A few years later, a high school guidance counselor suggested the budding entrepreneur apply to Babson. Today the vice president for capital markets at Sharestates, a Great Neck, New York-based real estate lending platform, credits Babson for a critical part of his professional development. “One of my biggest assets has always been my ability to work with other people—how to speak with them, how to engage with them—and Babson helped me refine it,” he says.

As an undergraduate, Kevin met ambitious and like-minded classmates, and he and some friends started BlabberForce, a firm that used word-of-mouth to promote events and products to college students. “It was a cool experience for a college student to have a business on campus back then,” Kevin says, “because it wasn’t a thing everyone did.” But the lasting lesson he took from the experience was about the critical importance of relationships in life and in business.

In his current role at Share-states, Kevin raises capital and works to streamline operations, the two tasks he likes to do best. “I get to work with people,” he says, “and I get to help make things work better.” Kevin soon learned that his skills also are well-suited to fundraising. When he was 5, his mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. As Kevin got older, he wanted to help, so in 2004 he raised money for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society’s Walk MS and has supported the event each year since then. He’s not shy about asking people for money. “I do it for a living. Some people are uncomfortable doing it,” he says, “but I’ve never had a problem asking for causes that I believe in.”

In 2013, Kevin brought his fundraising talents to Babson. Having worked in web development, he used his knowledge of the technology to create software for a 24-hour fundraising challenge. Kevin tested the model at his former New Jersey high school, and giving participation rose from 28 to 60 percent among his former classmates. So when his Babson Class of 2003 was nearing its 10-year reunion, Kevin led an online virtual reunion and day of giving. In one day, 83 classmates made gifts to Babson, and 70 people posted related updates and comments to Facebook. “It was like everyone was back together again,” he says.

Since then, more than 20 classes have held days of giving using Kevin’s model. Last year, Babson launched Make Your Mark, an annual day of giving for the Babson community that helped raise the overall alumni giving participation rate. “Communities can be extremely powerful,” Kevin says. “Maybe it’s for a cause, maybe it’s for a party, but when people come together, things can get done.”—Jeff Stupakevich, manager, advancement communications

Photo: Gecko Media of Dubai

On Friday night, attendees enjoyed dinner and dancing on a river boat cruise on the Chao Phraya River. Upon boarding the boat, attendees received jasmine leis.

Photo: Gecko Media of Dubai

Roommates during their undergraduate years at Babson, Yodjin Uahwatanasakul ’60, H’94, P’99, and Richard Snyder ’60, H’94, P’93, ’01, reconnected in Bangkok. They enjoyed the variety of panels, sessions, and networking opportunities throughout the summit.

Photo: Gecko Media of Dubai

At the Babson Connect: Worldwide Awards Gala, Harry Susilo, P’96, chairman of the Sekar Group, was inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Entrepreneurs. Earlier that day, Harry and his daughter, Finna Huang ’96, participated in a “Conversation on Family Business,” which was led by Randel Carlock, Berghmans Lhoist Chaired Professor of Entrepreneurial Leadership at Insead international graduate business school.

Photo: Gecko Media of Dubai

Members of the Babson community enjoyed the best of the region’s cuisine during a buffet lunch at the Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok.

Photo: Gecko Media of Dubai

Roshni Nadar Malhotra, a trustee of the Shiv Nadar Foundation and executive director and CEO of HCL Corp., participated in a “Conversation on Global Women-Led Entrepreneurship,” which was moderated by President Kerry Healey. Later that evening, Roshni was presented with the 2017 Lewis Institute Community Changemaker Award.

Photo: Tom Kates
Marvin Tarawally ’17

Marvin Tarawally ’17 would like to narrow that opportunity gap, to the point where young people in his home country—and, eventually, across Africa—have the chance to lead what he terms “meaningful and dignified lives.” Following his May graduation, Tarawally, who juggles more projects than seems humanly possible and admits he gets by on very little sleep, plans to launch a multipronged social venture that will help young Liberians acquire the skills they need to succeed. “By 2020,” he says, “Africa is going to have the largest cohort in the world of young people in the workforce. With that comes a lot of responsibility.”

Tarawally himself has traveled a long way from his childhood home outside Monrovia. The youngest of eight children, he grew up in a house without pipe-borne water and with power supplied by a generator, not an unusual circumstance in his country. At the end of Liberia’s civil war in 2003, much of the country’s capacity to provide electricity had been destroyed. The government has been working to rebuild its infrastructure, but less than 10 percent of the population has access to the grid.

The civil war also disrupted the country’s education system. As a teenager, Tarawally came to believe that education deficiencies lay at the root of the country’s problems. An entrepreneur by temperament if not yet by training, he decided to take action. He helped create Smart Liberia, a nonprofit designed to empower the country’s high school students and support their efforts to bring about change. Young people involved with the program have cleaned up their schools, renovated science labs, launched their own ventures, created tutoring programs for underperforming students, and, through the organization’s Lift Liberia arm, pursued learning opportunities abroad.

To further his own education after graduating from high school, Tarawally attended the African Leadership Academy, a Johannesburg school working to develop the next generation of African leaders. He learned about Babson when a recruiter came to visit, and he immediately knew he wanted to attend. Tarawally earned a spot in Babson’s Global Scholars Program, which awards need-based scholarships and provides support to talented international students.

