Have you already started your career in a specific field, but find yourself wondering if that is your true calling? If so, do you continue working there, or do you step back, get inspired, re-strategize, and use the skills you have to carve out a new path?
Sayesha Dogra, the entrepreneur behind the popular climate community platform The Climate Party, asked herself the same questions. She had already begun her career as a Chartered Accountant and consultant in e-commerce, when she joined a leadership program she had heard about to go to Antarctica, where she learned about the real world effects of climate change. . The trip changed her life and gave her a new sense of purpose. She knew she had to work in the climate space. Coming from a non-climate background herself, she recognised that there was a need to create collaborative spaces for people of all backgrounds to bring whatever skills they had to work together on climate issues. Thus, The Climate Party was born. It quickly grew in popularity, and has now hosted 1200+ people across six in-person events in multiple Indian cities.
In this episode, our host Shantha Venugopal engages in a conversation with the founder of The Climate Party, Sayesha Dogra, to discuss shifting to a climate career and her solutions to the challenges she faced along the way.
Below is an edited transcript that provides a detailed description of the guest’s journey:
Diving into the Climate Space Without a Background or Connections: The Journey of CA-Turned Climate Entrepreneur and Founder of The Climate Party, Sayesha Dogra
I am a Chartered Accountant by education and did my MBA from the Indian School of Business. Before I got into climate, I worked in consulting, venture capital, and startups, especially e-commerce. During 2022, I had an opportunity to go on an expedition to Antarctica with an amazing group of people from about 37 countries, where we really learned what climate change means and feels like. What I brought back was a very personal experience of climate change after witnessing various things and experiencing the ecosystem of Antarctica. That experience ignited a purpose inside me, leading me to question my career goals and what I was doing in life every day. It was quite a battle that I fought.
After much deliberation, I chose to quit my job and figure out my journey in the climate space. Of course, I had no plan on how I’d go about it. All I knew was this was the direction I needed to head in, but I had to figure out my path in that direction. Essentially, that’s what I call my journey. The expedition to Antarctica was the journey of my lifetime and one of the biggest inflection points in my life.
Shantha Venugopal
Can I ask how you got on that trip and what made you take that opportunity in the first place, especially considering your career before that had such a different industry behind it?
Sayesha Dogra
Right, so from my childhood and how I grew up, I figured out that I always had this thing for conserving energy and reducing waste. I did that on a personal level and at a small community level, whether it was in my office or wherever I was. Somewhere around 2017, I learned about a program run by Sir Robert Swan. At that point in time, I had just completed my CA, and a few years passed. I think that mental note came to the fore while I was at ISB. I had some time on my hands, so I thought, why not just take a shot and apply for it?
This program, called Leadership at the Edge, is run by the 2041 Foundation, which selects about 70 to 80 people from across the world and takes them to Antarctica to help them understand what climate change really means and looks like. We have a bunch of sessions on board where experts from all over the world come and explain to us the science, technologies, and social aspects of climate change.
Shantha Venugopal
It sounds like a really amazing and life -changing experience and I think in case our listeners are interested, they should definitely check out your blog Anti -Climatic to read more about your experience there and maybe even when they find the time apply to something like that because I think it’ll give you so much inspiration right for the rest of your career.
Sayesha Dogra
And since you mentioned, again for the listeners, I think I did one piece specifically on Antarctica on anti -climatic. So in case somebody’s really interested to know what a journey to Antarctica looks like, feel free to jump on and read it.
Shantha Venugopal
So now that you’ve told us your journey to getting there, what is your work today like and is it what you expected?
Sayesha Dogra
So I think I’ll answer the second question first. I jumped into the climate space without any background. When I say no background, I mean none at all—no educational background, no connections to people already working in this space. When I took the plunge, I wasn’t even working in India; I was in Dubai. I had no plan, but during my transition period, I was fortunate to receive a fellowship from a philanthropy fund, where I had the chance to be part of their environment vertical. This was essentially my first step, a foot through the door to get acquainted with people in this space, especially founders. That’s where I believe my journey began. I eventually left the fellowship because I wanted to move into operational roles and find something I truly wanted to do. During this time, I realized it wasn’t easy to find the right and most relevant people to connect with.
