Hugo Mkhize

Cambridge Judge Business School

 “Former Investment Banker from South Africa, now pursuing startup and investor opportunities in Climate Tech.”

Hometown: Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa

Fun fact about yourself: I have exactly the same birthday as my younger brother – we are separated by 5 years.

Undergraduate School and Degree: Bachelor of Business Science in Finance from the University of Cape Town

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? Investment Banking Associate at Morgan Stanley.

Where did you intern during the summer of 2023? I did not pursue an internship during this time. Instead, I returned to South Africa to spend time with friends and family following a year in the United States pursuing a master’s in advanced studies in Climate Science & Policy at the University of California, San Diego.

Where will you be working after graduation? I am currently interviewing for internship opportunities for the summer of 2024 but I have not yet started looking for full-time roles.

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School: Along with my classmate, Peter Golding, I was selected among a group of 12 MBAs in the United States and Europe as a ClimateCAP Fellow, a highly selective cohort of the next generation of climate leaders and changemakers. ClimateCAP, a global partnership of 40+ business schools, hosted us at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business in February 2024 for its annual summit that drew 400+ students. Over the course of the 12-month fellowship, I will be pursuing a climate action plan for assisting emerging economies in reducing their dependence on coal as a source of energy and facilitating a just energy transition as well as serving as an ambassador of the ClimateCAP Summit & Fellowship at Cambridge Judge Business School and beyond.

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? The extracurricular achievement I am most proud of is having an article featured on Enduring Planet’s Insights page. The blog, one of the most informative resources for Climate Tech entrepreneurs, aims to provide “tactical insights at the intersection of climate, finance, and entrepreneurship produced by Enduring Planet in partnership with top sector experts.”

The caliber of people I am featured alongside is truly humbling. More importantly, this opportunity provides an amazing platform for aspiring academic founders in Climate Tech to hear about my research. In July 2023, I published a financial strategy manual titled “A Financial Guidebook for U.S. Startups: Crossing Climate Tech’s Valleys of Death and Achieving Scale.” As part of this body of work, intended for academic founders, I conducted interviews with 44 industry practitioners, Climate Tech founders and CEOs, and funding organisations. I wrote the guidebook in order to make my small contribution towards bridging the gap between academic research and commercial solutions, breaking down financial and informational barriers along the way, especially for historically underrepresented founders. For the same reason, I write weekly about one section from the guidebook on LinkedIn each week and I also gave a presentation to my classmates in Cambridge Judge’s ESG Special Interest Group about my research’s key takeaways. My inclusion in Enduring Planet’s Insights page and ongoing collaboration with them, feel like a deeply appreciated megaphone broadcasting what I believe is important information.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? My proudest achievement is passing the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Level 2 exam while working over 80-hours per week as an Investment Banking Analyst over four months. As  background, the CFA exam requires over 300 hours of preparation time and is considered one of the most challenging in the financial services industry. This endeavor required considerable grit and determination as I continued to work on live transactions during the day and then studied roughly three hours a day when at home, often after midnight. The knowledge gained through the CFA program empowered me to perform better at my job. As is often the case, achieving a great outcome is rarely possible without the help of others. In particular, my manager acted leniently in granting me time off to study in the crucial last week before the exam. Time management and a willingness to make sacrifices were also important, as I used any downtime I had to study. Lastly, I leveraged my network within the firm to find the best learning resources for me. This required me to step out of my comfort zone, be vulnerable, and ask others for help.

Why did you choose this business school?  Cambridge Judge Business School was the only MBA programme where I applied.  I knew that embedding myself in an atmosphere of innovation and knowledge sharing for a year would be the ideal place to facilitate my career transition. I am currently in the second year of a two-year journey of transitioning from my previous role advising Europe’s leading utilities and power companies to a career in ClimateTech. This will allow me to play a more direct role in catalysing earlier-stage innovation in order to avert the worst effects of the climate crisis.

My inspiration comes from individuals like my mother, my stepdad, Robert F. Smith, and Jeff Bezos, who have made significant career changes, starting ventures that were not only fulfilling for them in their own right but also highly impactful. I am convinced that an MBA from a globally recognised institution like the University of Cambridge, will significantly enhance the trajectory I am currently on, providing momentum towards achieving my goals. Cambridge Judge Business School was also the ideal choice for me due to its specific MBA course concentrations, such as the Energy and Environment Concentration. These offerings have bolstered my expertise and thought leadership in the sector. Additionally, the opportunity to forge authentic relationships with alumni and integrate into the Cambridge Cleantech and the broader ‘Silicon Fen’ community has been invaluable and allowed me to develop a supportive network essential for my success in my areas of interest such as early-stage startups and venture capital.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? My favorite MBA professor is Dr. Chris Coleridge, who has lectured us for our MBA core Entrepreneurship module as well as an MBA Elective I am taking called Net Zero Entrepreneurship. While I was aware of him before the MBA due to his work founding Europe’s leading venture builder for Climate Tech startups in Carbon13, I was truly in awe during the first Entrepreneurship lecture.

I do not think it is a slight to say his conversational lecture style is not for everyone. For those who resonate with the content, it feels like a seasoned expert in his field giving you a weekly podcast based on his first-hand experiences – an incredible learning experience for aspiring entrepreneurs and investors alike. I will never forget during that same lecture when he started talking about what he calls the Innovation ‘sweet spot’. It is essentially a framework for explaining how, in certain hard tech industries such as Climate Tech, it is pivotal for the market, the technology, and the business model to develop in tandem. I did not articulate it as well as he did, but this was also the central thesis for my financial strategy guidebook for Climate Tech founders – essentially, if you know where your business is in terms of its technology, commercialisation, and market adoption readiness milestones. This will help guide what kind of financing is suitable for your business stage. It felt like everything clicked during that lecture – Thank you, Chris!

