Welch Environmental Innovation Fellowship

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is a global non-profit environmental organization with more than 1.2 million members and online activists. Our staff of over 350 includes lawyers, scientists, economists, and policy analysts who work to safeguard the environment through policy and legal advocacy grounded in rigorous scientific and economic analysis. The NRDC Center for Market Innovation (CMI) engages leading corporations in order to develop market-based environmental solutions. We combine business and policy leadership to accelerate commercialization of environmental solutions (www.marketinnovation.org). Our current work with Wal-Mart, for example, includes using their sourcing and marketing power to directly improve the energy efficiency of consumer electronics while also enlisting their support for smart utility regulations that encourage energy efficiency. We are looking for talented and passionate young leaders to help us harness market forces to scale up global warming solutions through a one-year Environmental Innovation Fellowship at the CMI. Fellows will have the opportunity to work with leading policymakers, business leaders and environmental advocates to develop innovative and lasting initiatives to cost-effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Fellows will be selected through a competitive application process in which we ask you to share a proposal with your innovative idea for market-based strategies to combat global warming. Selected entrants will receive a one-year fellowship with the CMI commencing in early summer 2008, with the expectation that they will devote part of their time to advancing their proposal as well as contributing to broader CMI priorities. This will be a full-time staff position with office space at NRDC and a stipend of $75,000 plus benefits. Fellows will report to the director of the CMI and will ideally be based in our New York office, though geographic flexibility may be possible in exceptional cases Application Guidelines: Applicants should submit a short PowerPoint presentation (no more than 10 slides) describing their idea as well as a resume and three references. We encourage applicants to be creative and entrepreneurial with their concepts, which should focus on new business models and associated market-enabling policies to effectively scale up existing technologies that reduce global warming pollution. A competitive entry might, for example, outline a novel business model to accelerate adoption of energy efficiency and renewables in the residential sector-including attention to key enabling policies such as rules encouraging utilities to procure both efficiency (e.g. decoupling and related incentives) and clean distributed generation (e.g. net metering and interconnection standards). Another competitive proposal might outline a strategy for originating credible carbon offsets through improved forestry or agricultural management practices within U.S. borders-including a brief sketch of essential policies within a cap and trade framework to make this workable. To be clear, we are not soliciting ideas for new technologies but rather ideas for new business models and associated market-based policies to effectively scale up existing solutions for global warming. A winning proposal should ideally include in the PowerPoint submission a concise description of the concept, size and characteristics of the target market, likely financial structures, brief sketch of key enabling policies, summary of feedback from any stakeholder interviews, key remaining questions, and suggested next steps towards eventual implementation. There is no expectation that applicants will prepare well-researched business plans with detailed backup. Rather, applications will be judged on creativity as well as the merit and feasibility of the idea. Final selection will be based on in person interviews in early April. Application Checklist: PowerPoint proposal - 10 slides or less Resume 3 professional references Who: The competition is open to any entrepreneurial graduate student, though marketed primarily to MBA students. Applicants are individuals, not teams, and we are committed to workplace diversity. Send application materials to Yerina Mugica at ymugica@nrdc.org