 100 million tonne annual emissions challenges. From there, investment candidates are subject to rigorous technical, scientific, commercial, and financial scrutiny.  “We think it’s important to demonstrate investment success in this field, because of the amount of capital that needs to come into it,” Gilbert says. “With this diligent approach, we believe we can mitigate risk while optimizing both return outcomes and climate outcomes.”

She notes that estimates suggest the capital required to achieve net zero will reach between $5 trillion to $6 trillion annually, through 2050. Government grants and philanthropic funding will be important to get companies ready, but she says Carbon Direct Capital aims to play a part in establishing the traditional private investment flows that are also crucial.  

The Climate Change Developer
Wendy De Wolf

As soon as Wendy De Wolf started thinking seriously about her future career, she felt certain she wanted to devote herself to addressing the problem of climate change. But where could she make the greatest impact?

As an undergraduate at Yale, she majored in geology and geophysics, and gravitated toward renewable energy. In her sophomore year, she began an internship with Energy Management, Inc. (best known for the Cape Wind Project in the Nantucket Sound, which was never built). The internship became a job as a project developer at Energy Management, where De Wolf helped build up the firm’s solar group, alongside her colleague Jamie Fordyce.

In 2016, she and Fordyce spun out Energy Management’s solar group to co-found a new solar project development business, which they named East Light Partners. She started Columbia Business School that same year, clear on the work ahead.

“I think of myself as a climate-change developer,” De Wolf says. “To me, this is such an incredibly tangible way to address climate change.”

De Wolf says she thinks about climate change mitigation work as falling along a spectrum. On one end, she says, are the policymakers writing sweeping federal laws; on the other end are “steel-in-the-ground” developers like East Light Partners, who are enacting small-scale, incremental change.

East Light Partners handles the first stages of solar project development, investing capital early in the lifecycle of a project to de-risk it, with an eye toward eventually selling the project to a larger infrastructure asset manager. This means East Light takes on the tasks of finding a site for a new renewable project, building a relationship with landowners, determining where to connect to the grid, and more, up to the point of construction, which the asset manager buyer typically hires a contractor to do.

“I’ve felt a real draw to this world because you’re having a direct impact on climate change,” De Wolf says. “At the same time, it’s small; it’s one project at a time. It’s not grand policy, but you can see the change that you’re making when the steel goes in the ground.”

Of course, the work East Light is doing to site, develop, and finance renewable energy projects is intricately tied with renewable energy-related policymaking on the federal and local levels. East Light has trained its efforts on states with proven markets for clean energy, and policies in these states have been integral in establishing and supporting such markets.

For instance, New York state, where East Light does much of its work, has a goal of generating 70 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030 — a significant leap from its roughly 30 percent share of renewables today.

As more states set similarly ambitious targets, demand for new solar projects is mushrooming, and this demand is only further intensified by solar energy’s progressively falling prices. East Light is eager to step in to meet this demand.

“Sourcing these renewable projects is easier said than done,” De Wolf says. “We’re filling the pipeline for the demand that’s forming as our economy and investor community become more focused on mitigating climate change.”

Still, there are challenges. De Wolf acknowledges that negotiating the balance between traditional business demands and climate demands can be difficult, even in her sector, where decarbonization is an explicit part of the service provided.

“There’s always a push-pull in which choices we make,” De Wolf says. She points to the example of a solar project that East Light Partners recently worked to get permitted in the Adirondack Park in New York state. De Wolf and East Light engaged in an ongoing discussion with the park’s agency about how to balance the various — and at times, competing — needs and desires for the project: protecting the park’s gorgeous views, minimizing disturbance to ecosystems and park resources, and managing to connect to the grid.

“The goal is to end up with the best project you can design,” De Wolf says. “You’re not going to please everyone, but the best possible project takes into account these issues, along with climate change goals — and obviously you still need to have a business, too.”

The Circular-Economy Builder
Ron Gonen

Ron Gonen is invested in ushering out one aspect of business that he argues is no longer tenable: companies offloading their waste onto the public. After serving as the deputy commissioner of sanitation, recycling, and sustainability for the Bloomberg administration, Gonen founded Closed Loop Partners to invest in building the circular economy.