Essentially, the Climate Party began as a solution to my own problem. I started it properly in April or May of last year, 2023. It began with a small meetup where I posted on LinkedIn, inviting people working in climate to gather at a community park, and 20 of them showed up. Initially, it was more of a passion project for me as I searched for my place in the climate space.
But with the impact I saw the Climate Party making and the encouragement from community members, I decided to commit to it full-time and expand it into a larger platform. As for my work, until now I’ve mostly been working alone, but I’ve been fortunate to have a team of around eight or nine volunteers who help us organize Climate Party events across different cities. My work involves everything—I handle HR, social media management, reaching out to people, and addressing customer grievances if any. Now, as we aim for bigger things, I’ve started delegating tasks, and volunteers have been instrumental in helping me with this transition.
Shantha Venugopal
It sounds like a lot of work, but of course, very fruitful work. So I’m sure you’re excited with the results so far. But were there any unexpected challenges or rewards to this journey in building your whole business model and climate parties and how to get the word out there and make the networks you need?
Sayesha Dogra
Yeah, so I think what I knew I was beginning with was already challenging. Unlike communities nowadays, which typically start online because it’s the easiest way to get the word out, right? I didn’t want to do that. Again, this stemmed from my own experiences on online platforms where initially you feel great to be connected to a lot of people, but in terms of real impact or genuine connections, it fades out very quickly. You get lost in all the Slack channels, and it’s very difficult to keep up, reach out to people, and have meaningful conversations, figuring out times, etc. This has been a journey in itself where you realize that this probably isn’t the most sustainable way.
So, coming from consumer tech, I eventually understood the need to go offline to make a real impact. In today’s world, being omnichannel means being physically and virtually present.
For me, the idea was to understand whether India needs a platform like the Climate Party and whether it would make sense to start offline first. My hypothesis was that if I could succeed offline, taking it online would be much simpler. That’s what I’ve seen play out. Most of the time, we’ve been focused on experimenting with various formats. The way we’ve conducted our Climate Parties is something…
I believe it’s a first-of-its-kind initiative because no one else brings so many people together and creates such an inclusive platform anywhere. And, as you may already know, we also organize a lot of climate games to raise awareness and educate people. By now, we have the largest repository of climate games accessed from all around the world.
Sayesha Dogra
So yeah, coming to challenges, of course, figuring out partnerships and how to keep costs at zero, but we’ve managed all of that. I think challenges are a natural course for any entrepreneur, right? But in terms of rewards, I would say they have far exceeded the challenges, and probably that’s what’s kept me on this journey. The good part about climate is that it’s horizontal, cutting across all verticals and touching every part of our lives. So, in my journey over the last year or so, I’ve had a chance to meet so many people and not just meet them, but also build long-term relationships with individuals across domains and skill sets, ranging from artists to scientists. That is something I would never have had the chance to do if I were working in my previous fields, right? You would be so siloed in what you’re doing. So, I credit this aspect of climate change for being horizontal and giving me access to so many people who are doing great work.
Shantha Venugopal
So in that same vein, what advice would you give to the next generation of people who could be either climate professionals themselves or inspired to do climate action work? What do you think are the skills that they most require to navigate the current landscape that you’ve navigated so well?
