Ebenezer J A

I came to LFA with an engineering and MBA background, almost a decade working in social impact & digital transformation but with zero formal climate credentials — just a growing unease about e-waste, water scarcity, and not knowing where that care was supposed to go. The program's structure changed that. Each assignment forced a real decision, not just reflection: a 2040 vision built around a specific organization, a path I had to choose and defend, research that tested my assumptions against real data. I was surprised to learn India isn't behind on climate technology — some Indian recycling companies actually outperform global recovery benchmarks. The gap isn't innovation. It's implementation, and justice — the millions of informal workers whose livelihoods depend on how that implementation happens. By the final assignment, I had an actual action plan with near-term dates attached — not "someday." What I didn't expect was how much the community would matter. Lab sessions and peer review with other fellows sharpened my thinking more than any assignment brief — their questions found soft spots I couldn't see alone. LFA put me in a room full of people carrying the same weight, and that changed what I felt capable of attempting. The harder thing to name is permission. I didn't feel qualified to call myself a "climate" anything. LFA gave me a structured runway — one deliverable at a time — from worried to building. By the end, I wasn't waiting for permission anymore. I kept going: a Sustainability Leadership certification next, and now the early stages of registering a nonprofit which focuses on sustainability, climate & resilience — name kept confidential while registration is in process — built around four programs, each for a specific group it's meant to serve, with a plan spanning the next twenty years, not two. None of that was the plan when I signed up. I signed up worried and without direction. The organization is what happened when I finally had somewhere real to put that worry to work.