When Kazi Ahmed first heard about the Bloom Energy Innovation Fellowship, offered by the Collin Powell School at City College in collaboration with Bloom Energy, a manufacturer and developer of clean fuel cell energy, he admits that he was skeptical of its paid summer internship with free summer housing in Silicon Valley. “It just seemed too good to be true,” he said.
But after landing a spot, he flew to the west coast to spend the summer immersed in the company, even giving presentations in front of C-suite executives as an accounting intern. The end of his 10 weeks in California was cemented with a full-time position waiting for him upon graduating college.
Ahmed’s story is one of many students at CCNY that participated in the climate-related and sustainability fellowships. Over the years, the Climate Policy Fellows Program, AccountAbility Sustainability Lab Fellowship, and the Bloom Energy Innovation Fellowships have prepared students for futures in the green economy.
The Climate Policy Fellows Program was founded in 2019 by Trevor Houser, a 2006 CCNY alum and partner at the Rhodium Group, a think tank that provides business leaders and policymakers with analyses to quantify global climate risks. Houser himself got his start through fellowships as a college student. “He had all these amazing opportunities throughout his career, and it stemmed from the opportunities that he got at City College as an undergrad,” said Deborah Cheng, Director of Fellowships and the Office of Student Success at the Colin Powell School.
The Climate Policy Fellows program is composed of four interdisciplinary workshops throughout the school year where CCNY students come together to discuss comprehensive solutions for global environmental issues and professionally prepare for a summer internship. Fellows are given the option of interning in New York City, Washington DC, or San Francisco at climate change policy nonprofit organizations.
Fellowship participant Jeremie Laveau got the opportunity to work alongside Trevor Houser at the Rhodium Group in Washington D.C. for his summer internship. “It was a pretty seamless transition into the internship,” said Laveau. “As an engineering student, they teach you to solve problems effectively and also prepared me for climate research – because all of this was new to me. It taught me a lot about the ins and outs of sustainability and how data is collected as well.”
“I wanted a better understanding of the way that policy, sustainability, and engineering intersect,” said Laveau. “The fellowship [taught me about] how new technology can be implemented and how the government interacts with private companies [through] local and state laws.”
Architecture student, Elizabeth Gomes, always knew she wanted to integrate sustainable thinking into her career; through her participation in the Climate Policy Fellowship she tackled climate-related problems using her expertise in urban planning. “I wanted to learn more about [sustainability],” Gomes said. “I didn’t really take many classes on climate change so I saw this fellowship as a way of me learning [about sustainability] through my own time and also making connections.”
The fellowship provided Gomes with online climate policy resources and gave her tools to secure an internship at the New York City Economic Development Corporation. “They helped me prepare for these interviews, went over my cover letter, my speaking skills and internship skills,” said Gomes. “It was very helpful.”
The third and newest sustainability fellowship at the Colin Powell School is the AccountAbility Sustainability Lab Fellowship which enables students to work with industry experts from the advisory firm AccountAbility to assess the intersection of environmental, social and governance, or ESG, within a company. Students participate in two classes throughout the academic year working in close conjunction with AccountAbility to learn methodologies and processes used to improve a company’s sustainability strategy. The fellowship provides hands-on insight about how sustainability-oriented consulting functions.
Fiha Farin, a senior studying at CCNY, participated in the AccountAbility Sustainability Lab Fellowship and the Climate Policy Fellows Program. In her studies of economics and psychology, she became interested in the intersection of financial systems, human behavior, and social impact. “I initially thought that combination was a bit niche, but the Colin Powell School fellowships showed me that it is actually very relevant and growing, offering a mix of policy learning and ESG consulting experience.”
“Both fellowships supported my goals of exploring careers in sustainability, building practical skills, and understanding how different sectors approach climate issues,” she said. “They connected me with a cohort of students that share similar interests, allowing us to learn from each other and collaborate on ideas around sustainability and impact.”
Fellowships like these have shaped the minds of college students by providing guidance on the many different ways their course of study can be utilized across a variety of sectors relevant to the green economy. In deliberately sourcing students from the social sciences, engineering, physical sciences, architecture and the humanities, students are able to bring their different expertise to the table.
“We designed these programs to be interdisciplinary because climate change is an interdisciplinary problem,” Cheng said. “We need people from different disciplines to be addressing the issue to think from all sorts of angles.”