Sayesha Dogra
Climate change as an industry, you know, obviously it’s been there for a while, but as an industry in India, it’s still nascent, which means that you have to build a lot of things from scratch. You have a lot of problems to solve, which actually is a big opportunity pool, right? But then you don’t really have existing playbooks. You can at best pick up lessons from different other industries and put them together here, experiment. And that’s essentially what I’ve been doing. But I think what really stands out is majorly two things. One, because we are at a very nascent stage and it’s a long game that everybody needs to play to really see the fruit bear, is to have that mission oriented mindset. I mean, unless you’re passionate about it, it will be difficult for you to survive in the long term. You lose hope, patience very soon. So that’s there. And second is the ability to put yourself out there. I think that is extremely, extremely important because again, people still find it difficult to discover each other despite having been in space for multiple years. Right. And that’s why The Climate Party really found its place and need. So you really need to put yourself out there, make the effort of reaching out to people and of course help them in any way that you can. And that’s the biggest thing I’ve seen until now. We have a very, very, high energy TCP WhatsApp group which buzzes with so many debates, discussions and a lot of help.
And I’ve gotten so many messages from members where they were actually sharing their astonishment of how when they put a query, the query was resolved within five minutes because so many people came forward to help.
Shantha Venugopal
I think that makes for a really great message for future professionals that people are out there to help each other, especially in this industry, I think more so than others. If you’re working on climate action, there is a belief that you work as a collective to solve this problem. So people are more enthusiastic about collaborating with each other. So that’s definitely there. And of course, The Climate Party solves that problem in a big way by connecting people to each other.
Sayesha Dogra
Why I feel this also happens is because climate change is not easy to understand. It’s quite complex and has multiple layers. So everybody is learning on the go. There’s nobody who can say they know everything about climate change, right? Because science keeps evolving. Something that was true yesterday may not be true tomorrow. So everybody is learning on the go, and I think people are very open to learning from each other.
Shantha Venugopal
So for our last question, we wanted to know what would the childhood version of you think of what you’re doing today in your career?
Sayesha Dogra
Well, I think my childhood version would be super inspired as well as proud of what I am doing today, and I think mainly for three reasons. First, I am inspired by the idea of embracing uncertainties like they are my old close friends. Second, I put myself out there to learn because, coming from a non-climate background, I had to figure out everything from scratch, literally building a new career from scratch. And then, of course, in the process, I built something purpose-led and meaningful. So yeah, I think my childhood version would be super proud and inspired by these three things. But again, it’s a long journey to go.
Shantha Venugopal
Yeah, but I think your story would inspire a lot of young people and especially to bring whatever skills they have to the table and work with other people to solve problems. I think identifying a niche for yourself can seem really daunting, especially when you’re starting out. So I think your advice of getting out there and being wrong and being open to learning and asking for help is really the way to go. But yeah, I’ll ask you if you have anything more you’d like to say to the next generation of climate professionals. Yeah, I can thank you.
Sayesha Dogra
I keep speaking to so many people who want to get into the climate space, and I am grateful to the younger ones who really want to do something meaningful early on in their careers. Climate change as a profession continues to be daunting, with barriers to entry feeling very high because it is largely seen as a very technical field.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that this is not the case. Climate change is horizontal and affects everything, so people find it difficult to figure out a fit for themselves. They don’t know how their existing skills can complement this mission. From what I’ve seen, almost all skills can eventually be green skills. To put it simply, any company working on a climate solution needs a storyteller, a finance person, a fundraising person, strategy folks, and more. It is just about raising your baseline awareness levels because many things are learned on the job.
All you need is to find the right set of people who will work with you and help you learn on the job. I think everything starts with a mission. Many startup founders now don’t look for an exact specific skill set fit because it’s not easy to find the right sort of people. They look for people who are passionate about what the company is trying to solve and let their teams grow by learning on the job. It’s all about what you’re doing and seeing how you can make a fit. At The Climate Party, we’re also helping people look for answers to this question, which is very daunting for many young and mid-career professionals.
Shantha Venugopal
Absolutely, and hopefully anyone listening will feel inspired to use whatever skills they have, come meet up with other people, raise their awareness level by looking at resources online, places like your blog and Transitions Research website and places like that can help them get to that opening entry level, foot in the door, start in climate change. So yeah, thank you so much for speaking to us today and for taking the time out.
