From Politics To Progress: Why I Left The White House For Climate Tech
My journey discovering what I want to do, how I want to do it. Reflections from pursuing sustainability through policy, tech, and finance.
Growing up Bengali-American with frequent family visits to Dhaka opened my eyes at a young age to our planet’s environmental challenges and their adverse consequences on human health. From air pollution to flash flooding, in Bangladesh, our changing climate has been responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths and the aggravation of even more disabilities and complex health conditions. My ninth-grade science fair project on acid-base carbon sequestration affirmed my ability to take tangible action on this issue so personal to me but simultaneously sparked a quest to uncover the avenue I found most fulfilling and aligned with my personality while doing so.
Years of work in political advocacy and community organizing made me confident going into college that a career in government and public service would be the answer to my ongoing search. Immersing myself in progressive movements and learning from my peers and radical literature exposed me to perspectives that I soon adopted. Climate change and its disproportionate impact on marginalized communities is a direct result of our capitalist system, in which large corporations like Chevron and ExxonMobil deliberately chose to prioritize profits over our people and the planet, despite being aware of the associated consequences. I realized that systemic change was essential to truly addressing our climate concerns and found policy as an effective approach to achieve it.
After my freshman year at Stanford, I was lucky enough to land an internship on The White House Council of Environmental Quality. Having applied last minute on a whim with little to no confidence, saying I was ecstatic would be an understatement. And as the summer flew by, I was floored by the opportunities to author policy memos for Presidential Task Forces, conduct research for a new Executive Order, advance key items on the Biden-Harris environmental justice agenda, witness the signing of the Inflation Reduction Act from behind the scenes, and even meet the President himself. But intertwined between these exhilarating opportunities were many insightful lessons and subsequent realizations.
Though I still hold the beliefs I mentioned earlier, I learned that my experiences in activism and organizing had limited the perspectives I was exposed to and built a disillusioned reliance on the power of government. While my time at The White House underscored my understanding that government is absolutely critical to cultivate lasting societal changes, it also opened my eyes to how variable, bureaucratic, and stretched-thin the policymaking process is. On the federal level, it can take decades for the exact combination of circumstances and a little bit of luck to open the door for truly revolutionary policy change. Considering my restless personality and desire for linear results, I began to realize that policy may not be the best avenue for me (personally) to pursue my ambitions.
Heading into my sophomore year at Stanford, I found myself growing more and more interested in the school’s robust entrepreneurship, innovation, and tech scene — a space I had been hesitant to enter due to my anti-corporate outlook on the climate crisis. Nonetheless, my recent realizations spurred me to take a leap of faith toward this budding fascination. As the search to find my ideal career path reignited, I found myself asking the same question to the myriad of guest speakers, CEOs, and investors I had the opportunity to connect with: is it genuinely possible for a company to balance profit with social impact? I found myself obsessed with this inquiry — but luckily, received a resounding, unanimous response from the many mentors I consulted. It all comes down to the values, culture, and vision of the founding team.
This summer I am working for Twelve, one of the most exciting start-ups in the climate tech and carbon transformation space, and my experience thus far has exemplified this insight. I have found climate tech and start-up ecosystems to be incredibly dynamic, engaging, and fulfilling. And while there are certainly uncontrollable variables at play, I have found the results to come much more linearly than the policymaking process. Twelve was founded by graduate students at Stanford and operates on a culture characterized by inclusivity, collaboration, and accountability, with the capacity to foster enormous greenhouse gas reductions across countless industries.
I quickly found my extroversion and restlessness aligning with the venture capital side of climate tech — a people-oriented career where I can meet the world’s brightest individuals working on climate while also gaining rapid exposure to diverse technologies and markets every day. Taking a chance to explore beyond what I deemed conventional, tolerating foreign perspectives, and reflecting on the alignment of career experiences with my personality allowed me to finally discover the path best suited for me. I have learned that systemic change starts from within, and in the context of capitalism, starts with the purposeful allocation of capital toward climate and decarbonization of industrial processes. I am excited to continue to explore, learn, reflect, and grow. And it is more than possible for me to change my mind again. But for now, I am looking forward to living in the moment and continuing my work on an issue so personally rooted in my identity.
