City Of San Antonio: District 7 Councilmember Thanks Harvard Business Students Advancing Sustainability

San Antonio TX

19 May, 2022

5:07 PM

Description

Press release from the City of San Antonio: Monday, May 16, 2022 CONTACT: Emily Collins [email protected] SAN ANTONIO (May 16, 2022) — Beginning May 9, San Antonio has been host to a group of 72 Harvard Business School MBA students as they undertake design projects for local companies and nonprofits. "The District 7 office is grateful for the effort of these students to help local organizations and businesses solve issues they wouldn't normally have the bandwidth to solve," said the Councilwoman. "In doing so, they have gotten to know our vibrant city while serving our community." The 72 students are participants in the Harvard Business School's FIELD Immersion Program, a required course for all first-year MBA students. The program sends students to a variety of cities to spend a week working with businesses and organizations on design thinking projects. The students will depart from San Antonio tomorrow. "We are extremely grateful to PACE and all the FIELD Immersion Project Partners organizations for all they do on behalf of our students," said Carrie Elkins, Professor of Business Administration and Faculty Chair for the FIELD Immersion. "The students benefit immeasurably from this experience and we hope the partner organizations do as well." "Our office is especially excited that the students are developing recommendations to improve the City's PACE program," said the Councilwoman. "This program offers great opportunities to improve facility infrastructure and efficiency with little or no capital outlay and we want to ensure our community has what it needs to take advantage of this program." The City of San Antonio established the Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program on March 5, 2020. PACE is an innovative financing tool that allows owners of commercial, industrial, nonprofit, and large multi-family residential properties access to low-cost, long-term loans to conduct energy efficiency and water conservation improvements to real property. Since the establishment of the PACE Act in Texas, over 35 counties and cities have implemented the program in their jurisdictions resulting in 26 executed projects valued at over $100 million in loans. This press release was produced by the City of San Antonio. The views expressed here are the author's own.