After coming to Babson, Tarawally continued to work with Smart Liberia, staying involved from afar and returning to his home country every summer. Now, as his time at Babson draws to a close, Tarawally is seeking to evolve the nonprofit into a new venture. Changemakers Village, a “social change hub,” will continue the work of Smart Liberia, but, Tarawally hopes, on a larger scale and in a way that is financially self-sustaining. Planned programming will consist of three tracks: technology for social impact, which will train young people in coding and software development skills to help them create applications that address Liberia’s social ills; education advancement, assisting students seeking educational opportunities overseas; and an employment accelerator, for students coming out of Liberian universities who lack basic workplace skills, such as knowledge of Excel and PowerPoint. Tarawally wants to equip young Liberians with the tools they need to bring about societal change.

Tarawally is raising money to get Changemakers Village up and running. His plans include opening a full-service print shop that will both help participants learn new skills and bring in enough revenue to support the program. His goals are ambitious, and his ultimate aim—to replicate the model throughout Africa—is even more so. But Tarawally is not fazed. “I am committed to my country’s future,” he says, “but I am also committed to seeing young people in the emerging world have opportunities. My personal goal is to use this Babson education to do that, and Liberia is my starting point.”—Jane Dornbusch

Artists have been carving gourds for at least 4,000 years in Peru; McLaughlin began carving 11 years ago in Minneapolis, her home for many years. An avid gardener, she planted some gourd seeds alongside a winding path at the back of her property. Thenceforth the trail, overhung with gourd vines hanging from trees, was known as Gourd Alley, and the bountiful harvest inspired McLaughlin to start carving. The name stuck: McLaughlin, now a professional gourd artist who splits her time between Florida’s Sanibel Island and Sandwich, Massachusetts, calls her business GourdAlley.

McLaughlin describes the medium as similar to soft wood, and her creations fall into roughly two categories. Larger specimens are crafted into bowls or ornamental containers. Miniature gourds become “gourdikins”: rotund little people, whimsically painted and accessorized, that are suggested by the gourds’ bulbous shapes.

The creative impulse came naturally to McLaughlin. Torn between art and business as a teen, she originally enrolled at Skidmore College but transferred to Babson. Focusing her studies on business suited McLaughlin. But, she adds, “I have a creative side that can’t be repressed.”

McLaughlin also has a strong stomach, which comes in handy for carving gourds. She places her fresh gourds in storage for a year to dry; when they emerge, they are moldy and malodorous. A dried gourd must then be bleached and scrubbed cleaned—“to within an inch of its life,” says McLaughlin—before it can be carved. “Carving gourds is not for sissies,” she notes. “You must wear a mask, and you must love power tools.”

Carving gourds went from avocation to vocation for McLaughlin when she “retired somewhat” a few years back. She has sold her work at craft shows but is now happy to be part of a nearby artists’ retail co-op.

The irrepressibly creative McLaughlin also paints furniture, but gourds are her passion. “I have a lot of variety in my work,” she says. “It’s not just a flat canvas. It’s three-dimensional, and it’s based in nature. The wonderful thing about working in gourds is that you can carve them, you can cut them, you can stain them. I’m not locked into anything. That’s what makes it fun.”

Under the guidance of Stephen Brennan, National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) Division III Coach of the Year, the Beavers finished a program best 31-2 and captured Babson’s first NCAA team title since 1984. The championship was the culmination of four years of success for a program that won 103 games and made a pair of Final Four appearances.

Photo: Keith Lucas
Charlie Rice ’17 (left) and Isaiah Nelsen ’17 celebrate during the Whitman game.

But success in March hasn’t always been the norm. The Beavers made just five NCAA Tournament appearances prior to 2014, advancing as far as the Sweet 16 in 2002. “We’ve always had great people in the program, but our group over the past few years has been very centered on its work ethic and their ability to put the team first,” says Brennan. “After reaching the Final Four in 2015, the goal was always to get back to Salem and find a way to win.”

Photo: Keith Lucas
The blocked shot made by Joey Flannery ’17 helped capture the championship.

Despite entering the NCAA Tournament without two starters, the Beavers’ senior class and their trust in each other helped book a return trip to Salem. “We’re a really close-knit group that relied on each other throughout the year,” says Joey Flannery ’17, two-time NABC Division III Player of the Year. “We all had a ton of confidence in each other, and that closeness on the court allowed us to make the run.”

Photo: Keith Lucas
Babson players and managers celebrate after defeating Augustana.

In the semifinals, the team defeated previously unbeaten and top-ranked Whitman College 91-85, despite trailing by 25 points with less than eight minutes to go in the first half. In the title game, the Beavers trailed by as many as 10 but worked their way back, with Flannery sealing the greatest win in program history with a blocked shot in the closing seconds. “It was an unreal finish to the game and the season,” says Flannery, who, despite ranking eighth in Division III all-time scoring with 2,620 points, may now be better known for “the block.”

