Winning With Waste

A guest lecture opened the door for Carly Levin (MSES ‘24) to find a career in sustainability helping companies deal with their data center detritus.

When Carly Levin (MSES ’24) sat in on a guest lecture by two sustainability experts from WSP, one of the world’s leading engineering and professional services firms, she had one thought: Where do I sign up?

That classroom moment in Northwestern’s Circular Economy elective — part of the Master of Science in Energy and Sustainability (MSES) program — opened the door to her career in sustainable consulting.

MSES is jointly offered by Northwestern Engineering and the Paula M. Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy.

WSP senior vice president Jenny Carney teaches the Circular Economy class. The guest speakers that day were WSP colleagues and sustainability experts Kate Hanson and Jordan Taylor Sloan, who discussed their work future-proofing cities, infrastructure, and organizations with more environmentally friendly design.

“I was like, ‘I want to work with these people and work on these cool projects that they are talking about,’” Levin said.

After class, she stayed to talk with Carney about opportunities at WSP. Carney referred her internally, and two interviews later, Levin had a job offer lined up for after graduation. Today, she works under one of the same guest speakers who inspired her that day.

In her role, Levin helps companies improve waste diversion at their data centers. On top of being massive energy users – data centers account for more than 4 percent of total US electricity use – they generate more than 105 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year. Data centers also produce large-scale physical waste from cooling systems, backup batteries, and server decommissioning. Some projections show data center electricity use as a percentage of the overall US load tripling by 2030, bringing with it commensurate increases in emissions and waste.

The disposal of much of this waste falls under various state and federal guidelines, including the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Clean Water Act, and Safe Drinking Water Act.

That makes the lessons Levin learned during the one-year MSES program vital to her on-the-job success.

“The most important thing that was valuable to me was data analysis and learning the sustainability lingo, because there's a lot of it,” she said. “Being fluent in that before I entered the role allowed me to onboard quicker.” That foundation gave her an immediate edge in the consulting world, where clients expect both technical fluency and business insight.

It also helped her earn a promotion from associate consultant to project consultant after her first year at the company. She has been in her new role since July.

One of her recent accomplishments was helping a major company develop a composting initiative in a state with no composting infrastructure or governing regulations.

“It's really cool to work with these bigger companies that we all know very well that are going above and beyond to be innovative and use their private-sector funds to make a real difference," she said. "We can't just rely on the government to do that.”

The job certainly has its challenges. As a consultant, Levin often advises from the outside looking in. That can limit Levin's access to valuable data, and it also can mean the companies’ executives can more easily dismiss her recommendations.

But Levin said her MSES education helped her be better prepared for her current reality. Thanks to MSES, she knows how to develop customized recommendations that are more likely to be adopted because they provide both environmental and financial benefits to the companies.

“There's a lot of work in MSES, and the year goes by very fast,” she said. “Everyone is very focused on the same thing and you're doing it together, which I appreciated. Those core classes are very well-rounded, but then you get to pick classes so you can focus on what you're interested in. It was a great experience.”