As a senior MBA student, Patrick Yeung came to MIT Sloan School of Management wanting to be surrounded by a community of builders. He states, "I come from a consulting background, which has its own strengths and gives you a specific toolkit, but I felt like I was not very technical, and so I wanted to be surrounded and inspired by people who had that knowledge and experience." MIT Sloan's Sustainability Initiative provides a great platform to help a generalist like him become more specialized in this space, whether it be the Sustainability lunch series they run every Thursday, the annual conference organized, or the class catalog that aligns with the Sustainability Certificate. Yeung eventually hopes to join a climate tech scale-up to help formalize the business and scale, using what he’s learned at MIT Sloan to make a real impact. He notes, "I've come to appreciate the systems thinking approach to sustainability that MIT Sloan has, especially in the context of the tech and lab-scale tech spinout ecosystem that MIT more broadly has. The technology is obviously an important piece of both climate mitigation and adaptation, but we will also need other techno-economic regime changes to truly change our planet for the better — that takes policy and legal changes, leadership and courage, and ultimately a willingness to fail, over and over, in order to iterate." The following photo gallery provides a snapshot of what a typical day for Yeung has been like as an MIT student.
Blogger's Review: Patrick Yeung's experience highlights the importance of interdisciplinary backgrounds in tackling complex issues, especially in the rapidly evolving climate tech sector. MIT Sloan's Sustainability Initiative not only provides a theoretical foundation but also emphasizes the significance of practical experience and leadership, which is a model other business schools should consider adopting.