After coaching for three decades, Brennan understands the significance of the team’s accomplishment. “The greatest gift, and it’s been going on since reaching the Final Four in 2015, is that we’ve been able to share our success with our alumni,” he says. “To become one of just 24 schools to win a Division III men’s basketball title is a major achievement.”—Jeremy Viens, athletics communications director

Photo: Joe Nadel ’19
The team is honored in front of a sold-out Celtics crowd at TD Garden.

Sadie Burton-Goss, Leticia Stallworth ’99, MBA’13, and Katrina Fludd ’08, MS’10

“We cannot keep the awesomeness of Babson a secret,” declared Leticia Stallworth ’99, MBA’13, addressing a crowd of more than 200 at the 19th Black Affinity Conference. Organized by Babson’s Black Affinity Network and held Feb. 24-26 at the Boston and Wellesley campuses, the BAC promotes diversity and inclusion by fostering connections among Babson’s black alumni and positively impacting the experiences of current and future students. Stallworth, president of BAN, was one of several speakers—including President Kerry Healey and Sadie Burton-Goss, chief diversity and inclusion officer—who commented on the College’s efforts to create a welcoming environment for all members of the community.

Friday networking event

The conference, with a theme of “Entrepreneuring While Black,” kicked off with networking and career-focused events followed by a welcome party at the Babson Boston campus. On Saturday, sessions addressed such topics as intellectual property; the challenges and rewards of managing side projects around the demands of a day job; the practice of mind mapping, which helps participants identify and work toward their dreams; and navigating the landscape of the media and entertainment industries as a person of color.

Aaron Walton ’83

At a Saturday evening gala, keynote speaker Aaron Walton ’83, co-founder of full-service advertising agency Walton Isaacson, urged the crowd to “turn your dreams into a reality, instead of thinking your ideas are a dream.” A highlight of the conference was the presentation of the Black Affinity Achievement Award. This year, the honor went to Burton-Goss, who drives Babson’s mission to create and sustain a culture of inclusion, and Katrina Fludd ’08, MS’10, a diversity and inclusion specialist at Princeton University. A Sunday morning worship service was led by Cyril Guerra ’95. The weekend came to a close with a brunch in Trim.

One of the conference’s several sessions

The conference, with a record number of attendees, was deemed a tremendous success. Stallworth recalls the road that led to this point. “The Black Affinity Conference was the first affinity conference ever held at Babson,” she says. “So many people told me and my executive board that we weren’t going to be able to do it. And here, so many years later, it’s bigger and better than ever. I just couldn’t be more thrilled.”—Jane Dornbusch

Continuing a tradition of excellence, women’s basketball won 24 games this season and made the program’s fifth NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 appearance, its first trip back since 2011. The team won two NCAA Tournament road contests, beating nationally ranked Messiah College and Fairleigh Dickinson University-Florham before bowing out to eventual national champion and top-ranked Amherst College.

Photo: Courtesy of FDU-Florham
The team celebrates following its NCAA Tournament win over Fairleigh Dickinson University-Florham.

“This was a special group,” says veteran head coach Judy Blinstrub, who in early February became the seventh active Division III coach to win 600 games. “We had strong leadership from our senior class and received contributions from several players. We were playing our best basketball at the end of the season.”

In February, the team’s six victories over conference opponents came by an average of 23 points. The Beavers capped the month with 83-59 and 65-46 triumphs over Smith College and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, respectively, to secure their seventh NEWMAC Tournament title in the last nine seasons.

Giovanna Pickering ’17 led the way for the team, becoming just the fourth All-American in program history after earning the New England Women’s Basketball Association and NEWMAC player of the year honors. “We’re really proud of this team,” says Pickering. “We had a lot of seniors who graduated last year, and we had a new group that needed to gel quickly. We were kind of counted out—picked to finish second in the NEWMAC—but we won the championship and made the Sweet 16.”

Throughout their basketball careers, Pickering and classmates Jennifer Narlee ’17, Taylor Russell ’17, and Ashley Snyder ’17 led the Beavers to three 20-win seasons, two NCAA Tournament appearances, and a pair of league tournament crowns.

Babson also finished this season ranked 24th in the country. “We had so many new bodies,” says Russell. “For everyone to step up and give contributions off the bench in every single game was big for us. We are really proud.”—Scott Dietz, associate director of athletics

Ski Teams Finish Big

For the first time in program history, both the men’s and women’s alpine ski teams placed among the top six programs at the United States Collegiate Ski and Snowboard Association National Championships. The women tied for fifth in the country, while the men placed sixth nationally.

Headlining the 2017 men’s national championships at Mount Bachelor in Bend, Oregon, were Douglas DeLuca ’20 and MacIntyre Henderson ’20, who together garnered four All-America accolades. Henderson, who finished fifth overall, became just the third skier in program history to earn All-America honors in the slalom, giant slalom, and combined standings in the same season. The men also captured their third USCSA regional title since 2013.

