We recently caught up with Sam Climo, an Impact Lab alumni who interned at GREEN Hospitality. Read our interview with Sam to learn more about the serendipitous gains from her internship: meeting great people and taking away valuable transferable skills.
Tell me about your experience of the Impact Lab Course? Which company did you intern with? What were your roles and responsibilities?
I interned with GREEN Hospitality during the Fall 2019 semester. My main role was to review and assess the sustainability practices at hotel chain companies, such as Marriott International, who was one of our clients, and recommend new ones.
Unfortunately, during the time that I was there, the protests were happening, so we didn’t really get the chance to meet all of the stakeholders in the businesses. Ultimately, we mainly communicated online. So we were mainly looking for new clients instead of working with existing ones, because the higher management of a lot of them were overseas at that time.
Any memorable experiences and learning from the Impact Lab?
I would say it’s meeting all the other Impact Lab students from my cohort, and getting to know the other not-for-profit companies involved with the Impact Lab Course that are also working on sustainability issues. Although I wasn’t working with them in my particular role, at the orientation session we were able to learn about these companies that other students were interning at, and what they were doing.
One of the interesting companies is Soap Cycling. At GREEN Hospitality, Soap Cycling’s work is a sustainability practice that we would recommend our clients and partners to do, which is donating lightly-used soap to be recycled and distributed to the people in need.
What is your biggest learning from your internship?
I would say it is learning digital communication skills. Because of the protests, we couldn’t meet the stakeholders in person, so a lot of the communications were done over video calls or emails, which fine-tuned my digital communication skills. So the experience really helped me in that sense.
Even for a digital native like yourself?
I was a student at the time, and I didn’t have that much professional experience. I was not used to communicating in a professional manner in a digital format, which was different to messaging my friends about my assignment! My internship at GREEN Hospitality gave me the exposure to this kind of digital communication.
What is your current work role?
I graduated last year. At the moment, I’m working at a company called KordaMentha. It’s an Australian boutique restructuring and advisory firm. My role in the restructuring team is to work with distressed or stressed companies to try to turn them around.
What are the transferable skills from your experience at Impact Lab that you are able to apply to your current role?
One of the skills that I took away from the internship is collaboration. We were working with other students at GREEN Hospitality. A lot of them were from different countries and had completely different backgrounds. I was the only Australian, the rest were from different parts of China or Asia, and I think one was from Europe. And communication through digital platforms is another skill that got really fine-tuned during my internship.
What is social impact to you?
As a society, whether in Hong Kong or Australia, there are people who are in need, and we need to help the less fortunate. I do volunteer here and there but not as consistently as I should. It’s nice that more corporations are now incorporating social impact in their ESG policies.
If you could do one thing to make society a better place, what would that be?
For me, it would be to fill the gap in education. I’m living in the city area and the education system here is quite good. We have a mix of both private and public school systems, and some public schools can even outperform private schools. But when you go to a rural area, the public school system there is flawed, and there aren’t as many teachers as there are in the more developed regions. And that translates into fewer kids going to university in the less developed regions.
What is your take on youth empowerment? How do you think the Impact Lab or your internship is enabling that?
I think youth empowerment is important. In the end, age is just a number. When you’re young, you probably have a different energy, you are excited to take on more roles, and you’re definitely more excited about different situations. At the time that I was in Hong Kong, youth empowerment was a very big factor and one of the main drivers for change.
Both the Impact Lab Course and GREEN Hospitality provide opportunities for students to take on responsibility and aid in social impact efforts. They empower youths in this way, and try to cultivate an environment where young people can also make a change.
What is your advice to impact-driven youth who would like to create greater shared impact?
I definitely think that young people should try to seize as many opportunities as possible. When I came to Hong Kong on exchange, I didn’t have plans to do the Impact Lab or intern at GREEN Hospitality. But then I got an email to my HKU account telling me about the course. I read about it, thought it was a really good program, and went ahead to apply for it. I liked what the Impact Lab had to offer: an internship with work experience contributing to a good cause. In the end, I met some really great people and learned a lot. So I really think that when you’re young, try to be involved in as many opportunities as possible. Just apply for it and see what happens!
