Undergraduate Sustainability Career Boot Camp
Tools, tactics, and techniques to navigate your career path in sustainability
Business leaders today are required to manage for a complex range of social and environmental issues that are critical to business performance. In order to equip NYU Stern undergraduate students with an understanding of the key skills and training necessary to integrate sustainability into any position or industry, we are pleased to offer a Sustainability Career Boot Camp event each spring.
The annual Sustainability Career Boot Camp, hosted by the NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business, provides Stern undergraduate students with an intensive training program to prepare them for a variety of sustainability-oriented careers. The students will learn concepts such as applying a sustainability lens to problem-solving, developing sustainability strategies, understanding key tools and frameworks related to sustainability, and exploring different career paths in the sustainability field.
About the 2025 Boot Camp with PwC
In January 2025, students were given a broad overview of careers across industries and heard from an NYU alumni panel working in sustainability and social impact. We partnered with PwC to lead a deep dive workshop on sustainability as a strategic imperative highlighting the key ESG concepts, frameworks and standards driving their work with clients today. The session featured an interactive case study with a focus on corporate sustainability reporting (CSRD), providing context on the new EU directive, and giving students an opportunity to learn how to understand double materiality assessments and reporting needs. Students were able to network with PwC professionals and NYU over coffee and lunch.
Please read reflections from the 2025 Sustainability Career Boot Camp with PwC below:
In February 2024, we partnered with HSBC for an engaging boot camp with a hands-on introduction to skills & internship opportunities in sustainable finance with a deep dive into the just transition to a low carbon economy. Additional highlights of this year's event included an intro to sustainability for competitive advantage and an overview of careers in sustainability with Adjunct Professor and former Sustainability Director at Banza, Sophie Rifkin, a panel of recent Stern alumni on how they leveraged their academic career into a job in sustainability, and an interactive case study with New York City Energy Efficiency Corporation’s CEO Curtis Probst on financing green energy building projects to make NYC greener, cleaner and more affordable. Students were able to network with professionals in banking, energy, and climate tech over coffee and lunch.
Click here to read a reflection from the 2024 Sustainability Career Boot camp with HSBC from Julia Niehaus (BS '26).
In February 2023, we partnered again with PwC for an engaging boot camp. In the last year, PwC committed to invest $12 billion over five years to create 100,000 new jobs aimed at helping its clients with climate and diversity reporting and also in artificial intelligence. ESG is going to be embedded in the firm’s work and this is becoming more and more common across companies and industries. This bootcamp featured an intro to skills and frameworks for ESG Careers covering things like materiality assessments, the pillars of what goes into the E, S and G and how external sources like SASB come into play. The PwC team then led a case study exercise.
Click here to read a reflection from the 2023 ESG Careers Boot camp with PwC from Christopher Lee (BS '26).
In February 2022, we gathered students at a critical moment of recovery and the opportunity to rebuild a more sustainable and resilient future of business. We are pleased to announce that PwC is returning as our 2023 sponsor, and after a career panel and training, students will work directly with PwC assurance professionals on an ESG case walk-through.
Click here to read a reflection from the 2022 ESG Careers Boot camp with PwC from Jenny Li (BS '24).
In February 2020, the Center for Sustainable Business hosted its third annual Sustainability Career Boot Camp for undergraduate students.
Programming Included:
Session on Careers in Sustainability: Students learned what different career paths in sustainability look like and how sustainability applies across industries. We walked through various career development topics, such as in-person and online networking, how to search for jobs, resume optimization, and related in- and out-of-classroom opportunities at Stern.
HSBC Career Panel: HSBC representatives spoke to elements of sustainability and ESG throughout the firm, such as green bonds, ESG integration in the asset management division, renewable energy financing work, and corporate sustainability. A representative from HSBC Human Resources spoke to opportunities for undergraduate students and the recruitment process.
World Climate and World Energy Simulation: HSBC representatives from its Corporate Sustainability team walked students through a climate simulation, followed by report-outs from students and discussion of applications for HSBC’s business lines.
Students learned answers to questions like: What is a career in sustainable business? What jobs should I look for and where do I look? How can I develop relevant skills at Stern? How can I start networking now?
In February 2019, the Center for Sustainable Business hosted its second annual Sustainability Career Boot Camp for undergraduate students. The agenda included a foundational lecture on topics including sustainability materiality, strategy and communications, business model innovation, business case for sustainability, and career pathways and navigation. After a lunch break, students enjoyed a career panel featuring representatives from HSBC and then participated in a case exercise sponsored and led by the HSBC team.
"The presence of HSBC made me more confident in my contributions. I felt I had certain ideas that, from my own experience, were useful in the case, and the team gave us insight as to how they manage to solve these issues on a daily basis. They also gave us feedback that allowed us to reflect on our work and see the pros and cons of our decision making." - Cristian Cortes (BS '22)
Read the recap by student participants Cristian Cortes (BS '22) and Hannah Goh (BS '20).
The inaugural Sustainability Career Boot Camp in March 2018 included a case competition sponsored by PwC. The first half of the program consisted of a presentation explaining the benefits of sustainability in business and how for-profit businesses can thrive in a competitive setting while still creating shared value. The students worked in groups to create sustainable solutions for certain industries and presented them to the class. The second half of the program consisted of a panel of professionals in business whose careers are related to sustainability. After the panel, students were allowed an hour to prepare presentations that were then shown to actual employees of PwC.
Read a recap by student participant Paige Yoo (BS '21).