On the women’s side at the national championships, Tatum Alkier ’18 became just the second five-time All-American in program history. She finished 12th in the slalom before taking 15th in the giant slalom and placing 10th in the combined standings. Elizabeth Baer ’20 was right behind Alkier in the giant slalom and picked up her first All-America award by placing 12th in the combined standings.—SD

Photo: Webb Chappell
Babson President Kerry Healy

Many of the discussions at BCW focused on priorities identified in our Centennial strategy: family enterprise, women-led entrepreneurship, and social impact. Ramon Mendiola ’86, P’20, CEO of Florida Ice and Farm Co. and a newly appointed Babson trustee, led a lively discussion on the triple bottom line—people, planet, and profits. At Babson, social, economic, and environmental responsibility and sustainability are central to our curriculum. Ramon’s reflections reinforced the importance of preparing entrepreneurs to lead in a new way, creating social and economic value simultaneously.

We also were honored to induct Harry Susilo, P’96, chairman of Sekar Group, into Babson’s Academy of Distinguished Entrepreneurs. We heard from Harry and his daughter, Finna Huang ’96, about the extraordinary 50-year journey of the Sekar Group, which began as a small fishing operation in a poor rural village and has transformed into an international enterprise employing 20,000 people. Their insights into the opportunities and challenges associated with a large family enterprise further emphasized the critical role of Entrepreneurial Thought & Action in shaping successful family businesses.

The weekend ended with a beautiful reception and awards gala, during which Roshni Nadar Malhotra, executive director and CEO of HCL Corp., was presented with the 2017 Lewis Institute Community Changemaker Award. Both Roshni and her husband, Shikhar Malhotra ’04, are accomplished business leaders, passionate philanthropists, and trustees of the Shiv Nadar Foundation. They have been instrumental in the foundation’s mission to create educational opportunities and empower individuals to bridge socioeconomic divides. Roshni is the driving force behind VidyaGyan, a leadership academy for exemplary, underprivileged students from rural India. VidyaGyan nurtures future leaders who can act as catalysts for change, setting in motion a ripple effect of transformative social impact.

Babson Connect: Worldwide is one of the many ways in which we celebrate our global community and bring Babson to the world. Planning is already underway for our 2018 event. I hope you will join us next year in Madrid as we continue to innovate, collaborate, and explore the potential of entrepreneurs to change the world for the better.

Kerry Healy

At the same time, people in some parts of the world have limited or no access to energy due to poor or nonexistent infrastructure. The International Energy Agency reports that 1.2 billion people around the world live without power.

Meeting the world’s energy demands is complicated at best, difficult or improbable at worst. Alumni working in the industry talk about how energy sources, from gas and nuclear to solar and wind, are powering the world today, and what the future may hold for these industries and the people who depend on them.

JIM JUDGE ’77, MBA’81

CEO, Eversource

Jim Judge is a 40-year veteran of the power company now known as Eversource, which delivers electricity and gas to 3.7 million customers in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. During his career, Judge has watched New England’s energy industry shift to a reliance on natural gas. In 2000, natural gas generators made up just 15 percent of the region’s power plants, he recalls. But the development of mining techniques such as hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”) has created an abundance of cheap natural gas, so gas-fired plants in New England now exceed 50 percent of the total energy supply, with virtually all generators built during the past 20 years running on natural gas. Because natural gas releases less carbon than other fossil fuels, it is a preferred fuel source from an environmental perspective, Judge explains.

Photo: Pat Piasecki
Jim Judge ’77, MBA’81, CEO of Eversource, which delivers electricity and gas to customers in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire

Judge began his career as an associate rate analyst in 1977 at Boston Edison. Through the years, the company merged with other utilities to eventually become Eversource, and Judge rose through the ranks to become CEO last May. During those four decades, the world has developed a host of new uses for electricity, but energy demand has remained largely stable due to such factors as advances in the design of electronics and power plants. “New England’s generators are the newest and most efficient plants that we have on the system,” Judge says. The company also offers programs for improving energy efficiency to its customers. “We spend more than half a billion dollars a year on energy efficiency, so new buildings going up now use a fraction of the energy used, say, 30 years ago,” he explains.

Nonetheless, New England sometimes still struggles to get enough natural gas during peak periods, Judge says. To expand the region’s infrastructure, Eversource is part of a project known as Access Northeast, which seeks to update existing pipelines to bring more natural gas from the rich shale deposits in Pennsylvania into New England.

Judge notes that the energy industry also has grown “greener,” particularly in states such as Massachusetts where customers and policymakers continue to push for energy from renewables, including solar. “We are working closely with policymakers to help achieve aggressive carbon reduction goals,” he says.

Judge expects renewables to become increasingly important and believes Eversource is well positioned for that shift. The company currently is working on what he humorously describes as “a large extension cord up to Canada” to take advantage of excess energy produced by the country’s hydroelectric dams. Eversource also partnered with a Danish company that specializes in offshore wind power, and it has invested $200 million in a large-scale solar farm in Massachusetts. For now, renewables provide a relatively small part of the total supply needed, Judge acknowledges, due in part to a lack of affordable ways to store power once it’s generated. “As you know, the wind doesn’t always blow, the sun doesn’t always shine,” he says.

The big breakthrough will come when the industry develops batteries and other cost-effective methods to capture excess energy supply for later use. To that end, Eversource has launched a $100 million program to test energy storage technologies for five years, and it currently is considering projects located around Massachusetts. “It’s a significant investment, but we think this is the next major breakthrough for our industry,” Judge says, “and we’d like to lead the charge on it.”

