On September 14th, students and alumni heard from Megan Starr, Partner and the Global Head of Impact at Carlyle.

In her role, Ms. Starr works to design and execute Carlyle’s cohesive, long-term impact strategy. She also oversees the dedicated ESG team, which leads the firm’s investment diligence and portfolio company engagement work on material ESG issues.  

Prior to joining Carlyle, Ms. Starr was within Goldman Sachs’ Investment Management Division, where she helped build the ESG and impact investing business. Previously, Ms. Starr served in roles at The JPB Foundation, a $3.8B private family foundation based in New York City. 

Ms. Starr received an M.B.A. and a Certificate in Public Management and Social Innovation from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, where she was an Arbuckle Leadership Fellow, and an A.B. in Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, where she graduated magna cum laude with highest honors in field of concentration. 

Join us on October 4th to hear from Evan Gordon Greenfield, Rajesh Swaminathan, and Rebekah Emanuel on Impact Investing and Deep Tech Start-Ups.

Evan Gordon Greenfield oversees British Columbia Investment Management’s ESG program for its Private Equity asset class. Formerly, Evan was Senior Managing Director, Global Head of ESG at S&P Global where he oversaw ESG strategy, M&A, and operations. Evan helped establish S&P Global as pre-eminent provider of ESG and climate solutions to corporates and capital market participants. Prior to joining S&P Global, Evan helped build and oversee the ESG and Impact Investing Platform for Deutsche Bank’s Asset and Wealth Management vertical in the America’s. Previously Evan was a private equity investor in the States, Europe and Asia.

Evan is a passionate member of the ESG Movement and believe the capital markets can play a critical role in advancing sustainability. 

Evan graduated from Duke University with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics & Markets and completed his MBA at Harvard Business School. 

Rajesh Swaminathan is  Partner at Khosla Ventures. Rajesh has two decades of experience assisting and investing in deep tech startups. He manages many of the firm’s investments across renewables generation, storage, hydrogen, industrial decarbonization, plastics, foodtech, healthcare and advanced manufacturing. 

Previously, Rajesh was the head of Applied Ventures LLC, the venture capital arm of Applied Materials, where he managed a portfolio of 85 deep tech startups globally, as well as two deep-tech funds in Korea and Taiwan. He led investments and helped build companies, many of which had strong exits, including Enphase Energy, Solid Energy, Rockley, Infinite Power Solutions, Adaptive3D, Tango, Inpria, PlayNitride and Norsk Ti. Rajesh was recognized amongst the top 100 global CVCs on the Global Corporate Venture (GCV) Powerlist. 

Earlier, Rajesh worked at Third Point Ventures and at Lucent’s Bell Labs, where he drove technical assessments and partnerships for several optical, MEMS, and RF device startups, and also led DFR programs for the successful deployment of Lucent’s 10Gb/s and 40Gb/s systems. 

While pursuing his MBA at Harvard Business School, Rajesh worked on Deutsche Bank’s cleantech banking team, and also worked with KV on companies in solar and water. Previously, he earned a master of science degree from the University of Maryland and a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, where he was awarded the Shankar Dayal Sharma (President of India) Medal for overall excellence. 

Rebekah Emanuel is the senior advisor for social impact at the Harvard Innovation Labs. A McKinsey alum and HBS grad, Rebekah has started flagship organizations across the private, public, and social sectors. While a student at HBS, she incubated a startup at the i-lab, took her startup to a residency at MassChallenge, and was invited to the second class of the Harvard Launch Lab.

Alongside startups, Rebekah has also spent significant time guiding mature organizations. As a director at the City of Boston, Rebekah wrote the long-term growth plan for the city, including exciting plans for the Allston area where the i-lab is situated. The first long-term plan completed in 50 years, she helped solicit and integrate over 14k constituent voices and align the city’s budget against the strategic priorities. The metrics she designed to track progress attracted media attention for their cutting-edge public accountability.

Rebekah holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, an LLM in Law from the National University of Ireland Galway as a Mitchell Scholar, and a BA from Yale University. She also serves as a chaplain.

• Open to: all Harvard students and alumni
• Time: 6:00 – 8:00 PM
• Location: Harvard Innovation Labs, Lobby. Batten Hall, 125 Western Ave, Allston MA 02134
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Join us on October 18th to hear from several members of the North Star Asset Management Team, including Julie Coolidge, Founder and CEO; Nimrit Kang, Chief Investment Officer; Michelle Graham, Chief Operating Officer; and Ashley Cohen, Director of Outside Investments. 

