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Specific Advice for Kellogg MBA Students

Updated: Apr 25, 2020

The original intent of this blog was to help current and recently admitted Kellogg students get jobs in cleantech (and more selfishly, to save me some time as I must’ve repeated the same topics to several dozen folks these past couple of years…haha). Sadly, Kellogg isn’t as well established within energy and cleantech as some of its peer business schools (i.e. Fuqua, Haas, MIT, Ross, Stanford), but with that said still many resources here that are super helpful, and Northwestern as a whole has an amazing engineering program with an incredibly strong network.


If there’s one piece of advice I can give, it’s that everything can be found on the new Kellogg Energy Club website. The Kellogg Energy Club website has been significantly improved over the last two years (Thank you classes of 2016 + 2017!) and now has dedicated sections for classes, activities, seminars, and other career events. The Energy Club website should be your primary resource for all things energy, and everything in this post can likely be found somewhere on the website. As such, I’ll skip more common topics such as the cleantech trek (which I hear is great but I didn’t go on), lunch and learns, and other campusgroup events, but present some of my own thoughts on useful resources.


Academics:

Compared to other schools, there is definitely pretty limited coursework at Kellogg. I know various energy club leaders have tried lobbying for an energy class every year, but the administration is pretty slow and frustrating. I’m still hoping for an energy project finance course, but I’m not holding my breath…

Despite limited formalized offerings, there are still plenty of resources offered at Northwestern. I would definitely recommend taking NU:Vention Energy if you’re interested in startups, entrepreneurship, or emerging energy technologies. Usually offered in the winter quarter, NU:Vention Energy is an interdisciplinary class that combines students from across all of Northwestern’s graduate schools to form small teams to commercialize university-owned IP and technology – some successful startups were started from the program including SiNode Systems, Ampy, and more recently, Hazel Technologies. The final class consists of a pitch to several VC investors and notable members of the Chicago cleantech community.  If possible, I would try to take it my first year to position yourself for energy recruiting in the spring (plus, you can then study abroad 2nd year winter). You’ll definitely get annoyed at the repeated Canvas postings (you’ll know what I mean later) and the professor’s insistence on having 50+ interviews per week to find product-market fit, but I swear it’s worth it…

NU:Vention Energy is technically offered by ISEN, the Institute of Energy and Sustainability at Northwestern. There are some really great resources offered to the Northwestern graduate school network, my favorite being the Powering the Future series, a weekly 3-hour seminar series taught by leading industry executives, most recently Gary Kremen (current CEO of Pace Avenue, founder of match.com & clean power finance), Bert Valdman (CEO of Optimum Energy, former CFO of Puget Sound), and Nat Kramer (CEO of Spruce, Chairman of SEIA). If you’re at all interested in solar or energy finance, just mentioning that you took a seminar with these guys gets you some respect during interviews. You basically get two hours every week to pick the brains of these executives and ask them anything you want about energy, and they’ll give you their honest opinions that aren’t “supposed to leave the room.” The last hour is a (free) catered networking dinner, sometimes followed by drinks at 27Live. I think it’s a fairly competitive process to get in the seminar and applications usually open during the winter for spring enrollment, so make sure to keep an eye out for it.

ISEN also offers a Cluster Fellow scholarship in the spring of 1st year – five students are chosen from across all of Northwestern with usually one being from Kellogg. As a cluster fellow, there are a couple of required courses and an undergraduate course to TA, but otherwise it’s pretty low commitment for ~$16k. In my opinion the selection process is pretty random, but supposedly they look at your prior work history, recommendations, coursework, and some application essays. The application isn’t bad and only took me a couple of days.

ISEN has a list of courses and I personally only took ISEN 410: Contemporary Issues in Energy & Climate Change. It’s good if you’re interested in the actual science around climate change and can help you get a better understanding of cleantech. It’s definitely not too helpful for recruiting purposes (trust me, I’ve never once talked about solar flares, el nino, or debated about geoengineering during recruiting) but I’m glad I took it. While we’re on the topic of ISEN, try to meet Jeff Henderson who pretty much runs the ISEN program and he’s just a great person to know in-general.

If you like research or interacting with Kellogg faculty, try to seek out the few professors with energy experience/research and maybe even do an independent study (e.g. Ozge Islegen does research on the electricity markets supply chain and Craig Chapman has a background in solar project finance).

There used to be an official Kellogg energy conference until it got absorbed by the larger Kellogg Growth summit. It kills me to say this but I thought the 2016 Booth Energy conference was pretty good, and if you’re free that day it’s totally worth paying the $25 some time in May or so to attend.

