New Tuck Course Connects Global Climate Negotiations to Business Strategy

For students interested in international climate policy and its implications for business, government, and society, participating in COP offers a rare learning opportunity, immersing them in high-stakes negotiations involving delegations from 195 countries—an experience that can at times feel dizzying.

“You get that deer in the headlights feeling pretty quickly if you don’t go into [COP] with the right orientation and focus,” says Bach, a climate change law and policy analyst who has been leading Tuck’s COP delegations since 2019.

In recent years, Bach has advised students in a for-credit independent study project (ISP) to apply what they’re learning at COP to a problem impacting global businesses. The new practicum course that debuted in the fall, The Private Sector in International Climate Negotiations, takes this applied learning concept a step further. Every student who attended COP enrolled in the course, which paired student teams with external business partners to complete a project related to a topic on the COP30 agenda.

In addition to sponsoring Tuck’s COP30 delegation, the Center for Business, Government & Society (CBGS) and the Revers Center for Energy, Sustainability and Innovation worked with Bach to source project partners for the practicum. One of those partners, Ann Tracy TEE’02, serves as chief sustainability officer at Colgate-Palmolive and is a past participant in Tuck Executive Education’s Global Leadership Program. The other two are Tuck MBA alumni Melina Sánchez Montañés T’20, principal at AENU, and Posie Holmes T’21, who works as general manager, markets, for a leading aerospace company. Montañés and Holmes were CBGS Fellows and attended COP25 as part of the first Tuck delegation Bach led in 2019. 

“We all know how exceptional the Tuck network is, and you love seeing experiences like these come full circle,” says Hannah Payson, executive director for the Center for Business, Government and Society. 
Payson noted that another Tuck alum, Brazil native Dan Ioschpe T’91, held a distinguished role at COP30. Selected by Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as a high-level climate champion, Ioschpe supported the COP30 Action Agenda, leading efforts to expand voluntary commitments, initiatives, and coalitions for the implementation of the Paris Agreement. In 2024, Ioschpe served as chair of the B20 coalition, an official dialogue forum with the global business community leading into the G20 Summit, also hosted by Brazil.

“These examples illustrate the impact Tuck alumni are making in sustainability-focused roles, across different industries and markets,” says Jonathan Silverthorne D’08, director for the Revers Center for Energy, Sustainability & Innovation. “Their leadership inspires and informs current students as they explore the breadth of opportunities available to them.”

One of the major talking points leading up to COP30 was its location. Most COPs are held in a major urban center of the host country, but COP30 took place in Belém, a harder-to-access destination at the northern edge of the Amazon. Despite the logistical challenges, the choice of Belém was deeply symbolic with the Amazon region at the epicenter of climate concerns in Brazil and home to more than half of the country’s indigenous population. 

The choice resonated with Jules Wheaton T’26, D’19, a member of Tuck’s COP30 delegation whose own interests in sustainability and climate advocacy were shaped by her experience growing up in New Mexico.
“I think more so than some other places in the U.S., New Mexico is very much tied to its geography and natural resources,” says Wheaton. “People are consciously aware of droughts and the impacts of extreme weather, and it’s also home to a large indigenous population.”

As part of the Colgate-Palmolive practicum team, Wheaton was tasked with researching ways regenerative agriculture can play a role in reducing the company’s Scope 3 emissions. She says exploring the topic at COP30 revealed how multifaceted regenerative agriculture can be, impacting crop yields and profits as well as the livelihoods of local farmers. Wheaton witnessed the importance of relationship-building during a panel event featuring a Brazilian farming collective, PepsiCo, and Tetra Pak.

“The discussion called attention to the human element and the importance of thinking about these problems from all angles,” says Wheaton. “There are long-term benefits that can rub up against the difficulty for local farmers to get from one season to the next.”

Before Tuck, Ludovica Gianni T’26 spent nearly three years as a financial services consultant in Europe, primarily focused on climate-risk management. That experience, in addition to her summer internship at Marriott, highlighted the complexity of dealing with vastly different climate policies and regulations in different parts of the world.

For her practicum project, Gianni partnered with AENU, a Berlin-based venture capital firm focused on sustainability investments. Until recently, most of the fund’s investments have focused on climate mitigation. They turned to Gianni and her practicum team to help assess opportunities in climate adaptation—a less developed investment area with fewer established KPIs. The team ultimately recommended two focus areas: climate data and food and agriculture, including water security. 

“The market for high-level geospatial and weather-related data is substantial since it helps assess risk and make predictions relevant to a variety of sectors and industries—from banking and insurance to real estate development,” says Gianni. “There is also a lot of research pointing to the importance of desalination technologies and their potential to significantly increase access to safe, drinkable water.”

One of the biggest COP30 takeaways for Gianni, and something she expects will remain top-of-mind in her work after Tuck is the art of persuasion in helping others recognize the business imperatives of climate change.

“It’s one thing to talk about climate issues with leaders and businesses that already see it as a priority, but there are companies and whole industries that aren’t conditioned that way,” explains Gianni. “To negotiate well, you have to know your audience and speak to what’s important to them.”