Julie Coolidge is Founder and CEO of North Star Asset Management and a pioneer in the field of socially responsible investing. She has been in the investment industry since 1983, including her role as an early member of the Social Investment Forum (now US SIF) in 1984. Julie launched NorthStar Asset Management in 1990, and today stands at the forefront of a more proactive approach to progressive wealth management. Through direct interaction with every client, Julie provides financial planning expertise, drives major investment decisions, and is the final word for all shareholder activism activities. 

 Julie was the lead plaintiff in the groundbreaking case Goodridge v. Massachusetts Dept. of Public Health which won equal marriage rights for same sex couples in Massachusetts, the first state in the U.S. to do so. In 2014, Julie was named one of the 25 Most Powerful Women in Finance by American Banker Magazine. She serves as a Trustee for the Hyams Foundation, a foundation focused on racial justice in Boston. Julie is also a former Chairwoman of the Board of the New World Foundation where she recently concluded a 17-year tenure and served in roles including Treasurer and Vice-Chair. Julie has an Ed.M. from Harvard. 

Nimrit Kang is Chief Investment Officer of North Star Asset Management.

Nimrit joined NorthStar in August 2022 and is the firm’s Chief Investment Officer. Nimrit joined NorthStar to serve high net-worth clients and non-profit organizations via integrative and effective portfolio management by connecting social concerns to security selection, asset allocation, and activism. Nimrit works closely with the equity research, portfolio management, and client service teams to deliver highly personalized portfolios that integrate financial goals while upholding a commitment to social change and environmental sustainability. Prior to joining NorthStar, Nimrit was a partner, Portfolio Manager, and Director of Research at Coho Partners, a long-only investment manager with $10 billion in assets under management and advisement. While at Coho Partners, she championed the holistic integration of material environmental, social, and governance (ESG) perspectives across the research process and led the vision and end-to-end process design for the firm’s standalone ESG strategy. Before joining Coho in 2017, Ms. Kang was the Director of Research and Investment strategy for MissionSquare Retirement where she was responsible for leading manager research and due diligence and ongoing oversight across $10 billion AUM in multi-managed equity strategies. She also spent more than 10 years in various equity research and portfolio management roles at DuPont Capital Management. 

Over the years, Nimrit has been involved with and served on the boards of various nonprofit organizations in the greater Philadelphia area. She currently serves on the Board of Directors and the Audit, Finance, and Investment Committee of the Philadelphia Health Partnership and Samuel S. Fels Foundation and Investment Committee of Salus University. She is a member of the CFA Society of Philadelphia and the CFA Institute and served as a board member for the CFA Society of Philadelphia from 2013-2016 

Nimrit graduated magna cum laude from Virginia Tech with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering and received a Master of Business Administration from the Harvard Business School. Nimrit lives with her husband, two teenage children, and a golden doodle dog in the greater Philadelphia region. 

Michelle Graham is Chief Operating Officer of North Star Asset Management. Michelle joined NorthStar in October 2022 as its Chief Operating Officer. She has over 20 years of experience in the financial services industry serving both institutional and high net worth clients. Michelle’s background includes building and directing teams from across an organization and globally, overseeing major initiatives, and redesigning workflows and practices. She has a commitment to bringing in tools and solutions that enhance operations and service has resulted in measurable outcomes. Throughout her tenures she has managed strategies yielding millions in sales, as well as millions in savings. 

Prior to NorthStar, Michelle spent 10 years at Goldman Sachs primarily leading onboarding teams in Asset Management, where she focused on improving our client service through process improvements and technology efficiencies. In her last role at Goldman Sachs, she was on the COO team for the Public Equities team, where she was leading acquisition integration and technology strategies for the Quantitative Investment Strategies desk. 

Michelle holds a BS in Accounting and Finance from Georgetown University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. 

Ashley Cohen is Director of Outside Investments at North Star Asset Management.

Ashley joined NorthStar in 2021 and is NorthStar’s Director of Outside Investments. Ashley supports NorthStar’s clients in identifying investment opportunities for social and environmental progress outside of the public stock and bond markets. She has a particular expertise and emphasis on outside investments that advance equity in Black and Brown communities in the US. 

