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Boulder Climate Ventures Connects Leeds MBA Students to Climate Tech Innovation

Through interdisciplinary collaboration and hands-on venture work, students are discovering the business opportunities in climate solutions.

Alex Kaindl (MBA'26)

When Leeds MBA students join Boulder Climate Ventures, they step into an experience that reaches far beyond the classroom.

They join teams working on real climate ventures. They collaborate with engineers, PhD students and investors. And they begin to see, in a tangible way, how their business education can contribute to solutions for some of today’s most pressing challenges.

For students interested in entrepreneurship, investing and sustainability, Boulder Climate Ventures (BCV) offers a powerful opportunity to connect academic learning with real-world application. BCV is a collaboration between CESR and the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at Leeds, and the CU College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, funded by Breakthrough Energy. The program is based on a model that Breakthrough Energy has rolled out at five other universities globally, including Stanford and MIT. CU is the first public university to join this group of top universities located in hubs for climate innovation.

BCV started with a seminar series teaching students about business opportunities in climate tech in fall 2025 and has continued into an incubator for early-stage climate start-ups in spring 2026. 190 attendees participated in the fall, hearing from 22 speakers including investors, CEOs and industry experts. This spring more than 30 students have formed teams to explore the viability of new climate ventures.

The program brings together students from across the university, along with community members from Colorado’s thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem, to support and develop climate-focused ventures—giving Leeds MBA students the chance to apply their skills in an interdisciplinary, fast-moving environment.

Fostering connections to power impact

That cross-campus collaboration is part of what makes the experience so distinctive.

“It’s not often that an MBA gets to work on a project, much less be in a class, with a doctoral chemistry student,” said Katherine Ratledge, program manager at CESR and one of the leaders who brings BCV to life.

“BCV teaches engineers and business experts to work together,” said Mike McGehee, professor of engineering and a member of the BCV team. “It teaches them to identify a promising opportunity, do premarket research, refine a business plan and pitch an idea to investors and customers.”

That means moving beyond case studies and into the kind of hands-on work that defines early-stage ventures: shaping business models, exploring market opportunities and helping translate complex ideas into viable solutions.

Katrina Grosek (MBA'26)

For Katrina Grosek (MBA’26, Clean Energy Pathway), BCV has been one of the most energizing parts of her MBA experience. She joined the program while working as an intern helping to launch TerraForge Capital, a new venture fund focused on the energy transition. She said the combination of her internship with getting exposure to climate tech business opportunities every week was powerful.

“Working with the General Partner to build out the fund, while attending BCV sessions in parallel, was the most impactful form of experiential learning I’ve encountered throughout my MBA,” Grosek said. “I got a crash course in Climate 3.0 and how the industry has shifted.”

Grosek connected with the founder of AnodeWorks, an engineer developing an electrochemical manufacturing platform designed to solve the bioplastics scale-up problem, at a happy hour hosted by BCV in the fall. The pair gravitated toward each other to work together this spring thanks to their complementary combination of technical skills and investing experience. In her role as chief of staff, Grosek has helped the founder to build the team and leads business development, strategy, and investor relations.

“Talking about BCV is honestly what gets me going each day,” Grosek said. “It has been one of the best programs I’ve participated in since beginning my full-time MBA at Leeds.”

Deepening MBA skills through real-world experiences

For Jared Haltom (MBA’27, Clean Energy Pathway), BCV has created an opportunity to connect classroom learning with the realities of venture building. He first heard about the program during orientation but did not initially see how he, as an MBA student, would fit into a climate venture environment that seemed heavily technical. Once he joined, that changed quickly.

After participating in the fall seminar series, he now works on business development, financial modeling and techno-economic analysis for AnodeWorks, the same startup developing an electrochemical manufacturing platform designed to solve the bioplastics scale-up problem that Grosek is working with. His role has involved translating highly technical work into a viable market story and helping the team understand production costs, commercial potential and how to communicate with investors.

“Case studies are great, but we’re trying to solve a real problem for a real business here,” Haltom said.

That emphasis on real-world problem-solving helps students build skills that translate across industries and roles—from startup leadership and commercialization to venture capital and climate strategy. It also gives them confidence in navigating ambiguity, working across disciplines and contributing to ventures at an early stage.

Empowering climate founders

Working with MBA students offers tangible benefits for technical founders as well. Marc Manyé Ibáñez, Co-Founder and CEO of AnodeWorks and PhD student in chemical engineering, said the biggest value of BCV has been working with people who bring a different skill set.

“Working with MBA students forces us to really think about this as a real business, rather than just a science project,” Ibáñez said. “They bring a lot of rigor to our market research, but more importantly, they challenge our assumptions.”

BCV has also become a meaningful space for business students interested in building ventures of their own. Alex Kaindl (MBA’26, Sustainability Pathway), who first joined the fall BCV seminars and now participates in the incubator as a founder, said the program has offered structure, accountability and a community of people committed to climate-focused innovation. She’s exploring ideas she’s been passionate about for a long time, including community-based models for wildfire insurance and biodegradable replacements for plastic packaging, like wool that isn’t fine enough to be used to make sweaters, but could be valuable in industrial applications.

“BCV offers a support system for being an entrepreneur but also someone who cares about climate change and improving quality of life for people, planet, animals,” Kaindl said. “The facilitators are really invested in our growth and success. They give honest feedback and connect us with experts that pressure-test our ideas.”

Cultivating next-generation climate innovators

For Betsy Klein, associate director of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship, the community connections and experiential learning are central to the program’s value. BCV gives MBA students hands-on experience working with real climate startups while strengthening 91��ý’s broader entrepreneurship ecosystem.

“BCV is helping position 91��ý as a talent pipeline for the climate innovation economy,” Klein said. She’s excited that the program offers “the opportunity to help build the next generation of climate founders, operators, and investors.”

BCV is more than an extracurricular opportunity. It is a space to explore how business skills can support innovation, collaboration and impact. It helps students imagine new professional pathways—ones that bring together purpose, problem-solving and leadership.

And in that way, Boulder Climate Ventures is doing more than introducing students to climate entrepreneurship. It is helping them see how their time at Leeds can prepare them to build careers—and contribute solutions—that matter.