ABHIJIT GUPTA, MBA’13

Founder, ACI Clean Energy

Following the completion of his MBA, Abhijit Gupta returned home to Mumbai, India, to launch a new branch of his family’s business: After decades in the IT industry, the company diversified into renewable energy. “India is the fastest-growing large economy in the world,” Gupta says. “There’s been a worldwide push for much cleaner fuel and renewable technologies, especially in the developing world, so we felt the demand would be there. It’s also a good area to be in from a moral standpoint, because I think we’re adding value to society.”

ACI Clean Energy provides biofuel made from wood scraps. It collects wood waste and sawdust generated by saw mills and other wood-processing industries and compresses them into pellets that can be burned as heating fuel. Although somewhat new in India, wood biofuels have a longer history in Europe, Gupta notes, driven in part by the requirement that 20 percent of the European Union energy needs be fulfilled by renewables by 2020.

For some ACI clients, such as large commercial kitchens that typically cook with propane, the change to biofuels can save money. For other clients, such as PepsiCo India, biofuel is more expensive than conventional fuels, notes Gupta. But PepsiCo chooses to use the pricier pellets in certain processes to raise its sustainability profile.

Gupta recently expanded ACI Clean Energy into designing, constructing, and maintaining solar installations. The company’s first project, completed in late 2016, involved installing a 400-kilowatt solar plant on a client’s factory roof. By the end of 2017, Gupta aims to install at least 10 megawatts of rooftop solar power, and he sees huge potential for future growth, given that India’s leadership has set aggressive goals for clean energy. “There is a government target for the country to install 100 gigawatts of solar power by 2022,” Gupta explains. “We’re at nine gigawatts now. That’s obviously massive growth, and billions of dollars of possible business.”

The World Bank reports that about 300 million people in India lack access to electricity. Utility companies are slowly building power lines to connect rural communities, but Gupta sees solar as a key solution, particularly if energy-storage technology improves, because solar lets consumers provide their own power. “It’s a fantastic solution for a country like India that needs more grid transmission connectivity,” he says. Even in countries like the U.S., the ability to store solar power will increase its popularity, Gupta believes. “That will be feasible in the future for sure,” he says.

JOHN CHAIMANIS, MBA’07

Co-founder, Kendall Sustainable Infrastructure; adjunct instructor, Babson

After volunteering as a teacher in an inner-city school and co-founding a public charter school in Boston, John Chaimanis was about to begin his MBA at Babson when he read an article about renewable energy in National Geographic. It included a photo that showed more than 70 people standing shoulder to shoulder before a massive wind turbine blade. The image “just blew my mind,” says Chaimanis, who from that point determined he wanted to work in the industry. Major European banks were backing wind projects, he notes, which encouraged his decision. “Once banks start putting hundreds of millions and billions of dollars into an industry,” Chaimanis says, “you have to believe it’s real, and not something that’s going to fade away tomorrow.”

With his goal in mind, Chaimanis started classes and relaunched Babson’s Energy and Environment Club, which had languished but came back to hold its first annual conference on energy topics that year. (Chaimanis remains involved in the club today as an alumni member.) After graduation, he joined Edison Mission Energy, an independent power producer, where he was part of a group that developed roughly 1,500 megawatts of wind projects in four years.

Chaimanis sees renewables as a savvy investment, but historically investors have had few ways to benefit directly. So Chaimanis partnered with Ken Lehman at Kendall Investments to create an offshoot company, Kendall Sustainable Infrastructure (KSI), which offers investments in closed-end funds focused on renewable energy projects. Chaimanis explains: “In a typical investment, our fund would spend about $1 million to build a solar asset, similar to a commercial real estate building, and then sell the power we produce, distributing that cash to investors.”

Through its funds, KSI owns interests in more than 30 projects around the country, mainly in solar power, although the company also considers investments in other renewables such as wind and hydropower. Chaimanis made the switch to solar around 2012, when wind power was well-established and he saw more potential for growth in distributed solar projects, the medium-sized installations that are bigger than rooftop panels but much smaller than utility-scale solar farms. The solar market has exploded; according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, solar experienced a compound annual growth rate of more than 60 percent during the past decade. Part of the appeal is that the installation cost has dropped, from $4 to $6 per installed watt five years ago to less than $2 a watt today, Chaimanis claims. “And it’s continuing to get cheaper and more competitive.”

He sees significant growth of renewables in other countries, including China and Mexico, which are aggressively investing in solar and wind power. “The recipe for successful renewable energy,” Chaimanis says, “is a stable regulatory climate with political certainty, and then the capital will come.”

Chaimanis acknowledges that renewable energy alone cannot yet supply all of the power needs in the U.S. “There’s more than enough wind energy and solar energy and land in the United States to generate the power we need,” Chaimanis says, “but the cost of storage today would make it an expensive proposition.”

However, Chaimanis sees a lot of work happening to increase the amount of renewables that the power grid can handle and to make the grid smarter and more efficient. Given the research by companies such as Tesla to develop cheaper battery technologies, he predicts the price of energy storage will become more affordable over the next decade. In the next 50 to 100 years, Chaimanis says, an all-renewable energy grid is “extremely possible.”