What was your favorite course as an MBA? My favorite course or project so far has been the Cambridge Venture Project (CVP), which requires students, in groups of five, to work as a team of consultants in a local business, addressing a specific market need. Our client was a UK-based technical building services company called andwis. We advised them on their ESG roadmap and identified priority initiatives that can have a real impact on their ESG goals. The project was particularly interesting because it gave us a chance to apply skills we had learned throughout the foundational MBA Michaelmas Term, especially in courses like Management Praxis, where the focus is on the way we interact with others in diverse, multicultural teams to achieve our objectives. While there were certainly challenging moments throughout the assignment, my CVP group was pleased to have delighted the client with our final deliverable, formed stronger bonds amongst ourselves, and gained new-found expertise in sustainable buildings and the broader built environment. The cherry on top was a LinkedIn post from the client, after the conclusion of the assignment, in which they thanked us for our contributions and remarked how the work done during the project was a key part of their strategic priority to become “the UK’s leading benchmark for technical building services.”

What was your favorite MBA event or tradition at your business school? My favorite Cambridge tradition so far was the Matriculation event at my college, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Matriculation is essentially a traditional swearing-in ceremony where you are welcomed to your college and it culminates with an impressive feast in the Formal Hall. Historically, at Corpus Christi on these occasions, an ancient drinking horn is passed around those assembled. The horn is said to be older than the college itself, which was founded in 1352 by townspeople following the Black Death pandemic. As I was signing my name into the Matriculation book to formalise my association with the college, it dawned on me how rare it was for someone from my background to be in that position. I hope more people from diverse backgrounds are given similar opportunities.

Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why? This is a difficult question to answer as I am less than halfway through my MBA programme at the time of writing. One thing I am still trying to figure out is how best to help the many classmates in my cohort who have told me that they want to learn more about climate. I have made an effort to speak to some of them about my experiences, shared newsletters and job boards, and helped some of the climate entrepreneurs with their business ideas. Despite this, I am constantly left feeling that there is more that I could be doing, especially given the need for the best and brightest MBAs to be working on this existential problem. I am thinking about putting together a wiki site with all the best resources I have read, watched, and listened to since I decided that I would dedicate my career to the topic in late 2021. If I have not been able to make progress in this regard, this Maybe the one thing I would have done differently

What did you love most about your business school’s town? If you walk around Cambridge on a Sunday morning or early afternoon, you will quickly notice how just many people of all genders and backgrounds are playing football – either in parks or on formal pitches. As someone who is enamored with the sport, it is one of the great joys of living in Cambridge and in the UK more broadly. During my MBA, I have had the opportunity to play for both my college team as well as a team of MBAs and master’s in finance (MFIn) students (aka Judge United) and it has been a fantastic experience in broadening my network, staying fit, and getting to live out one of my passions.

What surprised you the most about business school? I was told that this would be a “year-long holiday”. I was also told that because I have a background in Finance and used to be an Investment Banker that I had learned everything I needed to learn about Finance and Business, so an MBA would only incrementally broaden my knowledge. Even halfway in, I can conclusively say that both of these things are not true.

While you can certainly take it easy during the year and if you already have a job or are satisfied with your professional network, there is definitely an opportunity to treat the MBA like a sort of sabbatical. However, there are just so many CV and network-building opportunities that it would defeat the purpose of being here not to take advantage of as many of them as possible. During my  time in the MBA, I have been fortunate to take part in a multitude of extracurricular

activities such as participating in a circular fashion hackathon with CHANEL to help the global luxury fashion designer achieve its sustainability goals; making it to the regional semi-finals of MIT’s Climate and Energy Prize by pitching an entrepreneurial venture; presenting an investment memo for an ESG-focused private equity fund as part of the finals of Kellogg’s annual Energy & Sustainability Case Competition; and advising a Series A AgTech startup on how to prepare its financial model for its Series B capital raise. What I am finding in my interviews for summer internships so far, is that the question of my genuine interest in climate investing does not come up and I have multiple examples to draw from when answering industry-related questions.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? The MBA classmate whom I admire most is Mansa Shroff. She was one of the first people in my class that I spoke to – we had an informal virtual chat before the start of our program due to our shared interest in commercialising the innovative research that comes out of the world’s leading universities – she in Digital Health and me in Climate Tech. Not only is she a lovely person with an impressive career trajectory, but she is a master of getting things done and a fantastic speaker. During our MBA, she put together a week-long virtual Healthcare Career Conference, where she hosted an esteemed panel of experts from the likes of Novartis and Eli Lilly. She is also intimately involved with the Entrepreneurship Lab at King’s College. Mansa is one of those people who effortlessly seems like they have more than 24 hours in their days – I look forward to following her journey.

What are the top two items on your professional bucket list? Overall, I hope to do work involved with finding, funding, and scaling up the solutions that will help us avert the worst effects of the climate crisis. In the short term, I plan to work for and invest in Climate Tech startups to help underrepresented founders meaningfully participate in the impact and investment opportunity of our lifetime. In the long term, my ultimate goal is to leverage my experiences to play a fundamental role in helping South Africa achieve its energy transition potential.

What made Hugo such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2024?

“Hugo Mkhize is a powerhouse.  He hit the ground running at the beginning of the year, soaking up everything he could—and he’s already bringing what he learned back to the world, having identified some critical knowledge gaps and working at a high pace to fill them.”

Chris Coleridge
Management Practice Associate Professor
Fellow of Wolfson College
Founder, Faster Climate Impact

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