An ‘Intrapreneur’ Driving the Corporate Clean Energy Revolution

Miranda Ballentine is the CEO of the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance, a group that helps companies like Apple, Google, Disney, GM, Citigroup ink wind and solar deals worth billions of dollars.

Miranda knows this space better than anyone. As a former leader of sustainability teams at Walmart and the Air Force, she’s had to buy renewable energy for hundreds of stores and military bases, and track carbon emissions across complex supply chains.

In this episode, we’ll talk about Miranda’s winding career that led her from neuro-psychology to deploying solar in developing countries to Walmart and the Air Force. What was her intrapreneurial superpower that helped her drive change inside these massive organizations?

“Nobody ever talks about or celebrates becoming an intrepreneur driving change from within large organizations. And it is a different skill set,” she says.

“It's often about persuasion and influence and trust-building and identifying where you want to go and all the internal stakeholders and levers that need to be pulled to get you there. Patience. Tenacity. These are the kinds of natural superpowers that are required to be an entrepreneur in the world needs both environmental entrepreneurs and environmental intrepreneurs.”

Resources:

• GreenBiz: New era of large-scale renewables growth
• NPR: From Walmart to Google, companies teaming up to buy more renewable energy

Illuminators is a podcast from Uplight and Post Script Audio.