HUNTER HILL ’02

CFO, LPR Energy

Hunter Hill was born into an oil and gas family. Starting in the fifth grade, he spent summers working for his grandfather’s company, Hill Energy, helping map its oil and gas wells in Texas and Oklahoma. Later, when he graduated from Babson, Hill didn’t intend to join the family business. “But we were entering another energy boom, and my grandfather was getting up there in years and had failing health,” he says, “so I helped him run the company and wind down his affairs.”

After his grandfather’s death, Hill established PAS Capital, which invested in gas and oil projects. Later, he teamed up with his father and brothers to launch LPR Energy, a small, private oil and gas firm where he serves as CFO. The company drills for natural gas in central Pennsylvania; its customers include South Jersey Industries, one of the largest natural gas marketers in the Northeast.

Hill has had a front-row seat for the dramatic emergence of natural gas. In the early 2000s, companies working in the north-central Texas area perfected the then-new techniques of horizontal drilling and fracking to extract natural gas from a rock formation known as the Barnett Shale. The process involves drilling down at least a mile, and then drilling horizontally for several thousand feet through the shale. Once the well is drilled, water is pumped in, along with sand and additives, to create tiny fractures in the rock, permitting gas to escape. “One horizontal well can produce as much gas as probably 50 vertical wells,” Hill says, “but the cost of the horizontal well is only about three times that of one vertical well.”

Around 2008, companies including LPR began drilling in the Marcellus Shale, which includes areas in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and West Virginia, and found an abundance of natural gas. “In 2004, no one thought you’d be able to produce anything cost effectively from the Marcellus Shale, and today the Marcellus alone is producing 18 BCF [billion cubic feet] per day,” Hill says. “Overall production in the U.S. is around 70 BCF. The Marcellus is about 25 percent of production, and no one would have predicted that.” Hill says this has created jobs in the region, including at his own company, which employs more than 20 people to run its operations in central Pennsylvania.

The sudden abundance of natural gas triggered a dramatic drop in prices. “The oil and gas markets are very efficient, and the moment you have one molecule of excess supply, prices drop,” Hill explains. Still, given the current popularity of natural gas, he expects its price to increase in the near future. In addition to LPR Energy, Hill launched another company to purchase mineral rights from property owners in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. The company buys the minerals located under a person’s property, which gives Hill the right to lease the minerals for drilling, either by his company or a third party. If natural gas prices do rise, Hill’s company will drill new wells in search of additional gas.

Hill says one of the biggest challenges in natural gas is the question of what to do with the large quantities of wastewater produced by fracking; transporting the used water to disposal sites is one of LPR’s largest expenses. The challenge—and opportunity—lies in figuring out a portable, small-scale process to handle the water produced at the shale wells, cleaning it on-site for other uses, he says. Hill notes that people are working on this question; for the past five years, he has served as a judge for the Ben Franklin Technology Partners Shale Gas Innovation Contest, in which contestants pitch new ways to deal with mining challenges, including wastewater.

“There’s never a dull moment in this field,” Hill says. “You have to constantly be out there trying to figure out the next trend, the next game changer, and thinking, how is that going to impact my costs?”

ILENE MASON, MBA’08

Founder, Rethinking Power Management

Ilene Mason’s company, Rethinking Power Management (RPM), gives her insights into how municipalities and other organizations in New England are striving to become more sustainable, including their efforts to reduce power consumption.

Mason, who founded RPM to help organizations tackle sustainability issues and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, notes that New England is an especially exciting place to work on changing the local energy landscape. She cites former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick as a leader in this area for setting aggressive targets for carbon reductions and establishing a legislative framework to support those goals. Her small company has guided municipalities and businesses as they change their energy habits, from converting to LED streetlights to revamping the mechanical and ventilation systems in buildings. But meeting aggressive energy goals requires more than incremental changes, Mason adds. “If we’re going to achieve those carbon reductions, we need to go beyond changing lightbulbs and think more systemically, much more holistically, in terms of how we operate,” she says.

Mason admires innovative efforts by cities and towns to reduce their carbon emissions. “Boston and Cambridge have been very forward thinking in trying to reach those targets,” Mason says. She points to a “green steam” project, which involves a gas-fired power plant in Cambridge: The steam given off by the plant is captured and then routed by pipes to heat 250 buildings in Cambridge and Boston. Mason predicts that the energy infrastructure of the future will include more of these novel projects.

A metallurgical engineer by training, Mason took a break from that career when her children were young, volunteering for the Sierra Club and chairing her town’s recycling efforts. She eventually took a job with the Consortium for Energy Efficiency, which gave her insight into energy efficiency policies in the U.S. and Canada. But, as she finished her MBA at Babson, Mason realized she craved a role that would have a direct impact on energy use and greenhouse gas mitigation, and in 2009 she founded RPM.

Mason is concerned about what the current political climate could mean for energy efficiency and carbon-reduction efforts. “But I’m hopeful that local governments will be able to continue to push forward these kinds of policies and initiatives and continue to support them,” she says. “For me, the main driver is environmental stewardship, but the second piece of that is financial. As you become more efficient, you also can bring down costs, and for cities or towns or companies, that’s critical.”

