MSES Student Profile: Alka Bhide
Feb 1, 2022 2:11 PM
Bhide '22 set out to explore policy at a corporate level and work with different multinational organizations and NGOs toward climate agreements
MSES Student Profile: Ruth Cho
Interest to Implementation and Impact
Tierney Acott | August 30, 2022
Ruth Cho enrolled in the MS in Energy and Sustainability (MSES) student after spending years reading articles, listening to podcasts, and talking to her friends about climate change and sustainability. Now, given the opportunity to develop a career in a field she’s passionate about, Cho says, “I am just so pumped about it. It’s the most exciting and authentic thing I could do.”
Cho studied Human and Organizational Development and in Corporate Strategy at Vanderbilt University. She joined Sendero, a consulting firm in Dallas, and worked with their technology implementation department, helping companies with organizational change. At Sendero, Cho “spearheaded the brand-new sustainability committee and worked with leadership, looking into our office’s energy consumption, what materials we were sourcing.” It gave her a glimpse at a future in sustainability, which led her to ISEN. “It’s always been something of a personal passion, especially throughout the past five years or so, where more and more people have come to understand the importance of sustainability. I’ve definitely been driving my own understanding of it, and now get to formally be in the learner seat. I get to fill in the knowledge and skill gap.”
And Cho is thriving. “I've come to understand the complexity of the issue so much more clearly because of the three pillars of the MSES program: economics/market, technology, and public policy. Every single class touches on the importance of those three things. And I think that's so important because, in this day and age, people tend to focus on one as the grand solution to climate change, but it's going to have to be an intersectional, connected solution on a global scale. And it's really hitting me how important that understanding is, in order to actually and effectively tackle the issue.”
This intersectional solution has led Cho to specialize in Sustainable Technology. She would like to pursue a sustainability consulting role, focusing on corporate, product, and supply-chain sustainability across a variety of industries, helping drive industry decarbonization and powerful strategies for long-term sustainability. “At the end of the day, it’s about learning a lot of the skills that are necessary to help businesses thrive in this ecosystem and then applying them to cut emissions.” In the meantime, Cho is looking forward to putting her knowledge to use with the spring capstone practicum project and transforming her passions and interests into a career.