Nick Rojas (MS/MBA ’24) graduated with a dual degree from the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) and the Ross School of Business through their partnership, the Erb Institute for Global Enterprise. Rojas, a Mertz Fellow who specialized in Sustainable Systems, is now the chief of staff at Investature, a climate startup focused on mobilizing the $12.5T in U.S. retirement assets to fight climate change instead of fueling it.

Before coming to U-M, Rojas graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a bachelor’s degree in geography and had worked at a variety of Bay Area startups in program and project management roles, figuring out what exactly he liked doing to help him decide on a career he wanted to pursue.

After spending years scaling startups and founding one of his own, he discovered he wanted to work on tackling the global problems of sustainability. 

“I want my career to be focused on addressing the climate crisis and creating not just a more environmentally sustainable world, but a more socially just world as well,” says Rojas.

Rojas initially decided to return to school for a master’s degree because many of the roles he was interested in required either consulting experience or a master’s in business administration. As he was looking for programs, he came across the SEAS dual-degree program with Ross, and thought, “That’s sort of perfect. I have a bit of a science background, but never the hard science piece, particularly around sustainability issues, which I have always wanted, and I don’t have that hard business background. This sort of solves both of those.”

He says he liked the idea that the dual-degree program, which gave him a cohort through the Erb Institute of other students doing the same thing, while also getting perspectives from students in SEAS and Ross alone. Plus, he says it was one of the few programs he found that had a dedicated dual degree program for students studying the intersection of sustainability and business. 

“What Erb really focused on, and what I really enjoyed, was getting to dive deep into the business incentives to becoming more sustainable and how we align that with what the science is telling us we need to do if we have any chance of saving this planet, by using transnational corporations, the strongest force the planet has ever seen, to actually enact the change to do something good,” says Rojas.

In dual-degree programs, students can choose which school they want to take classes in first. Even though he applied to Ross first, Rojas started his dual degree program at SEAS because he “wanted to understand the climate frameworks that we’re working in first, and then focus on where to apply the business skills and context to address those different problems.”

Rojas did a traditional SEAS master’s project on greenhouse gas accounting. The project, Meijer Scope 3 Carbon Accounting Framework, advised by Greg Keoleian, conducted an emissions inventory on 15 categories to determine emissions impacts, data management and areas for improvement. Rojas says this project aligned well with both his SEAS and Ross curricula. 

When reflecting on his time at U-M, Rojas says one of his favorite courses was Climate Change Science and Solutions with Parth Vaishnav, which gave him his sustainability fundamentals. He says everyone studying business who wants to work in climate should take the course. 

Since graduating, Rojas has become a mentor to many prospective and current SEAS students. One piece of advice he has for prospective master's students is to be intentional with what you do in school beyond the classroom and ask yourself, “What are you missing that you think only grad school can provide?” For graduating students, he says to ask yourself, “Do I have the skill set I need for the roles I want? If not, I have a few more months to put myself on a path to get to that point. Part of that might be doing jobs that are not exactly what I wanted, but help me get the experience and critical skills I need for that future role.”