As a fellow with the Climate Knowledge Initiative (CKI), I contributed to research on decarbonising the aviation industry, which accounts for about two percent of global emissions and is among the hardest sectors to abate. My primary focus was sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). I evaluated the costs, enabling technologies, and barriers to adoption, and conducted detailed analyses of government policies such as SAF mandates, tax incentives, and subnational investment plans. Our team compared policy designs ranging from production subsidies to blending mandates to assess how structure, timing, and scale influence adoption rates and reduce SAF costs to a level competitive with conventional jet fuel. This work supports CKI’s mission to inform capital allocation toward decarbonisation by equipping decision makers with clear, evidence‑based insights.

Working with CKI leveraged my Columbia MBA skill set. Courses on climate economics and growth‑oriented policy tools taught me to analyse the efficacy of different policy approaches and provide recommendations for structuring effective initiatives. I also applied quantitative research methods from Managerial Statistics and Business Analytics to support my analyses. Collaborating with students from SIPA, Engineering, and the Climate School exposed me to more technically diverse teams than I had encountered in consulting or MBA classes. I also drew upon leadership concepts from courses like LEAD and Success, Satisfaction, and Sustainability to navigate interdisciplinary collaboration.

One challenge was adapting my consulting toolkit to a research environment focused on structural questions rather than discrete business problems. I needed to account for nuances such as technical feasibility, stakeholder trade‑offs, and policy design. Combining academic tools with my consulting skills enabled me to produce research that was analytically robust yet accessible to non‑technical audiences, consistent with CKI’s mission.

This fellowship expanded my understanding of climate policy across regions and demonstrated the transferability of my skills to complex, open‑ended challenges. I gained a deeper knowledge of the aviation sector’s decarbonisation challenges, improved my ability to translate technical insights into actionable recommendations, and reinforced the importance of structured thinking and clear communication in climate policy debates.