SerpApi.Org
Parker Raposa and Lauren Schif could have flown from Southern California to North Carolina in a matter of hours.
Instead, they spent seven days crossing the country in a Rivian electric pickup truck, stopping at the Grand Canyon, testing the nation's growing electric-vehicle charging network and documenting each day's adventure on Instagram before arriving in Durham for the next chapter of their lives.
The couple is among the inaugural class of Duke University's new Master in Business, Climate and Sustainability program, where students are learning to navigate the growing intersection of business strategy and climate change.
The degree comes as companies increasingly factor climate risks into business decisions, from supply chain disruptions and insurance costs to energy planning and extreme weather. According to the World Economic Forum's 2025 Future of Jobs Report, 47% of employers expect efforts to reduce carbon emissions to drive organizational transformation over the next five years, while 41% anticipate climate adaptation will reshape how their organizations operate.
For Raposa and Schif, the road trip wasn't just a way to relocate. It was also an experiment.
Raposa wanted to see whether an electric vehicle could realistically handle a cross-country drive while avoiding the higher carbon emissions associated with flying. The couple is still calculating the trip's emissions and costs compared with air travel.
"We thought it'd be kind of exciting to test the capacity of the range of my truck," Raposa said. "Because we're entering an environmental program, flying across the country has larger carbon emissions associated with it."
Like many prospective EV drivers, they expected charging to be one of the biggest hurdles. Instead, they found fast chargers readily available along Interstate 40, stopping roughly 20 times during the more than 2,500-mile journey. Most charging sessions lasted between 30 minutes and an hour, Raposa said.
Their experience reflects how much the nation's charging network has evolved. More than 64% of Americans now live within two miles of a public EV charger, and the number of public DC fast-charging connectors nationwide has grown to more than 70,000, making long-distance electric-vehicle travel increasingly practical.
For Schif, the charging breaks became part of the adventure.
"With the EV and the charging stops, it forces you to take a break, rest, relax and then hop back in the car," she said. "I really enjoyed it."
Schif, who spent the past three years working as a marine environmental scientist, said she enrolled at Duke because she wanted to move beyond collecting environmental data and learn how to translate science into business decisions.
"I really wanted to take more of a business leadership position to really leverage some of those data sets and really produce productive outcomes," Schif said.
The 10-month graduate program, jointly offered by Duke's Fuqua School of Business and Nicholas School of the Environment, combines coursework in business, climate science, environmental policy and applied analytics. Graduates are expected to pursue careers in industries including consulting, finance, energy, agriculture and insurance.
"It's not enough to just have the environmental knowledge," said Alistar Erickson-Ludwig, the program's academic dean. "You have to know your audience, and you need the business side and a business angle to be able to do that."
Erickson-Ludwig said businesses increasingly need employees who understand how climate-related events can affect every part of an operation.
"When there are extreme weather events, we need to have individuals who have the knowledge of those weather events," Erickson-Ludwig said. "It's going to be distribution. It's going to be logistics. It's going to be manufacturing, and all of those things are tying back to profit."
Raposa, who has worked in sustainability for about five years, said he believes that combination of business and climate knowledge will become increasingly valuable regardless of industry.
"Any business that requires the use of resources or land should be highly aware of their impacts on those vital parts of their business," Raposa said.
As the inaugural class begins its first semester, both students say the seven-day drive to Durham reinforced the reason they enrolled in the program in the first place: finding practical ways to connect climate science with economic decisions.
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