Sara Kennedy had a very clear goal when she signed up for the Presidio Graduate School MBA program: to work with or consult large corporations on sustainability.
With one month left before she graduates, Sara is already acting on her vision working as a consultant at the boutique sustainability consulting firm BrownFlynn. Based in Cleveland, the firm is at the cutting-edge of helping clients understand how sustainability practices can transform their organization and how to move forward with implementing and communicating these responsible practices.
“It’s amazing. I’ve never wanted to work so hard and so long for any other job,” says Sara, on her new position. “It’s very inspiring to be able to do it every day. You’re changing the world.”
Sara credits her MBA education for helping her get the job, as BrownFlynn was familiar with Presidio’s MBA program.
She’s also drawing on skills she learned as part of her MBA. Sara says Presidio’s Experiential Learning Program gave her valuable hands-on consulting experience.
The Experiential Learning program aims to foster the collaboration between student teams and private or public organizations that are facing the challenges of practicing sustainable management. In each Experiential Learning course, student teams partner with external organizations to create a custom-made project based on the unique needs of their partner.
“The project management piece is so real life and so spot-on with what you do in consulting in the real world,” says Sara.
Presidio’s courses on organizational change and ethics also taught her how to identify the frame of mind clients have and how to help them shift and embrace change.
When looking to her future, Sara has big goals to promote sustainability as strategy including speaking at a major sustainability conference. Mostly, she wants to continue helping client achieve tangible impact in regards to sustainability, ranging from emission and waste reductions to enhancing their human capital.
“I just want to be a really big part of this shift,” she says.