“There’s a disequilibrium that exists today: Companies are able to make a lot of money manufacturing their products,” Gonen says, “but then they push off the costs associated with those products’ waste to the commons.” After all, he explains, companies are not asked to pay for the landfills or sanitation systems that manage their used products; taxpayers are.

Proponents of a circular economy ask companies to account for the collective costs of the waste they produce. Doing so creates incentives for businesses to use processes and materials that are higher quality and less resource intensive, and to strive to reduce waste by designing products that can be repeatedly reused or upcycled.

Closed Loop Partners invests in the technologies, materials, and recycling infrastructure necessary to get there. With $400 million in assets under management and investments in 60 portfolio companies across eight countries and 25 US states, Closed Loop Partners reports that its investments have already helped avoid 6.8 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and kept 3.6 million tons of materials in circulation. The firm makes venture capital, growth equity, and private equity investments in companies around the world, and offers project-based finance to build up recycling and circular-economy infrastructure across North America. The Closed Loop Ventures Fund has taken stakes in Dimpora, a Switzerland-based company developing sustainable membranes for outdoor gear; HomeBiogas, an Israel-based company creating anaerobic digester units to convert organic waste into renewable energy and fertilizer; and Thrilling, a Los Angeles-based Internet marketplace that curates items from online boutique vintage clothing stores across the US, increasing access to reusable fashion.

Gonen says creating a true circular economy will require the scaling up of various types of businesses, new infrastructure and materials, and buy-in and support from other sectors of society.    “We need to create a system where companies that put products into the market are responsible for those products,” Gonen says. “If we have that kind of system, companies will innovate around the materials they use, the recycling systems they fund, and processes to make sure their products eventually come back to them — because if not, it’ll go to a landfill, which they should be financially responsible for.”

Of course, he concedes, that’s not yet the system that companies are operating within, and policy intervention will probably be necessary to get there. At the same time, he points out, some of the world’s largest retailers and consumer goods companies have invested in Closed Loop Partners (including Microsoft, Nestle, PepsiCo, and Unilever), and many others are investing in circular processes of their own, indicating a growing acceptance of the circular economy’s core tenets.

“We still need to make the case for the circular economy,” Gonen says, “but it’s becoming more mainstream, and we’re quickly getting to a place where the case no longer needs to be made. Things are changing fast, but we’re not yet where we need to be.”

The Catalyzer
Mark Gallogly

In the years after Mark Gallogly met his wife, Lise Strickler ’86, at CBS in the late 1980s, the two would regularly abscond from New York City to hike the Adirondack Mountains. Strickler was already a devoted environmentalist, and she and Gallogly would talk about the impacts of acid rain on the landscape they loved — and, eventually, about the notable improvements in the place as it gradually responded to national policies, activism, and investments by coal plants that together conspired to reduce the harmful pollution.

“I saw this obvious deterioration of an environment that was stopped, and ultimately regenerated, through a series of decisions around public policy and around business,” Gallogly says.

Now, he’s found a way to align himself with the type of regenerative force — one that grows out of a collaboration between government, business, and environmental advocates — that he first noticed at work in the Adirondacks.

In 2015, Gallogly and Strickler founded Three Cairns Group, with a focus on the climate crisis through venture investing, philanthropic initiatives, and public policy advocacy. Gallogly now works with Three Cairns full time, after retiring in December 2020 from Centerbridge Partners, a $28 billion private equity, real estate, and credit investing firm that he co-founded. Before Centerbridge, Gallogly worked with the Blackstone Group for 16 years, where he was head of global private equity. He also served on President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness from 2010 to 2012 and on the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board from 2008 to 2010.

At Three Cairns, Gallogly applies the expertise he’s amassed during his 35-year investment management career. One arm of Three Cairns is venture-capital focused; the firm has stakes as a limited partner in several climate-related venture firms and is also a direct investor in companies addressing climate change through new technologies and services. In this part of its business, Three Cairns seeks a return on its missionfocused investments.

Separately, Three Cairns and its founders act as philanthropists seeking to ameliorate the climate crisis, without an eye on returns.