CARL PEREZ ’15

Co-founder and CEO of Elysium Industries

Carl Perez and his co-founders at Elysium Industries want to build a better nuclear reactor. Their design is based on 1950s technology that was originally developed to power U.S. military planes, says Perez. The project was ultimately abandoned, due in part to budget cuts, and plans for this once-classified technology eventually were released into the public domain. Elysium obtained the plans, hired a staff of veteran nuclear designers, and is working to build a next-generation nuclear reactor that its founders view as a cheaper, carbon-free alternative to gas- and coal-fired power plants.

The Elysium team knows that the words “nuclear power” trigger fear of accidents like those in Chernobyl and Fukushima. But Perez says Elysium’s technology is safer and more stable than existing nuclear reactors because it uses a molten salt reactor, which doesn’t require human intervention to shut down in emergencies, such as a rise in temperature or an earthquake. And while older reactors burn roughly 4 percent of their uranium, the molten salt reactor burns 99.99 percent, eliminating the problems created by spent nuclear fuel, Perez explains. In fact, he claims this technology can run on the spent nuclear fuel generated by older nuclear plants.

Nuclear provides plentiful, carbon-free energy, says Perez, who believes that renewables such as wind and solar alone can’t meet the world’s voracious energy demands. For example, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that renewable energy provided only 13 percent of U.S. electricity in 2015. The Elysium reactor would produce about 1,000 megawatts of power, enough for 500,000 households in an industrialized country or more than 1 million households in less developed nations.

On a more personal level, one of Perez’s primary concerns is “energy poverty,” a lack of access to consistent power in Africa and elsewhere. The problem resonates for Perez, whose father was born in Algeria. During college, Perez studied such topics as the international energy infrastructure and the sub-Saharan energy sector. He found that though African countries are fertile for entrepreneurship, frequent power failures mean business owners must devote significant resources to purchasing backup power generators. Even developed areas in South Africa experience regular power outages, which limit the ability to conduct business. Perez wants to help and sees nuclear power as a solution.

For now, Elysium’s design team is about to begin materials testing on its first reactor. Although the company is pursuing the U.S. market, obtaining U.S. licenses is likely to take more than a decade. In the meantime, Perez and his colleagues are working with regulators in Canada, which has a vendor design review program that will take about three years. Elysium hopes interested utilities will sign on and then oversee licensing procedures and costs themselves. The company also hopes to attract interest in Japan. Perez says that in the aftermath of Fukushima, the country is dismantling its aging nuclear power plants, thus increasing its reliance on imported fossil fuels, so it is eager for safer nuclear options.

Given that renewable energy is unlikely to meet all of the world’s power needs in the foreseeable future, Elysium hopes to shift society’s thinking about nuclear power. “If the desired outcome is to generate electricity safely and without any carbon emissions,” Perez says, “then nuclear needs to be part of that discussion.”

SAVITHA SRIDHARAN, MBA’14

Founder and CEO, Orora Global

Photo: Jillian Clark
Savitha Sridharan, MBA’14, founder and CEO of Orora Global, provider of clean-energy solutions for rural and semi-urban communities

Savitha Sridharan believes that solar energy has the power to change women’s lives. Her company provides reliable and affordable renewable energy to rural communities in India that lack access to electricity; recent statistics from the World Bank reveal that about 300 million people in India don’t have power. She chose to focus on solar because it’s easily scalable and people in India seem open to this technology. “One of Orora’s chief missions is to empower more women to become part of the clean energy industry,” Sridharan says. “We hire and train women to become part of our network, and they go and light up the communities where they live in rural India.”

Born in Bangalore, Sridharan came to the U.S. to advance her studies, eventually working here for nine years as a designer of integrated circuits. “As much as life as an engineer was fun and I was doing what I wanted to do, I also had a strong passion for social change, for giving back to my country,” Sridharan says. Living in the U.S. with her husband, she raised thousands of dollars for nonprofits in India by running races, from 10ks to ultramarathons. A survivor of childhood sexual abuse, Sridharan felt especially committed to making life better for women.

At Babson, she focused on renewable energy, joining the Energy and Environment Club. “It gave me that confidence to go explore New England-based renewable companies, to learn about the industry and think about ways to replicate it or try something new,” she says. The concept for Orora took shape around two main products: solar-powered lanterns that hold a charge for up to eight hours after sitting in the sun for four to six hours, and solar-powered home-lighting systems. The company now also offers custom-built, solar-based systems for community buildings such as schools and hospitals.

Rural women tell Sridharan that her lanterns have been game changers. “If women don’t have sanitation, they have to walk into the wild to use the restroom at night,” Sridharan says. “They get attacked every day. My first customer made me cry. She said, ‘By giving me your solar lantern, I have not had a man touch me in three months, and I can walk around in the night safely.’ It’s returning their dignity, and that’s important to me.”

Orora is a for-profit company, and its main customers are local nonprofit agencies that connect Orora with communities. Orora helps the nonprofits raise funds to purchase lanterns and lighting systems for women to sell, and it trains women in salesmanship and business skills. “The women are involved in many ways, from business development to training other women to installing and servicing products to talking to the government,” Sridharan says. She recently teamed up with Womentum, a crowdfunding company founded by Babson undergraduate Prabha Dublish ’18, to run a yearlong campaign for Orora. They hope to raise enough in 2017 to give 200 women $150 each to start selling solar lanterns.

