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MBA students Mary Boling and Dan Thompson recently had the opportunity to travel to Reno, Nevada, as a part of their consulting project with Arrow Electronics. The project is a part of Joshua Nunziato’s Socially Responsible Enterprise MBA class, where students complete a semester-long sustainability and ESG consulting project for a real company. 

"The consulting project undertaken with the MBA team from the Leeds School of Business serves as a testament to the integral role collaboration plays in today's business environment, inspiring upcoming business leaders to prioritize robust supplier relationships to reduce environmental impacts,” said project host Lindsay Tyson, Director of Global Sustainability at Arrow. “During their visit to the Reno warehouse, the MBA students observed the Arrow supply chain ecosystem in action, bridging the gap between their acquired knowledge and real-world supply chain dynamics."

CESR has helped with sourcing these projects from companies including Arrow Electronics, WestMET, and Nuveen, a TIAA company.

“It’s important for Leeds students to have the opportunity within the classroom to tackle real environmental, social, and ethical challenges that companies are facing today,” said Kathryn Wendell, Executive Director of CESR. “Not only does this provide students with a valuable learning experience that they can talk about in job interviews and apply to their future careers, but also it provides business leaders with a fresh perspective on how to drive business solutions to tough problems. Moreover, these consulting projects connect companies with top talent and help to showcase our excellence in sustainability, ESG, and social impact here at Leeds.”

"The consulting project undertaken with the MBA team from the Leeds School of Business serves as a testament to the integral role collaboration plays in today's business environment, inspiring upcoming business leaders to prioritize robust supplier relationships to reduce environmental impacts,"

- says Lindsay Tyson, Director of Global Sustainability at Arrow

CESR recently sat down with Mary and Dan to talk about the project, their trip to Reno, and their insights into the rapidly-evolving ESG landscape.

CESR: Can you briefly tell me about your background and what brought you to the Leeds MBA program?

Mary: My career up until coming to Leeds has been in education. I taught middle school English for 3 years and then worked in student recruitment for a charter school network in Denver for about 5 years. What brought me to Leeds was my desire to pivot out of education and into a different industry where I could still focus on having a positive impact on the world, but in a different sector.

Dan: I did my bachelor's here at the Leeds School of Business as well, and I graduated in 2015 with majors in Marketing and Operations Management. During my undergraduate years, I was working at Tango Analytics, where I did market optimization, sales forecasting, and retail trade area analysis. After that, my father and I started JBT Ventures and invested in a variety of small businesses. Since 2019 we've mostly been focused on our own personal investment strategies. In 2021 I decided to get my MBA because he's looking about retiring, so it’s time to go my own way.

CESR: What are your post-MBA goals?

Mary: I’m currently a part of the Clean Energy Pathway, and am interested in consulting roles in the renewable energy space.

Dan: I'm still looking at a number of different ideas, but I like the idea of working in the cannabis industry, maybe on the marketing or branding side. We invested in some cannabis businesses back at JBT Ventures; so I do like the space, but I‘m still exploring a number of different avenues.

CESR: Describe your project with Arrow Electronics.

Mary: We are working on looking at Arrow's supplier engagement, specifically through an ESG lens. Since they're such a large company, we've been focusing on what supplier engagement looks like at their Reno facility, which is their largest North American facility. The reason why we went out to visit Reno was that actually being there in person, meeting some of the people and getting to see the operations first hand can really deepen that understanding of the current state [of the facility]. 

Dan: They want us to get a unified supplier outreach approach with the lens of the quality and sustainability industry best practices. They’re going to have to be reporting Scope 3 emissions pretty soon and that means they're gonna have to gather data from their suppliers and calculate their emissions accurately.

"It's one thing to learn about things in class and understand what’s required at a high-level, but then seeing it mapped onto such a large company that has so many complexities really brings to light the way that companies actually take these challenges and goals and make them a reality, especially when you need to consider other facets of the business besides just reporting or emissions,"

- says Mary Boling, MBA Student

CESR: What value have you seen in working on real sustainability/ESG challenges that face a company like Arrow Electronics?