“We’re trying to identify cracks in the ecosystem of finance around climate,” Gallogly says, “and figure out how we can form partnerships to help fill those cracks and provide new services that don’t currently exist.”

One of these philanthropic efforts is a new fund focused on the Global South called Allied Climate Partners (ACP), which will seek to invest in project development in Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean. In many regions in the Southern Hemisphere, Gallogly explains, risk-oriented investment capital is often not available or accessible, which removes a key part of the necessary growth cycles of businesses and projects. “The idea,” he explains, “is that ACP would be that risk-oriented party.”

Another of Three Cairns’ philanthropic initiatives (recently announced at COP27 in Egypt) is the Global Carbon Trust, a partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies that is designed to strengthen the rigor of global carbon markets and reduce greenwashing. One of the Global Carbon Trust’s missions is to structure term-limited contracts for carbon credits and introduce them into a carbon market where, currently, carbon credits are created on a permanent basis. Gallogly believes the introduction of term-limited credits represents a crucial step in the maturation of the global carbon market because it means, for one thing, that third parties like insurance companies can step in to insure the credits, eliminating buyers’ risk and enabling the carbon market to scale. What’s more, term-limited carbon credits would mean that after the specified term, the owner of a carbon credit-generating forest, for example, can sell it again and is incentivized to employ the latest technology to increase the carbon storage capacity of that forest.

“The market needs a standardized, term-limited, well-documented contract and one that is monitored and verified over time,” Gallogly says. “All of this creates alignment around a mission.”  

The Home Energy Saver
Donnel Baird

In September 2021, Donnel Baird testified before Congress during a hearing on the economic benefits of electrifying America’s homes and buildings. During his testimony, Baird presented his own climate-tech company, BlocPower, as an illustration of the economic value waiting to be unlocked by making homes and buildings healthier, safer, and less environmentally impactful.

“The business case for BlocPower is simple,” he said during the hearing. His company replaces antiquated fossil fuel energy systems in old buildings with all-electric technology, like heat pumps, thereby focusing on the third-highest source of carbon emissions in the United States: residential buildings. “BlocPower makes money because this technology saves so much in energy and other costs that with the right transaction and incentive structure, BlocPower is able to turn a profit and leave households spending less on energy than before,” he explained.

Indeed, BlocPower has ably demonstrated its economic case in the near-decade since Baird founded the company while a student at CBS in 2014. BlocPower has raised over $100 million in debt and equity financing from investors including Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, Apple, Andreessen Horowitz, and others. In a recent conversation on the Tamer Center’s Capital for Good podcast, Baird said he believes that BlocPower’s strong commercial viability will be the engine that drives it to scale.

At the same time, Baird is eager to partner with governments and push for the right policies to achieve the extensive scale he envisions for BlocPower. In fact, he’s come to believe that government and business must work together to address a crisis as massive as climate change — neither the public nor private sector can do it alone.

“I’m a Black American,” he said in the Capital for Good interview. “We know that the power of the federal government to implement just policies is critical to the survival, empowerment, and wealth building of Black Americans.”

Before attending CBS, Baird served as a political organizer and worked with President Obama’s first campaign. He believes that governments have access to unique levers for change. At the same time, he added, so do businesses in the private sector.

“It is necessary, when fighting the climate crisis, to have robust policy intervention, but it won’t be sufficient,” Baird said. “We have to have the private sector step up.” He added that $4.5 trillion will be required to pay for the labor and equipment necessary to decarbonize buildings across America.

Such a massive undertaking also creates new employment opportunities. In New York City, BlocPower has partnered with the city government to train and hire over 1,700 clean-energy workers from several low-income, high-crime neighborhoods to date.

In a step toward ramping up and approaching the massive scale of the problem, BlocPower is now working on decarbonizing buildings in whole cities at a time. The company is working with the government of Ithaca, New York, to decarbonize its 6,000 buildings and help the city reach its ambitious goal of 100 percent decarbonization by 2030. Baird said his company is now in talks with other cities inspired to follow Ithaca’s lead.

“Our view is that if you can move a building completely off of fossil fuels, then you can do all of the buildings on a city block,” Baird said. “And if you can decarbonize all of the buildings on one city block, then, theoretically, you can decarbonize all the buildings in a city.”