Graduate / Statement of Purpose for M.S. in Sustainability Management at Columbia + questions (due very soon) [3]

Hello!

I'm submitting this in a couple of days and getting anxious because I'm not a native speaker, so any constructive criticism is welcome.

Most of my effort so far went into organizing it and answering the program's concerns (focus on professional development, experience in sustainability and volunteering, good quantitative background).

Thank you

I am interested in energy solutions - SOP

Dear Sir or Madam,

In April 2016 I met with a dozen of Eritrean refugees in the heart of Boston, in an area unsuspecting of the small community's presence, to represent a nonprofit called Solstice Initiative. We had gathered to discuss the benefits the Eritreans would get from installing shared solar panels on their rooftops. However, the cost of a down-payment on panels, with all the renovations the decrepit community center would need, could not be justified.

This experience prompted in me the question of what tools I should possess to lead successful nonprofit projects. I had started a fellowship at Solstice Initiative because I had the desire to develop creative energy solutions for local governments and communities in the U.S. I was still earning my degree in Environmental Policy and Analysis from Boston University, a program at the crossroad of environmental science and modeling, biology, policy and remote sensing. It offered many analytical classes on sustainability and allowed me to take courses in business, law and engineering as well in the context of environmental analysis. Still, Boston University being a heavily research-oriented establishment, I knew that I wanted to partake in real-world applications.

The industry of utilities consultancy, with which I familiarized myself this year through boutique consulting firm Sia Partners, pointed me in the direction of management and planning. Having just recently graduated, I helped the British government regulate public utilities effectively by conjuring stakeholder strategies. This work aimed at protecting vulnerable customers of the six major national electricity transmission companies from blackouts (along with managing water resources effectively and sometimes expand activities in the case of private utilities). Our office was in London but customers we protected lived all across the United Kingdom and while it was a highly enriching experience, it struck me as widely different from Solstice, where direct communication with the communities was the highest priority.

My internships, academic, professional, and even volunteering experiences all demonstrated different approaches to the realization of projects. I remembered seeing, during a volunteering trip, young Nepali save their playground from subsiding into the lowers stratums of Kathmandu Valley by re-vegetalizing it with perfunctory planning, only speed of action. The idea that the answers to sustainable project management are plural and lie at the crossroad of scientific expertise, financial skills, human interaction and an educated vision of sustainability, hence fully formed in me over time.

The MS in Sustainability Management program acknowledges that the real world requires to understand the interactions between natural and social systems, the quantitative and financial decision models that enable the solutions, and the management and organizational self-awareness that make their application possible. That is what I look forward to get from Columbia's Earth Institute and School of Professional Studies. It is the perfect environment to build knowledge and practice in these different areas of project management I too often feel attrited of, so I can bring to the table the expertise I want to see.

Like I mentioned, I am interested in locally targeted (but replicable) energy solutions and I created my own database of efficiency initiatives for governments to use in Massachusetts and in my native France during my free time at Sia Partners. More multilateral organizations like the C40 cities inspire me for their wide yet multi-unitary ideas, like supporting mayors and businesses with unique energy goals while pushing them to embrace their position in a global chain of efforts. I feel the need to further my capabilities to work with such organizations.

In return for this opportunity, I know I will uphold Columbia's values of integrity and accountability. I am willing, hardworking, and humbly dedicated to the causes I discuss. I learned English from scratch to attend college in the first place, some six years ago, because I believed in the principles of a sustainable future. I am certain that graduate school will make me more capable of tackling multi-faceted projects such as with the Eritreans of Boston. This program attracts me because it recognizes that environmental and social systems are complex creatures that the mind has to raise to in order to find solutions. Curiosity is but the precursor to imagination. Thank you,

Most sincerely,

(...)