A Landlocked Ocean Lover, Utilizing Enterprise to Save the Sea | Leeds Faculty of Enterprise

From Enterprise at Leeds 2022 | Full challenge

Emma Pearson is an element entrepreneur, half marine scientist, and wholly decided to guard our oceans.

Rising up in landlocked Colorado, Emma Pearson (Fin, EBio’22) first dove into the ocean by means of TV. She grew to become hooked on Nationwide Geographic documentaries in regards to the ocean, then grew to become enthusiastic about saving it. 

By highschool, she had began a nonprofit, Sea the Change, to teach and encourage elementary college college students in Colorado about ocean conservation.

Since then, Sea the Change has continued to evolve, because of the enterprise ideas Pearson realized at Leeds. She lately graduated from CU with a twin diploma in finance and ecology and evolutionary biology, however initially had no intention of majoring in enterprise. It was a last-minute choice primarily based on intestine intuition. 

She quickly realized her hunch had been proper: A enterprise ability set may assist her save the ocean. “I believe that the true answer to defending the ocean lives on the intersection of enterprise and science and coverage. My objective is to catalyze that intersection,” Pearson stated. 

Faces of Leeds: Meet Emma Pearson

At Leeds, she grew to become each a Leeds Scholar and a Leeds Honors scholar, making the most of the experiential alternatives that got here with these distinctions. She went to South Africa by means of the First-Yr World Expertise program—a visit she referred to as “life-changing.” There, she did a consulting venture, drawing upon her nonprofit expertise to present recommendation to a neighborhood group. 

“Them taking me critically as an 18-year-old was simply actually thoughts blowing,” she stated. “It didn’t simply assist me develop as a pacesetter, nevertheless it helped me outline the place I needed my profession to go.” 

With newfound pleasure in regards to the area of consulting, she joined Leeds Consulting Group and developed her management abilities, later profitable CU’s Pupil Chief of the Yr Award. 

Whereas working her approach by means of enterprise courses, she concurrently pursued her science diploma. For 2 years she interned on the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, serving to to develop a synthetic intelligence-driven detector for blue whale sound manufacturing. Her honors thesis, evaluating temporal and seasonal patterns of the whales’ noise ranges, might be printed this December in CU’s Honors Journal.

It was throughout her internship search that her pursuits converged. When she stumbled throughout Boston Consulting Group, she was impressed by their relationship with the World Wildlife Basis and their conservation work. As an intern there, she networked with world managing companions in London, then boldly reached out to the CEO to speak about sustainability. 

“I gained some confidence from my experiences at Leeds—and the largest factor I’ve realized on the subject of pursuing your profession is make them say no, don’t say no to your self,” Pearson stated.

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