To the Inaugural Graduating Cohort of the University of Texas at Austin Global Sustainability Leadership Minor
By Amanda Hsieh, SVP Strategic Development at ClimeCo, 2024 Graduation Speaker
This speech is taken from the 2024 Global Sustainability Leadership Minor graduation ceremony.
It is an honor and privilege to be back on campus at this inaugural graduation ceremony for Global Sustainability Leadership Minor. I’m delighted to celebrate the graduating class of 2024 with the faculty, staff, parents and friends present. Earning a college degree, especially one from UT, takes hard work, dedication, and perseverance. You should all be incredibly proud of yourselves in what you have achieved.
But we are not only celebrating your academic achievements today, we are also celebrating the beginning of a new chapter in your lives, a chapter filled with boundless opportunities to make a difference in the world. My ask of you is to take your UT degrees and apply what you’ve learned to your community, your organization, our world and make it better. Your enthusiasm, your sense of urgency and your ideas are needed to realize a just and regenerative economy. I challenge you to be changemakers.
It’s up to you to find your why and how. What do you want to change? What is not right in the world? Is it a social injustice that you simply can’t ignore? Is it a pressing environmental issue that riles you up? Make these issues your north stars and search for jobs, projects, educational and volunteer opportunities that align with your north stars.
Think of your majors — Finance, Communication, Chemistry — as your technical skills, instead of your profession. How can you apply these skills to solving pressing social and environmental challenges? These challenges are complex and multifaceted. If they were simple and straightforward, they would have been solved already. We need all disciplines actively involved if we are to make lasting impactful change.
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Over the last three years, I’ve been fortunate to interview inventors, innovators, corporate leaders and impact investors on my podcast, ESG Decoded. One of the conversations that has stuck with me is the one with David Latten, Head of Indirect Procurement at Logitech, who is sadly no longer with us. David said,
“Everyone can have a role to do something. No one can do everything, but we can all do something… Every role can have an impact.”
He found a way to fight for gender equality by adopting Gender Fair principles into Logitech sourcing strategy for indirect goods and services.
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For anyone who thinks this is pie in the sky thinking, the energy transition, electrification and decarbonization are global megatrends that are increasingly becoming mandatory and creating jobs in the process. The overall trend we are seeing is that what was voluntary became market-standard and is now becoming mandatory.
As example in the U.S. from 2023 to early 2024, we saw 25 states pass 47 climate-related bills. CCUS, Carbon Markets, Climate Disclosure, Sustainable Infrastructure and Incentives are the five categories we are seeing the most activity in. Furthermore, 45 states accepted Climate Pollution Reduction Grants under the Inflation Reduction Act, totaling $5B. Each State’s climate action plan will be tailored for their unique to their economy and will seed future state policies.
From a job perspective, GreenBiz shared some preliminary insights from their eagerly awaited 2024 State of the Profession report. Most respondents from large companies reported increases in sustainability team headcount and budgets, that CEO engagement is up, more sustainability professionals are being embedded in departmental functions, such as energy and supply chain, and brand new roles, such as an ESG controller, are being created.
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Graduates, I’m envious that you had the benefit of the Global Sustainability Leadership Institute. It took me a decade after I graduated from UT to find my way to working in sustainability. I always believed in protecting the environment and nature, along with advancing equality, but I had no clue when I graduated that I could have a career in impact. It was only when I was working for IKEA, a global retailer and corporate sustainability leader, that I saw firsthand the positive impact business can have when proactively managing their social and environmental risks and turning sustainability into an asset.
That was when I was hooked on sustainability and decided that creating positive impact had to be the focus of the rest of my career. My decade-long IKEA career funneled me into leading a women-owned, ESG consulting firm, Global Affairs Associates. Over two years ago, my business partner and I happily sold our consulting firm to ClimeCo, a global sustainability company focused on decarbonization. As Sr. Vice President of Strategic Development at ClimeCo, I have privilege and fun of developing our company to create value and impact for our stakeholders with the ultimate goal of decarbonizing our global economy.
My winding journey through mutual funds, retail, purchasing into sustainability and entrepreneurship equipped me with the skills, global perspectives and network I rely on to drive growth and impact today. While I appreciate everything I learned during my twenties, I know that process could have been fast forwarded. Graduates, you have had the benefit of the Global Sustainability Leadership Institute. You are starting way ahead of where I was when I graduated from UT with a finance degree. And this is why I can make the bold ask of you to be changemakers in a world that urgently needs it.
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I’ve two simple pieces of advice to help you along your journey. While they are straightforward, I believe they are worth sharing because it’s too easy to get distracted and too easy to give in and go with the status quo.
First, stay curious. Deep dive into the issues that resonate within you. Listen to multiple perspectives to understand the root causes, contributing factors, nuances and complexities. Question if our current norms truly serve the greater good. It’s through this critical exploration that your understanding will evolve, and so too will your perspective on the optimal solutions to create lasting change.
Now is the best time in your career to immerse yourselves in the issues that you are passionate about. The best way to learn is to get involved directly and see with your own eyes. Is there a project or committee at work that you can raise your hand for? Can you pick up a freelance project? Is there a volunteer opportunity? Seek out these opportunities to learn firsthand. Default to yes when they seek you. The knowledge and experience you gain along the way will make you more valuable and more effective at creating change.
This desire for knowledge will serve you well. Sustainability is constantly evolving. In the last 6–7 months, we have new financial instruments to drive much needed capital to the global plastic pollution crisis. We have $7B funding from U.S. Dept. of Energy to scale seven regional hydrogen hubs. The EPA established PFAS levels, aka forever chemicals, in our drinking water supply. And this week, policy makers and stakeholders are in Ottawa negotiating what will be included in the highly anticipated UN Plastic Treaty.
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My second piece of advice is to live and work with intentionality. Align your actions with your north stars.
Too often, we fall into the trap of doing things a certain way simply because “that’s the way it’s done.” It’s easy to be on cruise control but we have to challenge the status quo if we are truly committed to creating a better world. We are fighting to reconfigure entrenched economic, legal and social systems that perpetuate climate change, plastic pollution and biodiversity loss. Acting with intention is sometimes easier said than done because we are fighting to undo the programing that we may not even be aware of.
To bring it back down to earth, here’s a few examples of how I act with intention. I actively seeking out female and BIPOC guests to be on my podcast. I try to uplift and amplify the ideas of other female leaders around me. I changed my own purchasing behavior to avoid excessive consumption, reduce plastics and participate in circular economy. I intentionally dedicated my forties to scaling sustainability-focused businesses including my old ESG consulting firm and now ClimeCo.
These are all small steps, but think of the impact we could make together, if we collectively took and repeated these small steps until they were our daily habit and the new norm.
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Congratulations once more Graduates. I’m so excited for you; I’m so excited about the change you will make. As you prepare to leave these forty acres, know that the world is yours to shape. You have the foundational knowledge and skills to make a meaningful difference. Be a force for a more just, equitable, resilient and sustainable world. Go forth and blaze your own trail. May it be Meaningful, Fulfilling, and Impactful.
