Highland Electric Fleets is the market leader in electrifying school buses, offering a turnkey solution that covers the process from bus procurement and depot design to financing and training. School buses are the largest form of public transportation in the United States, meaning that electrifying buses can and will have an important impact on reducing emissions. During my summer at Highland, I worked on a few different projects as part of the product team. I worked closely with the product marketing manager, Matt (my direct manager), and also worked directly with teams across Highland, including marketing, legal, sales, finance, and operations. I had five primary projects, which were:

1. creating new stakeholder personas;
2. drafting messaging and training materials for the commercial team;
3. analyzing a large set of government vehicle registration data to identify market characteristics and trends;
4. developing a comprehensive marketing competitive analysis; and 5) working on the business plan for a brand new vertical. Each project had a clear set of associated deliverables. For example, I created stakeholder personas for school bus drivers, bus dealers, fleet managers, and student advocates, with the goal of helping the marketing and other commercial teams to tailor messaging and communications when interfacing with various stakeholders. Stakeholder engagement and mobilization is key to Highland's success. Another example is the business plan I worked with the growth team to create for a new potential product offering. This required me to fully assess, understand, and document Highland's current capabilities across the organization in order to assess feasibility of this new offering. It was really interesting to see how a startup at such an early stage approaches growth. As part of this project, I presented findings directly to the CEO, which was a very valuable career experience and made me feel that my contributions were truly valued!

   My learnings from the CBS MBA core classes contributed to my work this summer in different ways. For example, without Financial Accounting and Corporate Finance I would have struggled to understand Highland's core business model and how it is able to leverage asset depreciation and tax credits to drive value for both the company and customers. The marketing core class helped me to assess the unique value proposition and positioning of each competitor when creating the marketing competitive analysis. When working on the business plan for a potential new vertical, I found myself thinking often of learnings from Strategy class, particularly around what characteristics and capabilities can help enable a company to expand successfully in a new market. The Climate Policy course I took with Gernot Wagner helped me to better understand the post-IRA regulatory environment and current system of tax incentives/credits, which are particularly important to Highland right now. I am confident that learnings from MBA classes supplemented my existing skill set from consulting to help me drive value for Highland this summer.

   One challenge I faced in my internship was deciding how to structure my projects and prioritize between them on a day-to-day basis. As a former consultant, I was used to working on one core project at a time with timelines set primarily by clients. My projects had varying degrees of reliance on other people within Highland — for example, working on the business plan for the new vertical was a very collaborative project with the growth team, whereas creating the marketing competitive analysis was primarily independent work. I had to figure out the right timeline for each project and adjust as the summer went on based on findings or availability constraints. Fortunately, everyone at Highland was very supportive of my projects and willing to spend time sharing knowledge, and my manager Matt was always a great resource and sounding board. Another challenge I faced was having very little knowledge about this industry. It took some time to get up to speed, but learning so much about fleet electrification, school transportation, and electric buses ended up being one of the most valuable and interesting parts of the internship. Highland experts from all of these different areas were more than willing to share knowledge and experience on training calls.

   My two primary (and positive) takeaways were that I do want to work in climate tech, and I do want to work in a startup environment. It felt very rewarding to work with colleagues who felt similarly passionate about working at a company that is doing something to combat climate change. There was a sense of energy and inspiration that I never experienced in my previous career. The effects of climate change felt particularly tangible this summer — for example, with the smoke from the Canadian wildfires turning the skies of NYC orange — and as horrible and scary as that was, it reaffirmed my sense of purpose and motivation. I am still exploring which exact area of climate tech I want to work in, but I also realized that what matters most is that the company is doing something real and tangible to reduce emissions/combat climate change and that employees are united around this purpose.

   Before this internship, I had only ever worked with huge Fortune 500 companies on consulting projects. I felt excited about working at a startup but was unsure if I would actually like such a drastically different work environment. My experience this summer validated that I do want to work somewhere early-stage. Even as an intern, I felt that the work I was doing was actually valuable to the company because there was just so much to get done. My team really listened to my ideas and I even had the opportunity to present outputs from one project to the CEO and other members of leadership. As a consultant, I rarely felt that my work would make any real impact on the client, so this was a welcome change. I also really liked that most people at the company knew each other, creating a sense of community and connection to the workplace that I hadn't experienced before. I am happy that my summer internship confirmed my goals, and I feel excited and energized about my next steps.