Dan: It was great to see the facility and the challenges that they face on a daily basis. Arrow is a huge company, with a 6.7 billion market cap and over 200,000 customers. With the increased reporting standards that are coming up, they are facing a big challenge with calculating the Scope 3 emissions.

Mary: It's one thing to learn about things in class and understand what’s required at a high-level, but then seeing it mapped onto such a large company that has so many complexities really brings to light the way that companies actually take these challenges and goals and make them a reality, especially when you need to consider other facets of the business besides just reporting or emissions.

CESR: How was your trip to Reno, and what was your biggest takeaway from it?

Mary: It was awesome. Our main points of contact are based in Denver, but they also were out there for site visits so we were able to tour with our main points of contact and get introduced to people at the facility. Having both of those groups together was really great. My biggest takeaway was how important the operations and ensuring products are received, stored and delivered at a high quality are. The products that Arrow is dealing with are very sensitive, so having the right procedures and materials in place is critical. What I found really interesting was being able to hear about the idea of maintaining that high bar of operations while also still making moves on improving ESG metrics and then seeing firsthand what that's looking like on the floor.

Dan: My biggest takeaway was seeing the complexity and scale of their operations. When we were walking on the floor we had to wear anti-static smocks and little shoe straps so that we wouldn't damage the products – they take a lot of care with that. It was really interesting to see all of that in action.

"What I found really interesting was being able to hear about the idea of maintaining that high bar of operations while also still making moves on improving ESG metrics and then seeing firsthand what that's looking like on the floor,"

- says Mary Boling, MBA Student

CESR: What are some important trends that you see in the ESG and sustainability landscape right now?

Dan: I would say ESG integration with financial reporting. It's a growing trend that ESG reporting is being combined with traditional financial reporting, and it’s mostly driven by sustainability-minded investors. Also, reporting organizations like the GRI and SASB have quite a bit of influence now.

Mary: Some of the things that stand out to me right now is that companies know that there are pressures to be reporting out data, but for some of these companies it's the first time they’ve ever calculated this type of data. Right now, they are figuring out how to go about it and the assumptions that need to be made. There's a lot of different reports out there but not a lot of standardization or specific guidelines. There's just a lot of inefficiencies in the systems, and until we get that clear people will be trying to work with a moving target. Developments in California are starting to hint at what that could look like.

Dan: In Professor Nunziato's class, we've talked a little bit about how the org chart is set up within a company in terms of  who the sustainability division reports to. Sometimes it's the finance department or a lot of times it's legal and compliance and you can kind of gain some insight into how a company is looking at sustainability based off of how the org chart is set up.

Mary: I feel like overall it seems that it’s been tied more with the risk compliance part of companies, just making sure that they're hitting those standards and making sure that they're not opening themselves up to any type of litigation or being out of compliance, which does send a certain message on this type of work. To Dan’s point, it is interesting to think about what it could look like if it was under a different wheelhouse.

CESR: Is there anything else you would like to share regarding your project, or any advice that you have?

Mary: The Reno trip was a really great trip. Being able to work with a company and also visit their site is what getting an MBA is all about. It's about that real world application of what you're learning in the class, and I really appreciate Professor Nunziato for creating this opportunity for us to have this project through his course (Socially Responsible Enterprise). I would recommend this class for students who are looking to better understand the complexities around what the ESG and sustainability landscape is right now. It's a really great class to have philosophical discussions in class, but then also get paired in a project that's kind of showing firsthand how those complexities are showing up in the business world. I also really appreciate Arrow’s willingness to collaborate with us throughout the semester. Getting insight into such a large company and being able to contribute to the work that they're all doing has been really meaningful and this has definitely been a highlight of my experience at Leeds so far.

Dan: I definitely think it's a good experience. I would say, if you have the opportunity to do consulting projects in class or outside of it, it's definitely a good experience to have.

• Interested in exploring how our MBA or advanced undergraduate teams might accelerate sustainability initiatives at your organization? Visit this page to learn more about submitting a proposal.
• To learn more about the Socially Responsible Enterprise class and more opportunities, explore CESR’s ESG and Sustainability MBA Pathway.
• Mary Boling and the Leeds MBA team recently placed second place at the International Duke University Energy in Emerging Markets Case competition. To read about this exciting success, check out this recent blog post.