While studying abroad in Australia, Duke University senior Casey Goldstein attended one of the first climate tech conferences in that country. There, he was exposed to all sorts of off- and online communities dedicated to sharing resources and networks in the climate tech space.
He stumbled across a Zoom meetup hosted by two college students who wanted to meet other college students and discuss finding careers in the climate space. It was here that Goldstein fell in love with the community outreach and realized that he and these other students can do more to grow this community even further.
From then, he collaborated with Elon graduate Larsen Burack and Princeton University senior Abid Sikder to create College to Climate (CTC), an online platform designed to connect college students to climate and climate tech resources, professionals and opportunities.
Beginning by hosting virtual meetups, the platform quickly reached students from six continents. Its success evolved the platform to host a Launchpad Program, a four-week program bringing industry speakers to speak to students virtually. The platform also runs a global Slack community, a weekly newsletter and a podcast.
Goldstein is working on College to Climate as part of Duke’s Melissa & Doug Entrepreneurs Accelerator, a year-long intensive program designed for Duke students who are committed to launching and growing their companies. (We previously featured fellow cohort members Hayha Bots, Alleviate Health and SaveOr.)
Goldstein and his other co-founders are all interested in climate tech in a variety of different sectors but were frustrated at the lack of a transparent college-to-career pipeline. They realized the difficulty for high school and college students to leverage their skills for the climate space was due to the decentralized nature of the existing workforce. According to Goldstein, it’s harder to inspire the next generation to invest time and resources because it can take so long for them to get their feet set in the industry.
CTC strives to counteract this problem by using a top-down approach, connecting top industry leaders and resources directly to these students. And according to Goldstein, these professionals were more than excited to help bring their expertise to CTC’s growing community of students that spans across more than 30 countries.
“We happen to be in a space where people are unbelievably friendly,” Goldstein said. “People are also really interested in empowering the next generation who wield the power to fix climate change, so they’re actually relieved and really excited when we approach them with the opportunity to inspire the next people who are going to be at the table.”
CTC’s connection with these industry professionals builds a great foundation for an international audience who are all conversing about the same issues. That’s where they’ve benefited greatly from word-of-mouth marketing by formal and informal campus ambassadors, spreading their influence on a global scale.
CTC’s growing reach and demand evolved the platform to run its first formal education Launchpad Program in June 2023, opening it up for free for anyone in the world who’s interested in learning how to find jobs in climate and build up the skills necessary to do so. Goldstein said that even in their first iteration of the program, students made tons of connections and even had immediate hires out of the program.
Since that success, CTC has launched and just concluded their second Launchpad Program, with over 50 students—a majority of them international students—who have participated. They will soon launch their Campus Ambassador Program, which will allow more students and interaction on more campuses across the world.
Goldstein’s dedication to uplifting this global climate community is what got him and CTC into the 2023-2024 cohort of the Melissa & Doug Entrepreneurs Accelerator.
“I am so unbelievably grateful for what [the M&D program] has done,” Goldstein said. “They give us access to funding and resources and it has been the biggest catalyst for us. We’re so grateful for the program and all the amazing opportunities that it’s come with.”
Goldstein and his team all agreed that when they created this organization, they wanted to democratize access to education, resources and networking for students across the world. Even after Goldstein graduates, he finds himself gravitating toward creating a company out of this platform in order to scale and bring these opportunities to as many students as possible.
And they have the numbers to prove their success. There are over 350 people involved in CTC’s Slack community and their presence expands to over 100 universities across the world.
Goldstein said that the most prevalent feedback they received were from people who were disappointed by how lonely it is in the climate job space, especially on campuses notoriously known for other subjects. Goldstein wants CTC to be a space for people to know that they’re not alone and should celebrate their interest in pursuing this space, among hundreds of like-minded peers across the world.
“As companies get bigger, they’re scaling for job opportunities, but it still very much is a network-driven space,” Goldstein said. “Giving college students the ability—amidst all other career paths they’re considering—to have a clear, defined route and a community of people that want to do that very same thing is the most powerful thing that we can offer.”
