Sustainability Dialogue with Alumni: Understanding the Power of Small Actions with Soomin Park

Soomin Park is a passionate sustainability advocate who is currently working as a Sustainability Analyst. She is a graduate of HKUST's Environmental Management and Technology (EVMT) program, and she has extensive experience in sustainability consulting and project management.

As an undergraduate, keen to inspire others towards sustainability, she spent her time serving as an IPO Student Ambassador and promoting EVMT programs to like-minded peers in Hong Kong and around the globe, working with WWF-HK and WWF-Korea, and increasing awareness of how on-campus composting would promote better soil conservation.

Her key message to those in pursuit of this field, is that “many of us experience burnout due to frustration over whether our efforts make any real impact”. And for this, she recalls the words of Professor Paul Forster, the Co-Director of the EVMT program who passed away in 2020: "Do not underestimate the power of small things." His course on system thinking changed her view to realize that “sustainability begins with acknowledging that our actions ripple through the world in very unknown ways. So, as individuals, each one of us do hold the power to shape the system”.

As an Analyst at a leading global Sustainability Consultancy CAPCO, she is making a meaningful difference by helping environmentally problematic businesses and industries become more sustainable.

Before she got there, her past experience included a 6-month full-time placement with adidas’s Social and Environmental Affairs team and an Investment Research internship at Mirae Asset Global Investments. These experiences, she says, along with “the vast amount of practical and academic insights I learned while earning my qualifications are now proving hugely useful in my career as a Sustainability Analyst.” 

She predicts a growing number of changes to the field of sustainability through more rigorous regulations and increased consumer demand and is excited to see this industry bloom further.