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Meilin Chan

Master of Environmental Management, 2024 

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Concentration:

Business and Environment

Employer:

The Walt Disney Company

Role:

Program Manager, Value Chain Emissions

 

 

 

Meilin Chan never imagined becoming a Disney employee. For much of her life, the Illinois native thought she’d become a doctor, like her father.

As an undergraduate at Boston University, she packed her schedule with biology, chemistry and physics classes in preparation for medical school. But second thoughts stirred during a course on ecosystem science and conservation.

“That’s when I learned a lot more about things like climate change and environmental degradation — and not just the near-term impacts, but the long-term generational impacts that [they] would have. And so that felt a lot heavier, and like a bigger issue for me at that moment,” Chan recalls.

Chan ultimately graduated with a degree in ecology and conservation, just as the pandemic thrust life into lockdown. With time on her hands, she assiduously networked through LinkedIn with environmental science professionals, inquiring about their jobs. That’s when she began to envision a career supporting sustainable business practices.

For Chan, a master’s degree was a necessary next step. After applying to and receiving offer letters from several schools, she received pivotal advice from Nicholas School alum Madison Barnes, who graduated in 2019.

“[Madison] was really kind and generous with her time, and had a phone call with me and just talked me through how she chose the program and how it helped her get to where she was at the time,” Chan says.

That conversation solidified Chan’s decision to attend the Nicholas School, where she chose the Business and Environment concentration. Life eventually came full circle: Chan and Barnes now work together at Disney in Los Angeles.

“If I hadn’t had an initial conversation with Madison, or [if] she didn’t know who I was, then I don’t know if my resume would have been lost [in the Disney application pile],” Chan says. “The Disney team also had an idea of the type of knowledge and skillset I would have, given that they already had familiarity with [the] Duke MEM program.”

As a program manager on Disney’s sustainability team, Chan tracks carbon emissions tied to the company’s value chain, or product life cycle. Value chains are like human-made ecosystems, she says, “where everything’s connected, and where an impact in one part of that ecosystem could ricochet and impact another aspect.”

Chan specifically focuses on carbon emissions indirectly related to Disney operations, such as consumer use of Disney products. She also helps chart Disney’s progress toward carbon reduction goals.

Her broad scope includes “all our sites around the world — to the parks, the ships, [to] when Disney makes movies and TV shows.”

Lessons learned during a Nicholas School course on carbon accounting, led by executive in residence Holly Emerson, have been particularly useful to her work. In that class, students were tasked with calculating the carbon footprint of a mock corporation. The project challenged Chan to think critically about the information a business would need to provide for accurate accounting, she explains. 

When she looks back at her time at the Nicholas School, Chan highlights a keen sense of belonging.

“For two whole years you are in a cohort of people who you don’t even have to really give the baseline explanation of why you care about what you care about,” she says. “Everybody was on the same page.”

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This article is part of a Nicholas Narratives series called “Earth Ambassadors,” which profiles alums from the Master of Environmental Management and Master of Forestry programs at the Nicholas School of the Environment. Find more profiles here.