Adriana Penuela-Useche, EWMBA 22 – Activating Entrepreneurship for Sustainability and Climate Action

May 1 2023 • 40 mins

Our conversations celebrating Earth Day continue with Adriana Penuela-Useche, a chemical engineer, startup consultant, and future investor who’s passionate about the intersection between entrepreneurship and VC as a way to create Climate Action and protect the planet for future generations.

Adriana grew up literally hugging trees in Bogota, Colombia, and wanted to find a way to combine her love of nature with her passion for engineering. With her 11 years in the chemical engineering field, her passion to go beyond herself volunteering for Engineers Without Borders and creating her new path supporting deeptech startups in the Climate tech sector.

In this episode, Adriana discusses how her family’s upbringing, immigration story, and experience at Haas shaped her, what she thinks are the biggest climate change challenges today, and the exciting technological innovations that could help with some of those challenges.

*OneHaas Alumni Podcast is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

On how she has developed her love for nature and community

You can describe me as a tree hugger, backpacker, camper, because I love all of those. What I love the most is that my parents developed me in a sense of holistic sustainability viewing it as:”we don't have to only care about nature, but also care about the community that surrounds us.” And to explore that through economics. So with my dad being a mechanical engineer, tinkering of many things and my mom being an economist drove those two components in our lives and created these building blocks that I have lived throughout my life, which are “community, not competition and a continuous love for nature and those in need.”

On creating a better ecosystem for entrepreneurs

There has to be a better way to create an economic system. And then from there, knowing that, for example, in Colombia or other places like what I saw in Ethiopia with Engineers Without Borders, there is so much innovation happening in the day to day that triggers and aligns with good capital to build astrong entrepreneurial ecosystem globally, like a real ecosystem of entrepreneurs, but also develop economies as a path.