The Sustainability Sisters

Sarah (MSES ‘22) and Meg Ryan (KSM ‘26) each describe their own Northwestern direction toward full-time jobs in positions of environmental influence.

As young girls, sisters Sarah (MSES ‘22) and Meg Ryan (KSM ‘26) shared a love of nature. Today, they share positions of influence in promoting environmental sustainability in the corporate world.

Sarah is the senior manager of transportation electrification with global sustainability and energy advisory company Trio. Her role involves providing companies turnkey solutions to transition their vehicle fleets from gas guzzlers to electricity power.

Meg is the director of environmental sustainability at telecommunications infrastructure business Ciena, which works with mega-tech companies such as Amazon, AT&T, Meta, and Verizon to build out communication networks across the globe.

At the core of both sisters’ careers are Northwestern University and its Master of Science in Energy and Sustainability (MSES) program, which is jointly offered by Northwestern Engineering and the Paula M. Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy.

“Right out of college, I knew that I really wanted to do something in the environmental space, just because it was such a pertinent issue and something I found myself becoming really passionate about,” Sarah said. “MSES helped me realize I really liked being a subject matter expert on electric vehicles.”

But Sarah might not have found the MSES program without the help of her little sister. It was Meg who brought the program to Sarah’s attention after a conversation with MSES director Holly Benz, back when the program first launched in 2020. Ultimately, it ended up not being the right time for grad school for Meg, but eventually spurred an application from Sarah.

In MSES, Sarah found a program customized to energy and sustainability professionals that she could complete while staying in the working world. At the time, she was working at the Environmental Defense Fund, where she had served for more than eight years).

Meg has since partially followed her sister’s journey to Northwestern. She currently takes night classes at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management while continuing her own full-time work at Ciena.

“A lot of people think you have to pause your career or choose one or the other,” Meg said. “Obviously, there are trade offs, but it's possible to do both.”

Meg is also benefiting directly from the MSES program as a Kellogg student. She recently took an MSES elective class on the circular economy that she found directly applicable to her current job.

The interconnection between programs at Northwestern is one of the university’s biggest strengths, Meg said.

“To have these synergies between programs pulls in both the deep subject-matter expertise and the business angle,” she said. “At the end of the day, putting these things into action takes both perspectives.”

Both sisters now find themselves in positions of considerable influence in the professional world.

Meg’s role at Ciena involves finding every possible way to layer sustainability into the company’s culture and supply chain. Because the company supplies optical hardware and other routing and switching devices to such major tech companies, the downstream impact of her work can be significant.

Sarah at Trio meanwhile is head-on tackling one of the most significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions – vehicles. Her job puts her front-and-center with innovative technology with the potential to reduce humankind’s negative influence on the environment.

“Not only is there this huge focus on transportation right now in terms of reducing emissions, but the technology is evolving constantly,” Sarah said. “There are alternative fuel technologies that are cropping up from an increase in research and development in the vehicle space. It’s just a really cool and exciting industry to be a part of at the moment.”