A Wharton Graduate Chooses Entrepreneurship to ‘Fight the Fire’ of Saving Our Planet
Students who attend the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania as undergraduates are known for pursuing internships and jobs in investment banking and management consulting. They seek prestige, competitive edge, great salaries, and the kind of strategic thinking that advances careers in business.
When Svanika Balasubramanian (pictured above talking about circularity, a sustainability concept where resources and products are kept in use for as long as possible) was a Wharton undergrad in 2015-2018, she too worked as a summer analyst for Deloitte Middle East and Morgan Stanley in New York City.
Then, she caught the entrepreneurship bug. And, a chance partnership with a student assigned to be her peer reviewer changed the direction of her life.
“My now-co-founder Peter Hjemdahl (a past Wharton Global High School Investment Competition client) was writing his thesis at Wharton about the economics of female waste workers in India, in the slums of Mumbai at the Deonar East landfill,” noted Svanika, whose original research project was on the economics of refugee resettlement and immigration in Germany. “He was researching a topic that I deeply cared about…so, we decided to co-write the thesis together. Eventually, we had this 200-page paper, and it just felt wrong to leave it at that, because we had somehow peered behind the curtain at a very not-talked-about topic, and there was so much there. We didn’t have it in our hearts to step away from that and do a different job in New York.”
And thus was born rePurpose Global. The company has grown into one of the world’s leading plastic action platforms that brings together brands, consumers, innovators and policymakers to combat the plastic waste crisis and improve the lives of marginalized waste workers – a startup that won Penn’s prestigious President’s Engagement Prize in 2018.
Seven years later, Svanika, Peter and their other co-founder Aditya Siroya – each at one time destined for corporate finance — are all-in on their entrepreneurship journey. RePurpose Global employs some 70 people globally and partners on projects that they say have recovered more than 23 million kilograms of plastic waste from the environment.
In Conversation with the CEO
Wharton Global Youth invited Svanika to talk about her career and her deep commitment to the circular economy – which she does with great energy and insight. You can watch that full interview on our Youtube channel.
“The circular economy is a newer concept that is starting to pick up steam,” said Svanika, who serves as rePurpose Global’s CEO. “It is the idea that our current model of use-and-throw culture, where we buy a product, use it once, and it goes into a landfill [is not sustainable]. The majority of things in a landfill that are single-use are used for less than 15 minutes before they ended up there. Instead, we all want to be moving toward a circular economy, where we use a product and then we remake it into a different product.”
Svanika (don’t miss how she uses a clever superhero analogy to describe her evolving day-to-day role as an entrepreneur and CEO!) shared her expertise about the plastic crisis facing our planet:
- Plastic consumption is alarmingly high – the average person consumes a credit card’s worth of plastic every week, and more than 60 million pounds of new plastic are generated every hour.
- Plastic production currently generates more carbon emissions than global aviation, making it a significant contributor to climate change that goes beyond traditional environmental concerns.
- Less than 10% of plastic in the United States is recycled, with most being landfilled or shipped to developing countries that are not equipped to handle the waste.
- The plastic waste crisis is deeply interconnected with humanitarian issues, with tens of millions of people in impoverished communities working in exploitative and unregulated waste management sectors, often experiencing reduced life expectancy and serious health problems. Repurpose Global works with approximately 600 brands to create formal employment for waste workers.
- The global plastic waste problem requires a comprehensive approach, involving brands, consumers, innovators, and policymakers, with an estimated $5.2 trillion needed over the next 15 years to transition to a circular economy and effectively address the crisis.
During our Wharton Global Youth interview, Svanika shared deeper revelations about environmental activism, business and career. Be sure to tune into our Youtube channel for a masterclass in entrepreneurship and the triple bottom line of how business must balance its commitment to people, planet and profits.
“Everybody throughout the history of time, from the first human being to where we are today, has always been born into a world in crisis; into a world on fire,” Svanika observed. “The responsibility that each of us holds is not to make sure that the world isn’t on fire, but rather that the fires that our future generations have to care about are different from the ones that we are fighting today.”
Conversation Starters
When Svanika Balasubramanian teamed up with Peter Hjemdahl for their research collaboration, she said, “Eventually, we had this 200-page paper, and it just felt wrong to leave it at that, because we had somehow peered behind the curtain at a very not-talked-about topic, and there was so much there.” Have you ever worked on a project that left you feeling similarly? How did you act on your interest? Share your story in the comment section of this article.
Our YouTube interview with Svanika is rich with insight and career advice, moving from entrepreneurship as a source for change, to breaking cycles of generational poverty through structured economic opportunities. Listen to the interview (linked above) and choose a quote or theme that resonates with you. Discuss with a group or share your thoughts in the comment section of this article.
What do you think about Svanika choosing entrepreneurship over corporate finance? Would you make this choice? Why or why not?