The Ainslie Simmonds HBA '92 & Mark Manley MBA '03 Award is conferred to a full-time HBA2 student at the Ivey Business School who demonstrates excellence in sustainability. Below is a Q&A with last year’s winner, HBA 2026 student Zehan Li.
What inspired your interest in sustainability? Can you share a personal experience that influenced your perspective on it?
I chose to pursue a dual degree with HBA and PPE (Politics-Philosophy-Economics) to understand how corporations influence society’s most pressing issues. On Cross-Enterprise Leadership Day in my HBA1 year, we covered the case of the Maple Leaf Foods CEO making politically controversial and divisive tweets. That was the first day I had truly considered the duties of a CEO, not just to his or her company and the shareholders, but to society. It made me consider how difficult, but necessary, it is to defend what you stand for even when the environment is tense. In business, we often talk about inflection points, catalysts, and tailwinds, but the truth is that there is rarely an easy time to create change.
Since that day, I’ve been trying to understand the degree of obligation and possibilities for corporations to address social and environmental issues in tandem with business. And since that day, I have regarded business leaders as societal leaders.
How has your education at Ivey helped you develop your understanding of environmental issues?
Ivey’s foundational teaching style of in-class participation and collaboration has pushed me to view complex issues from various viewpoints. Class discussions ensure that important perspectives are rarely missed, and I’ve found that I have many passionate peers and professors who can speak endlessly on the issues they care about. Being from Alberta with parents working in oil and gas, I came to Ivey with an appreciation for fossil fuels while wanting to strive for more in an energy transition. From cases in my managing energy course to office hours with my professors to lessons from my peers on why they are for nuclear energy, I have access to so many resources and people with more knowledge than myself. At Ivey, I’ve been able to form my own opinions through so many different perspectives.
Are there specific classes, projects, or experiences at Ivey that have been particularly impactful? Feel free to provide an example.
The access to learning from and working with professors at Ivey is seriously underrated. In my second semester of HBA1, after having had winter break to think about Cross-Enterprise Leadership Day, I realized I wanted to get more involved with research. I reached out to two different sustainability professors at Ivey—professors who I had never taken a class with—to ask if I could aid them in their research. Both professors gave an enthusiastic “Yes”; they even offered to pay me when I’d asked to help for free! I owe big thanks to Professor Nouri Najjar and Professor Wren Montgomery for not only letting me be involved with their work, but for all the time and expertise they afforded my questions and discussions. I had the chance to explore the newest developments in greenwashing, carbon accounting, emissions tracking, and more, while having weekly thoughtful discussions one-on-one with my professors. Professor Nouri has continued taking all my questions this year, from electricity grid systems to my PPE thesis, and Professor Wren even kept answering my questions while on sabbatical from California. Getting to be on the ‘frontlines’ of knowledge while working under experts is so rewarding, and I’m very grateful to have so many brains to pick at Ivey.
What does winning this award mean to you, personally and professionally?
Winning this award shows me that hard work is noticed, and it encourages me to keep trying to make change. Trying to find answers in sustainability often simply leads to more questions. Sometimes it feels like there may be no feasible solutions, no restorative systems, and no willing leaders. As a student, it is also a less traditional and more uncertain direction to try to pursue a career in. Receiving this award shows me that people value the pursuit for change, and that there is a future for me and others to try to do so.
What advice would you give to other students or young professionals who want to make an impact?
My recommendations would be to ask lots of questions and to try to decide what area of sustainability interests you the most. Many of my early conversations were full of big and painfully unanswerable questions. At the beginning, you know so little that you don’t even know what to ask, but as you ask more questions, you get exposed to the little details that warrant more interesting discussions.
Sustainability is such a broad topic; I think it’s best to find a space in sustainability that you find interesting to motivate yourself to explore on your own and reach out to experts. For me, it was cleantech venture capital (VC). Innovation and emerging technologies excite me; they make me constantly rethink my vision of the future.
How do you envision incorporating sustainability into your future career?
I’m still not sure! I’ve spent a lot of time exploring cleantech VC and would love to work in that space. However, it’s still a very uncertain and relatively small field in Canada without a lot of opportunities to jump in. With my personal connections to the energy sector, that’s a field I could see myself spending a lot of my career in as well, be it in a financial or strategic capacity. I also gained experience in ESG consulting and became very familiar with corporate ESG ratings this year; that’s a direction I could go in as well.
What role do you think individuals and communities play in achieving a sustainable future?
It can feel hard to make an impact as an individual, but if we can change the collective status quo, the sum of every individual’s impact will be monumental. It starts with understanding our impact. Everyday choices like how we manage our energy, what we do with our waste, how we move around, what we buy, and so on, make up our footprint. Beyond our individual footprint, we also contribute to important systems in energy, retail production, agriculture, etc. It helps to be educated on these systems, and their lifecycle of original source to consumption. In this respect, it’s important to educate each other and rely on others for knowledge. I’ve personally been trying to share my perspectives on fast fashion and overconsumption with my parents. It’s hard to overcome differences across generations, languages, etc., but mutual understanding on any level makes a difference in the long run.
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