Carishma Gokhale-Welch, Project Leader Clean Energy at NREL

The financing piece was one of the initial draws for me. But even so, in my day-to-day, I find myself working closely with electrical engineers on microgrids, and while there is a lot I know from my masters or from experiential learning -because I've been on a project or have had to read reports or do some peer reviews-, it's been great to have access to foundational concepts in energy through the Foundations course and the Technology Transitions course. I didn’t actually have to take the Foundations course, but I appreciated being able to take it to walk through some of those concepts and refresh my memory. It has definitely built on what I already know, but allowed me to take time to better articulate what I'm thinking. It has been very helpful.

I also do find myself working more and more with the private sector, so this gives me a different perspective from the researchers and technical institutions and governments that I usually work with. I really look forward to being able to apply this knowledge with the private sector.

This ties back to my previous comment; I actually don't get to interact with the private sector so much. And the diversity of the cohort brings a different perspective. Every time I go to a conference that's geared toward deployment, I feel the same way; we’re thinking through theoretical, techno-economic limitations, but actually putting something in the ground is so different. 

The diversity in the cohort challenges that view. There's someone looking at insurance, someone looking at consulting, or there's someone looking at putting PV and storage out there. And so I think the perspectives from the class, the discourse, the comments, the feedback you get from your peers has been really neat.

You know, even the platform has been great in helping facilitate those conversations.

I sure hope so! I already work on clean energy every day, but this directly impacts how well I respond to my job, how well I can help the clients and I can support NREL’s mission in general. And I am grateful for the support of my manager.

Lifelong learning has always been a passion and a goal for me. Grad school was a long time ago and things change. And this is a little bit different from what I studied. I was always interested in the business side of clean energy and this is my opportunity to focus on that. This program is helping me develop a deeper understanding of not just the technology, but also project development and finance as well as the business case.

You know, I like ruminating on things. I use the platform a lot to just keep in touch for logistics, but also with my peers. Sometimes I'll take it offline with one or two folks on a text or email. And I'm still figuring out how to leverage these relationships. But this partnership that I think I was pursuing in the academic space with CBEY is also there with the cohort. Together we’re so much more impactful than just sitting in our silos. It's very easy to get entrenched in what you do and just sort of focus on that. So, this program has also enabled me to think outside my silo. 

And you know, some in the cohort are changing slightly what they're doing. But what I do is exactly what I want to keep doing; so expanding my network and creating these relationships is critical. I'd love to leverage that and team up with folks in the cohort! I haven't thought through it fully yet, but how cool would it be if a bunch of us got together and actualized something. It could be working together on a board, or supporting the design or deployment of a project, or assisting a government in a developing country, or something somewhere where we can leverage each other's skills.

Practically it would have precluded my ability to participate in the program if I had to be in New Haven in person for longer than a week at this point in my career…

But beyond this obvious benefit, being able to articulate and respond to questions on a platform helps me think. The weekly timeline also forces you to be more efficient because it’s challenging. And it's nice to be able to mull over things and let things percolate in your brain. So my response 20 minutes later, my “daily dose,” is much more refined than what it would be if I immediately said something. And these are all benefits of the program being online. 

There are a lot of resources at Yale itself. Both the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and the Yale School of Management are world-class institutions. And so I think they bring not only a lot of faculty resources, but it also attracts the right cohort. 

Energy is an interdisciplinary field in general, but I've appreciated that the program is technical but also gives you the ability to be broad if you like. I'd consider myself being in a later stage in my career. And in that phase and it's helping coalesce concepts and theories. It seems like a weird thing to say but I think it does a good job of reaching out to both people who are advanced in their careers and people who are less familiar in the space and need to get up to speed. 

I'll also say that I think just continuing to learn and not being fossilized (pun intended) has always been something I strive to do. And this program, of course, has been instrumental in creating an opportunity to take my momentum forward and to renew my commitment to lifelong learning.

You know, working at NREL, I do have access to a lot of learning resources, people, reports, databases and things like that. But I think I've been most impressed with the design of these courses and modules, especially the policy one because it was designed to help walk me through things, some of which I have in one way or another in my brain, but it helped me tie them together.

And I do so together with a group of people and get that instantaneous feedback. So instead of being these disparate concepts, it helps sort of write a story for a lot of these different pieces. I don't know that it's unexpected but it's been my aha moment! Because I'm in this line of work and I work on these things every day. The program has helped me bring things into a different focus, with different lenses. That's impressive.