The Business of Beautiful Conjectures

Recent Fletcher alumni Naman Shrivastava (MIB 22) is something of an expert juggler. On one hand, he advises government leaders on energy sustainability. On the other, he leads an entrepreneurial social impact venture that facilitates training young professionals for careers in management consulting, product management and public policy.

He manages to do both well, while maintaining a long-standing commitment to achieving progress on environmental issues and sustainability. The deeply passionate Shrivastava is a consultant to the central and state governments in India, where he ensures the country achieves its intended energy targets and moves toward transitioning to low-carbon fuels. In 2017-2018, he drafted India's energy policy.

However, despite his success as a high-level strategic consultant, Shrivastava paused his career a few years ago to pursue an MIB at Fletcher. His goal was to strengthen his business acumen in the global context.

While at Fletcher, he refined skills in management and deepened his understanding of how businesses function. He was inspired to continue building his entrepreneurial venture, in large part due to his love for both freedom and problem-solving. He says it's what prompted his independent and unconventional career path.

"When you are solving problems, you need to have the ability to make beautiful conjectures. You need to have certain quantitative and qualitative ways to think about things. I think I always had those skill sets, and they were refined when I took formal courses at Fletcher," he says.

While Shrivastava launched his educational startup Global Governance Initiative (GGI) before Fletcher, he was able to scale up and expand while pursuing his degree -- thanks to guidance from his Fletcher professors. "GGI grew exponentially when I was a student at Fletcher and the School's ecosystem was truly marvelous. It was of great assistance for what I set out to do," he said.

Some of the biggest supporters of his work were Fletcher faculty members who, among other things, helped him curate GGI's advisory board.

GGI is a social impact firm for students and young professionals, many of whom are without social or financial privilege. "With GGI, we wanted to ensure that privilege is not confined to a small section of the society, because it should be all encompassing. We are trying to create micro communities across various parts of the world so that people are able to achieve their goals and ambitions with the help of an entire collaborative network of partner institutions we have built so far," he said.

Currently, Shrivastava is in Eastern Europe working with the Open Balkan initiative, helping leaders in the region restructure their priorities, improve their digitization index and navigate in the midst of the Russia and Ukraine crisis. He also continues to strengthen and expand GGI -- bridging the skills gap among more young professionals and scaling up its geographic footprint.

Shrivastava, who oversees GGI's growth, says the core team is around 25 members, mostly concentrated in South Asia. To date, the organization has positively impacted nearly 10,000 young professionals and plans are in place to build GGI to the global level.

Read more about Fletcher's Master of International Business (MIB) degree program.