David Kilroy
Bekenstein Climate Leaders

David Kilroy, Yale School of Management

Goal: Developing scalable climate solutions 

As an Eagle Scout, David Kilroy ’25 MBA once canoed for 75 miles through the Canadian wilderness, basking in the pristine surroundings. It seemed a world away from his childhood home in Cleveland, where he grew up hearing about the polluted Cuyahoga River that caught fire in 1969 and inspired the U.S. Clean Water Act.

“I remember being absolutely shocked at how clear the (Canadian) water was because you just don't see that very often,” Kilroy recalled.

As a city and regional planning major at The Ohio State University, Kilroy took sustainability, resilience, and environmental planning courses. After graduating and working as an AmeriCorps volunteer, he ran a business incubator in Appalachian Ohio. There, he saw how the business sector could play a part in advancing environmental solutions. 

“There was a startup in Athens, Ohio, using reclaimed contaminated water from old mines and turning it into red pigment paint for reuse,” Kilroy said, adding that he was inspired by examples of people finding ways to take negative environmental impacts to create something positive.

He saw how these threads — a deep interest in environmentalism, businesses, particularly startups — connected. That brought him to Yale, where he is pursuing an MBA, and taking full advantage of opportunities to tap into resources at the Yale School of the Environment. 

“Yale is so uniquely strong in helping students work at the intersection of business and the environment,” he noted.

Kilroy’s team won a competition as part of the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking’s Intensive program. The group pitched an idea for novel roofing material that has the potential to improve energy efficiency and won a grant to develop the business. 

This summer, Kilroy worked at ClimateHaven, a New Haven-based nonprofit that supports climate tech entrepreneurs. There, he built a framework for developing existing startups.

“There are so many ideas, and so many solutions,” he said. “It matters, helping those solutions to scale.”

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