Prior to joining NorthStar, Ashley worked in the sustainable and impact investment division of Cambridge Associates, where she conducted investment due diligence on impact investment funds including early stage venture, real assets, public equity, and fixed income and supported institutional investors on implementing and monitoring the financial and impact performance of investments. Ashley also co-authored reports regarding social equity investing to advise investors on aligning their portfolios with key social equity issue areas. 

She holds a BA from Dartmouth College, where she studied Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. 

• Open to: all Harvard students and alumni
• Time: 6:00 – 8:00 PM
• Location: Mignone Center for Career Success, 54 Dunster St, Cambridge MA 02138
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Gaurab Basu, MD, MPH is a primary care physician and Director of Education and Policy at the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment (Harvard Chan C-CHANGE) at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is an Instructor at Harvard Medical School (HMS). His work focuses on the intersection of climate change, global health equity, human rights, medical education, and public policy.

Dr. Basu has developed and evaluated numerous innovative health equity curricular programs. He is the director of the HMS Climate Change and Health curricular theme, co-founded the CHA Center for Health Equity Education and Advocacy, co-directed the HMS social medicine curriculum, and co-directs the Climate Health Organizing Fellowship. He serves on the education committee of the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University. Dr. Basu has received the inaugural HMS Equity, Social Justice and Advocacy Faculty Award and the HMS Charles McCabe Faculty Prize in Excellence. He has been a HMS Curtis Prout Academy Fellow and a Harvard Macy Scholar.

In 2021, Dr. Basu was named to the Grist 50 list of national climate leaders. In 2018, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation named him a “Culture of Health Leader.” He serves on the Implementation Advisory Committee in the Massachusetts Governor’s Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. He was a part of the city of Cambridge Mayor’s Climate Crisis Working Group and its Net-Zero Climate Task Force. His work has been featured by NPR’s All Things Considered, The Boston Globe, Scientific American, the BMJ, and Grist, among others.

Dr. Basu previously worked for numerous global NGOs including the Gates Institute, Partners in Health, the Child in Need Institute and Last Mile Health. He is on the board of directors of Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Weather Channel’s climate program “Pattrn,” and on the advisory council of the Environmental League of Massachusetts. He served as one of the clinical leads of Cambridge Health Alliance’s COVID Community Management clinical services during the pandemic.

He graduated magna cum laude from Brown University, with a bachelor of arts in international relations. He received his medical degree from the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont. Dr. Basu was a Sommer Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he studied human rights and received his masters in public health. He completed his internal medicine residency training at Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School.

• Open to: all Harvard students and alumni
• Time: 6:00 – 8:00 PM
• Location: Mignone Center for Career Success, 54 Dunster St, Cambridge MA 02138
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Join us on October 30th to hear from Ben Webster, Director of Policy at MiQ (Methane Intelligence) and Jason Neff, Soil and Climate Innovation Principal Scientist at Syngenta Group.

Ben Webster is Director of Policy at MiQ (Methane Intelligence), a not-for-profit climate tech foundation undertaking cutting-edge work to reduce methane emissions in the oil and gas sector. has an extensive background in environmental policy and government relations. Most recently, he served in the leadership of the University of Colorado Boulder’s graduate programs in sustainability and environmental management. Prior to this, he served as the Managing Director of the Sustainability Innovation Lab at Colorado – an innovative co-working space at the University of Colorado driving sustainability solutions between NGOs, start-ups, and the university. 

Before moving to Boulder, he advised senior members of Congress on water resources, infrastructure, sustainability, and public health issues while working as a staffer for the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was very involved in legislation and administrative oversight concerning the Clean Water Act, water infrastructure, and other water resources policies. In addition, he also participated in the legislative response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as developing elements of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. 

Ben has worked at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Academy of Public Administration, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Ben has recently worked with the BlueGreen Alliance on the scope of oil and gas operations in Colorado and New Mexico. He received his PhD and MA degrees in Government and his Master of Public Policy degree from Georgetown University, and his BA in Political Science from Bates College. 

