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After a ten-year career serving in the Army, Ethan Subra (MBA’25) came to Leeds last fall to pursue work in the clean energy transition, an area that would let him continue to focus on creating a positive impact through his work. He was attracted to Leeds by the program’s Pathways in Clean Energy and Sustainability, alongside the location in Boulder.

We recently sat down with Ethan to discuss how the skills he learned in his military career serve him as a rising business leader, what excites him about working on the Clean Energy Transition, and his summer internship with Scout Clean Energy.

CESR: First of all, thank you for your service in the Army. Can you tell our readers more about that experience, and how the skills you learned translate into the business world?

Ethan Subra: Serving in the Army was very formative in terms of shaping my leadership style and helping me learn how to be professional in any environment. At the age of 23 being put in charge of a group of 40 people from a wide range of backgrounds forces you to grow up fast. That helped me to learn about some personal weaknesses and humbled me early on. Learning how to manage people from diverse backgrounds and orient them to pursue a common goal, particularly in times of high stress and challenge, was a significant learning experience for me as a leader.

In the Army, you change jobs every year or two as you grow in rank, so that constant change helped me to become adaptive and willing to tackle things head-on, to accept failure and learn from it, then eventually succeed. Over the course of 10 years in the Army, I had to do that over and over in different environments.

Another skill I developed relates to handling risk. The experience of assessing threats and adversaries in the Army helped me understand how to view, accept, and mitigate risk. That has paid off in my experience in the business world so far. It relates to the due diligence process, which was my focus in my internship this summer.

CESR: Tell me about your experience as a veteran at Leeds, and the community of other veterans in the MBA program.

ES: The Veterans Club has added a solid core of individuals with shared experiences of serving in the military, which has been helpful now that I am very far away from that environment. Leaving the Army feels like quitting something cold turkey after 10 years. School is very different; the internship was very different. It has been good to be a vet here because there is a high percentage of other vets, and there’s a strong support system in the Leeds School. Doug Bennett supported the veterans club and is a well-respected businessman. Heather Adams has taken over now sponsoring the club. Both are veterans as well. There’s a lot of appreciation and community that’s fostered between vets through that faculty and student connection. I appreciate the diversity in my personal community at Leeds of both veterans and non-veterans.

"I don’t want to just add more money to a company’s balance sheet with my time, energy and skills. I want to leave a better planet for the next generation and generations beyond, and through that work generate value for a company."

CESR: What makes you excited about the clean energy transition?

ES: What gets me excited is two-fold. Number one is the intrinsic value I derive from pushing the clean energy transition forward. I got a lot of intrinsic value out of serving in the Army, so I knew that I needed to find that same value in the work I did next. I’ve found that to be the case in the renewable energy transition writ large. Finding an MBA program that had a strong curriculum and opportunities for renewable energy and climate tech was a priority for me. CESR and the Clean Energy and Sustainability Pathways were some of the biggest things that drew me to Leeds.

I don’t want to just add more money to a company’s balance sheet with my time, energy and skills. I want to leave a better planet for the next generation and generations beyond, and through that work generate value for a company.

The second piece is that it’s a growing industry. Every week you read a new article about how there’s a looming shortage of energy period, and how there’s a lot of work to be done to meet our climate goals but also to grow the grid and the capacity enough to meet the demands of the growing economy and technology. I see job security there, opportunities for growth, and a demand for skills that I am developing here through the program, and through my internship. Looking ahead building skills for the clean energy transition seems like a sound investment.

CESR: What has been the impact of the Clean Energy Pathway (and other programs from CESR)?

ES: The impact has been huge so far, because the first year of the program is so dense on fundamental MBA courses. To not just work on the skills, but also the network and my industry awareness, the Clean Energy Pathway has added specificity that I wouldn’t have gotten if I had just gone to class. The and opportunities that come out of that, the networking events, and the Clean Energy Finance Bootcamp provided phenomenal exposure and helped me get the internship I wanted. I was able to market those things to employers in my interviews, and that helped me to gain traction and set myself apart.

"I see job security there, opportunities for growth, and a demand for skills that I am developing here through the program, and through my internship. Looking ahead building skills for the clean energy transition seems like a sound investment."

CESR: What did you do this summer for Scout Clean Energy? What did you learn?

ES: I worked on their Mergers & Acquisitions team as an intern. I helped my manager, Dan Witt (MBA ’20), one of the senior managers on the team, on an acquisition proposal for an energy project that ultimately got approved. It consisted of building on a brownfield site on top of a closed coal mine. I helped to prepare Dan on some very niche parts of that deal that were unique to Kentucky, where the brownfield site was. I was responsible for understanding the tax implications, how much money we would save over time, and the siting approval process.

I also got to work on developing a financial model, which is what I wanted to do this summer. I was exposed to it through some finance classes and the Clean Energy Finance Bootcamp. I got to get deep in a very complex financial model that will help us look at aging wind farms and how we could turn a profit on acquiring those over time. It’s part of Scout’s long-term strategy of growing the wind pipeline, and it opens a whole new category of acquisition projects, vs. acquiring empty land. I led meetings with wind manufacturers like GE, Vestas and others to begin the due diligence and fact-finding process in support of the broader project valuation I was developing.

I’ll be working part time with Scout in the fall as well. My goal is to stay on with them and keep that initiative moving.

"So, say “yes” to as many things as you can within the healthy boundaries you set for yourself. The more you put yourself out there, the greater your chances of finding that thing you’ve been looking for."

CESR: What advice do you have for students just starting the program?

ES: If you don’t know the industry that you want to go into, cast a wide net early on and give yourself many opportunities to discover what intrigues you and what your strengths are. Give yourself the opportunity to say no to many things on your way to finding something you really want to commit to.

Also, realize you never know where that special connection that leads to an opportunity is going to come from. It could be a connection from a lunch n learn, or an alumni happy hour, or from a professor. You might think that the connections happen at official “networking” events, but it can happen anywhere. So, say “yes” to as many things as you can within the healthy boundaries you set for yourself. The more you put yourself out there, the greater your chances of finding that thing you’ve been looking for. That’s the approach I took, and it paid off for me with my internship, but it’s also for paid off for my classmates in other ways. Don’t discount any events.

Learn more about upcoming sustainability and social impact events, as well as the Clean Energy and Sustainability MBA Pathways.