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HEC Paris MBA Helps Engineer Set Up Eco Consulting Firm

HEC Paris alumnus Thierry Fornas explains how his MBA took him from working for the giants of industry to setting up carbon-offsetting schemes.

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Workers in Burkina Faso begin work on an EcoAct carbon- sink and reforestation scheme. EcoAct runs similar schemes around the world.

Many MBA students set up their own consulting firms after they graduate, but HEC Paris alumnus Thierry Fornas’ firm is one with a difference.

While other consulting firms aim to increase a company’s profitability or boost a flagging brand, Fornas’ company, EcoAct, offers advice on how companies can increase their environmental and social responsibility.

“I wanted to do something with meaning,” explains Fornas, speaking to BusinessBecause from EcoAct’s offices. “In my past professional experience, [I was] working in industry, working in big companies. I wanted to have a professional experience which would be meaningful to me, but would also have meaning in what I could bring to people.”

Established in 2005, EcoAct initially focused on renovating and restoring dilapidated parts of France; roadsides, housing settlements, and brownfield sites. But, as Fornas tells us, “It was quite difficult to make them [our clients, which included giants of industry such as General Electric and BNP Paribas] pay for the cost of a such an operation!”

Thierry Fornas, HEC Paris MBA Graduate, 2006

With France’s high corporate taxes, EcoAct had to offer more to the companies it was consulting, and in 2007, the firm changed course, focusing on carbon reduction schemes.

EcoAct’s clients were given smart and financially efficient ways to curb their carbon emissions. People in the developing world were also given job opportunities, as EcoAct’s carbon-offsetting schemes ranged from investing in a hydroelectric plant in Yancun, China, to a biogas farm in Itararé, Brazil.

Across EcoAct’s projects, there are two constants: the reduction of carbon emissions and the spread of economic advantages to some of the world’s most deprived areas

But while HEC Paris varied and stimulating MBA curriculum does not yet include a course on “Saving the World”, Fornas says that his time there was immensely valuable. “Everything I learned was for me really meaningful and useful,” he says, “I’m still using all my books!”

For Fornas, trained as an engineer, the move from microelectronics to eco-consulting was only possible thanks to his MBA and the HEC syllabus.

“What I’m doing is completely different to my ten years of experience before [the MBA],” he says, “I took the maximum from the MBA course and I use eighty percent of it every day.”

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Comments

26 July 2011

Thanks for your message Alexandra.
We did a lot of hard selling and contacted a lots of prospects.
After 9 months, we had our 1st customer: General Electric!

thierry

Thanks for your message Alexandra.
We did hard-seeling from the beginning, and performed a lot of potential customer visits: public authorities, big and medium companies.
We also built an offer, and proposed it to these prospects...
After 9 months, we had our 1st major customer: GE!

thierry

fascinating story. as a start-up eco consultant thierry how did you get your customers initially? sales is the one thing they don't teach enough in business school i think!