Dr. Jason Neff is the Soil and Climate Innovation Principal Scientist at the Syngenta Group headquartered in Basel, Switzerland.  In this role, Dr. Neff leads efforts to identify and deploy new technologies that reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and improve soil health and agricultural productivity.  From 2003 to 2023, Dr. Neff was a Professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the founding Director of The Sustainability Innovation Lab at Colorado (SILC) created to accelerate the development of use-inspired sustainability science and technology. In recent years, Dr. Neff has led efforts to develop new analytical tools to support smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and served as the Chief Scientist for a startup company focused on natural carbon sequestration solutions.  Dr. Neff has a Ph.D. from Stanford University and a B.A. Summa Cum Laude in Environmental Biology from the University of Colorado at Boulder.  He is the author of more than 100 academic publications and an introductory environmental science textbook called ‘A Changing Planet’ and has raised more than 30 million dollars in funding from government and non-profits to support research in sustainability science. 

• Open to: all Harvard students
• Time: 6:00 – 8:00 PM
• Location: Harvard University Center for the Environment, 26 Oxford St, Cambridge, MA 02138
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Join us on November 7th to hear from Sanjay Seth, Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor for Climate and Equity for US EPA Region 1. 

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Region 1 is a 550-person unit of EPA focused on the New England region. In this role, he supports the Regional Administrator to craft and implement policy, planning, operations, and personnel strategies across all programs, with a focus on climate change, environmental justice, and regional implementation of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act programs. 

Previously, he served as Climate Resilience Program Manager for the City of Boston, where he managed the Climate Ready Boston program, which focuses on implementing a multi-billion dollar resilience plan to help prepare Boston for the impacts of climate change. Prior to Boston, Sanjay worked on an interdisciplinary consultant team on behalf of the City of New York to support a plan for a multi-billion dollar investment to protect New York from the impacts of climate change. 

While at Harvard, he founded the Climate Leaders Program, a year-long interdisciplinary program for students with a professional interest in climate action, which is based at the Harvard University Center for the Environment. He was also co-founder and co-president of Harvard Alumni for Climate and the Environment, a non-profit with approximately 2,000 members affiliated with the Harvard Alumni Association. 

Previously, Sanjay has served as a fellow of New Urban Progress, a program focused on transatlantic relations among metropolitan regions focused on developing more sustainable and just cities. He served on a teaching team at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government for a hands-on course focused on building effective, values-driven organizing campaigns. He served as a Fellow of the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, developing tailored management, leadership, and decision-making programs for mayors and their senior staff. And he has served as a Research Analyst at Regional Plan Association, focusing on climate adaptation, climate mitigation, and international forums for sharing best practices among global cities and regions. 

Originally from Bismarck, North Dakota, Sanjay has a background in community and political organizing. Sanjay is a dual-degree graduate in the Master in Urban Planning program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Master in Public Administration program at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He also holds a Bachelor’s in Economics, Politics, and Public Policy from Goldsmiths’ College, University of London. 

• Open to: all Harvard students and alumni
• Time: 6:00 – 8:00 PM
• Location: Harvard University Center for the Environment, 26 Oxford St, Cambridge, MA 02138
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Join us this Spring (date TBD) to hear from Lauren Kiel, general manager for Bloomberg Green, Bloomberg Media’s multiplatform editorial brand focused on climate and sustainability news, analysis, and solutions. 

Bloomberg Green includes a website featuring daily editorial coverage, a daily email newsletter, a podcast and radio segments, a magazine, and a weekly television show, as well as integrations across digital video, Bloomberg Quicktake, Bloomberg Television, and Bloomberg Live events. 

Prior to the launch of Bloomberg Green in January 2020, Lauren was director of the Bloomberg Sustainable Business Summits, which bring together senior leaders in sustainable business and sustainable finance across the world for conversations on how sustainability connects to the global economy. Lauren previously lead the editorial and programming strategy for Bloomberg Industry Group’s annual live journalism conferences and managed editorial for Bloomberg Government events. 

Before joining Bloomberg, she was a member of the editorial team for The Atlantic’s live journalism division, AtlanticLIVE. There she led content development and speaker recruitment for more than a dozen events and conferences per year, including the CityLab conference for mayors and city leaders. 

Lauren is also currently a faculty member at Bard College’s MBA in Sustainability teaching courses in Marketing and Stakeholder engagement. Lauren holds a bachelor’s degree in History and Literature from Harvard University and a master’s degree in English: Issues in Modern Culture from University College London. She is based in New York City.