One of the beauties of solar power in rural India is its simplicity, Sridharan says. “Solar is one of the easiest solutions, because apart from the solar panels, all you need is the sun,” she says. “There’s no question of availability. In India, the sun is always there.”

Erin O’Donnell is a writer in Milwaukee.

Photo: Pat Piasecki
Miguel Rivera-Santos

Miguel Rivera-Santos, associate professor of strategy and international business, has studied Dadaab. He says that outsiders shouldn’t make assumptions about life there. “We close our eyes and think it’s a wasteland,” he says. “That’s wrong. It’s not a wasteland.” Conditions in the camp are dusty and dire, but residents work hard to build an existence. They make things. They buy and sell. The entrepreneurial spirit thrives, albeit on the most practical of levels. “The business activity is not about becoming rich,” says Rivera-Santos, the Louis J. Lavigne Research Scholar. “It’s about feeding one’s family.”

Rivera-Santos’ research focuses on communities in poor and overlooked places such as Dadaab; specifically, he examines how interactions with governments and multinational companies can affect those in poverty. Rivera-Santos’ work has taken him to many African countries, including Cameroon, Tanzania, South Africa, and Botswana. Those travels have left him impressed by Africa’s burgeoning business climate (“It’s a continent that is waking up,” he says) and inspired by its culture, history, and beauty. He is amazed by how much he doesn’t know about the continent. “Africa has a rich culture that goes back many hundreds of years,” he says.

Much of Rivera-Santos’ life has been spent moving among different countries and cultures. He was born and raised in Paris, but his parents come from Galicia in northwestern Spain. That explains his Spanish last name. It also explains a hobby he once pursued: playing the bagpipes. Galicia is a Celtic region in Spain, and the sounds of a bagpipe band are common in his family’s village. “It’s not the Scottish bagpipes but Galician bagpipes,” he says. “I can play, but I’m not good at it. I haven’t played in years.”

In Paris, Rivera-Santos and his family lived near the Canal St. Martin, an area that was once working class with mom and pop shops but has grown more “posh” over time, he says. As a child, he enjoyed Paris, but he didn’t view it as a beautiful or romantic city. It was simply what he knew, the place where he lived and went to school. Nowadays, he sees the city differently. “Going back, I see the beauty of it that I didn’t see before,” he says. “Now I’m a tourist when I go back, which is great.”

As a young adult after college, Rivera-Santos lived in Poland for almost six years during the 1990s. At the time, France had compulsory military or civil service, and Rivera-Santos choose the latter. This service brought him to Poland, where he worked for the French embassy, and when his 18 months of service were done, he decided to stay. He enjoyed Poland and its people, and the 1990s were an exciting time to be there as the country found its way after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Rivera-Santos remembers seeing new businesses continually popping up. “Things were coming back to life,” he says. “I think there was a real entrepreneurial spirit.”

After completing his civil service, Rivera-Santos worked for a foundation that fostered cooperation between French and Polish universities. As part of that work, he found himself in the classroom, teaching basic business courses. He enjoyed it. In fact, Rivera-Santos recalls clearly the day he decided to make teaching a career. He was teaching an intro to marketing course in the city of Lublin in eastern Poland, an agricultural area, and his class was full of farmers who needed help learning how to sell. One day, a student came up to him and said that he had positioned the wares in his co-op’s store according to principles that Rivera-Santos had taught in his class. “After your class, I reshelved,” the student said, “and then we sold more.”

Rivera-Santos was astonished. “I remember thinking, ‘I did something that had an impact,’” he says. “This guy got something out of that. It got him thinking.” In 1997, Rivera-Santos left Poland and went on to earn a doctorate in strategy from HEC Paris. He came to Babson for a job interview in 2002 and immediately was smitten by the school. “It felt like home,” he says. “I could picture myself in an office on campus.”

That was 15 years ago. At Babson, Rivera-Santos teaches courses on strategy and global business institutions and policies. He often brings examples from his travels into the classroom. When teaching about innovation in poor markets, for instance, he may discuss how cell phones changed grocery shopping in remote Tanzania or helped Cameroon entrepreneurs manage their fleet of trucks.

His research on poverty continues to bring him to Africa. One of his recent projects involved looking at how government policies have affected street vendors in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon. The vendors sell all sorts of items, from flowers to hats to phone cases, on the city’s streets. Viewing the vendors as a nuisance, but also wanting to help them out of poverty, the government introduced regulations, requiring vendors to register and pay taxes and moving them to a central location.

The government hoped the policies would legitimize the vendors and free them from corruption and the constant jockeying for prime spots on the streets. But while some vendors thrived, others didn’t, their way of doing business upended by the new rules. “All of a sudden, they had to completely change their business model,” Rivera-Santos says.

By traveling to Africa, Rivera-Santos strives to shine a light on communities, such as the street vendors, that are poor and powerless. He makes sure to share his research, whether with governments hoping to help those communities or with corporations looking to break into a new market. “My hope,” he says, “is that I can help them make better decisions, even in complex settings.”