By Sushmita Dhekne, Student in the M.S. in Sustainability Management Program, Columbia University School of Professional Studies; Vice President, Women & Sustainability
On November 15, Women & Sustainability, the student organization I colead as vice president within Columbia University’s M.S. in Sustainability Management (SUMA) program, hosted a full day of panel sessions and networking. Our organization’s mission is simple but urgent: to empower women professionals in sustainability and build an inclusive network of diverse professionals.
This year’s Uplift Summit brought together approximately 160 students, panelists, and industry professionals. Our goal was to create the space we ourselves wanted to be in—a room where women could speak candidly about their careers, challenges, and ambitions in the sustainability field.
Charting Resilient Career Paths in Sustainability
In recent times, those working within the field of sustainability have faced mounting challenges. That feeling was captured best by Claudia Dreifus, an instructor in Columbia’s M.S. in Sustainability Management program and contributor to The New York Times, who was a panelist at the event. “As someone who was in the women’s movement in the 1960s, it’s great to see women banding together about their professional lives. Women have been working and saving the Earth forever, and it hasn’t been considered a career. It was an encouraging event in a discouraging moment.”
One of the event’s highlights was a panel titled Green Job Real Talk: Breaking into Sustainability Careers, on the theme of standing out and finding work in a challenging career climate. The panelists reframed job rejections as bullets dodged, positions that looked perfect on paper but may have led to a poor cultural fit or difficult managers.
Leah Cantor, a SUMA student, shared what resonated most with her. “I really appreciated one of the panelists’ advice on making your résumé reflect what you can actually do, not just listing what you did,’ she said. She learned that it’s important to do your own research on the company to make sure you actually want to work there. “It’s easy to feel desperate looking for a job, but you can still choose to find the right fit for you. Skip the ones you’re not going to want to work at anyway.”
Panelists at the 2025 Women & Sustainability Uplift Summit. (l to r): Pamela Gill Alabaster (moderator); Claudia Dreifus; Kim Matsoukas; Alice Roche-Naude.
Storytelling, Technology, and Rethinking Impact
In the Shaping the Narrative: Storytelling & Strategy in Sustainability panel, a student asked what felt like a question on everyone’s mind. “Why can’t we just talk about sustainability and protecting nature because we care about it?” The panelists didn’t sugarcoat their answer: Sustainability practitioners today have to learn to be nimble and meet people where they are, even when that means framing the work differently than they’d prefer. Dreifus also emphasized the importance of clarity in communication. She said, “Make it so clear that a bright 12-year-old could understand you.” It’s not about dumbing it down, but about making sure the message lands.
The Tech & Impact: Building the Future of Climate Innovation panel was surprisingly candid about AI. Panelists admitted that they’re embracing the technology and using it to work faster. One shared a cautionary tale about not fact-checking AI output.
For Cantor, the most inspiring part of the event was hearing sustainability founders’ unique entrepreneurial journeys. “They’ve done so many different things,” she said. “It’s easy to feel like you’re going to get stuck in one lane, but they all took very different paths.”
From Student Initiative to Lasting Community
Between panels, people connected during networking sessions. Some had traveled hours from outside the city. Watching my classmates meet one another and the panelists, I realized something: These aren’t just my classmates. They’re the people I’ll be working alongside after graduation, the ones who’ll actually get what it means to build a career in this field right now.
Watching the day unfold, I thought about how far the student organization had come. “Uplift started six years ago as an online, half-day summit,” said Leilani Salas, President of Women & Sustainability. “It has since evolved into an in-person, all-day event, and it couldn’t have been possible without a board that cares. Each person brought different expertise and went above and beyond to ensure every detail was taken care of.”
Standing in that room, watching students take notes and professionals share their stories, I realized what my team and I had accomplished. My classes taught me frameworks and science, the foundations for understanding and solving complex problems in sustainability. But being the vice president of Women & Sustainability taught me how to lead. I know now how to show up for my teammates. How to create something that matters even when I don’t know if it’ll be successful. And I’ll take all of it with me after graduation.
Views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Columbia School of Professional Studies or Columbia University.
About the Program
The Columbia University M.S. in Sustainability Management program, offered by the School of Professional Studies in partnership with the Climate School, provides students with cutting-edge policy and management tools to help public and private organizations and governments address environmental impacts and risks, pollution control, and remediation to achieve sustainability. The program is customized for working professionals and is offered as a full-time and part-time course of study.
The program fosters creativity and adaptability by equipping students with the skills to tackle real-world sustainability challenges through an interdisciplinary approach from the world’s premier sustainability academics, researchers, and practitioners. The up-to-the-minute curriculum and flexibility prepare graduates for careers in the dynamic and rapidly changing field of sustainability.
Learn more about the program here.