On a random note, one thing I really regret not taking at Kellogg was more computer science classes. Knowing SQL, Ruby, Python will be a tremendous help if you’re recruiting for any energy or IoT companies (even for non-technical positions), so definitely take a class if you can.


School-year Internships:

Given how busy Kellogg students are and everday fomo, one thing that’s often way overlooked at Kellogg are school-year internships (can also be structured as independent studies), but I think they’re the best opportunity to spend a few months getting real-world knowledge and experience. These can include school-facilitated internships, independent internships, and either academic or experiential independent studies.

Clean Energy Trust is a participating host internship firm through VC Lab, a Kellogg finance course offered year-round that requires at least Finance 2 as a pre-requisite. VC Lab is a 1-credit course that allows students to intern at a host-firm two days a week, and includes a mix of participating national VC investors (e.g. Lightbank, Pritzker group), and several operating companies . The two relevant companies in VC lab are Clean Energy Trust (amazing network in Chicago), and SiNode Systems (early-stage battery startup). In past years, True North Venture Partners has also participated in the course.

You’ll learn more in a ten-week internship than you will ever by trying to cram for it. At CET, my project was to map out the electrochemical energy storage landscape – I was able to learn a ton about energy storage and speak intelligently about the topic during networking and interviews. If you’re interested in interning with CET, the process is fairly competitive so try to reach out to former CET interns or current staff members Paul Seidler or George Johnson if you’re interested. I think they prefer interns with demonstrated interest in energy or prior work experience. If you’re really intent on cleantech startups, I’d seriously, seriously consider interning with CET.

If you’re feeling really adventurous, there may also be opportunities for nearby internships at nearby Chicago firms. I did a paid internship with Uptake during the spring, a B2B company focused on the industrial internet of things and energy analytics, and it was amazing exposure to the startup tech world. Other potential firms in the Chicago area include Exelon (utility), Invenergy (renewables developer), Energy Foundry (vc), Woodlawn Associates (consulting), S&C Electric (utility services), SoCore (renewables developer), Agentis (energy efficiency), and a bunch of startups working remotely at Coalition Energy – you’ll have to reach out to companies independently though and there’s no formalized process.


Case competitions:

Case competitions are a fantastic way to meet with other bschool students, recent alumni, get out of Evanston for a little bit, and even potentially network your way into a job. I especially enjoyed the Ross Renewable Energy competition, where our team look home 3rd place (I swear we were snubbed from 1st). The Duke Emerging markets competition is also pretty well-known and a couple years ago, Powerhive was a sponsor, which was pretty cool. I definitely met a few recent MBA grads who I then chatted with later on during full-time recruiting, so I think this is a great way to build your network. In general, if you’re interested in these case competitions, try to speak to the club presidents early on in the year in case spots get filled. I tried to participant in the Ross competition my first year but wasn’t able to given spots were all taken, and ended up doing it 2nd year. I thought it was a fun trip, we won some money, and I would definitely do it again. It’s definitely not mandatory though, and can be a lot of leading up to the event.

Recruiting:

Formalized energy / cleantech recruiting is very limited at Kellogg. While big oil companies (e.g. Chevron, Exxon) and large utilities (e.g. Exelon, PG&E, SCE) come on-campus for interviews, most of the smaller firms tend to be found on the Kellogg job board, and even then I’d advise you to constantly check out other cleantech jobsearch websites (my favorite is Dayawaycareers).

The Career Management Center is pretty good for guiding you to find a job and for keeping you sane throughout the process, but is mediocre at-best when it comes to pointing you in the right direction for cleantech jobs. By the way, don’t even think about asking them for cleantech or startup compensation data because they just don’t have any (but maybe getting better?). Regardless, I spoke to my coach at least once every couple of months and made sure I told her my progress in case there were any red flags. Almost all my job offers ended up being personally networking or applying independently.


The alumni at Kellogg have been extremely, extremely useful to me during the job search. I won’t cover this in too much detail since I’ll be sure to have networking in another post somewhere. The Kellogg alumni directory is a good way to find a list of alumni in energy (you can export an excel list), but honestly linkedin is still your best bet. And of course, feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions.


Parting thoughts:

In short, you’ll definitely find the right opportunities if you look for them. Remember to enjoy the Kellogg experience and don’t stress out! It’s a two-year period of funemployment and the last long break you’ll ever get before 30+ years of pre-retirement work!

📷

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