“Seeing how climate change and environmental issues directly affect people and communities, and have done so for decades, and the ripple effects of that into generations, that’s really got me passionate about this field,” Jain said.
Jain changed his major to environmental geosciences and media studies. After graduating, he worked at a climate change consulting and research firm, and later at a solar startup. At the Yale School of the Environment (YSE), Jain connected with classmates who wanted to create a startup that addressed environmental issues and he and a team launched WindLoop, a company that recycles end-of-life wind turbine blades.
“Yale has played a role not only in building that community and ecosystem so that we were able to find each other, but it played a role in financially supporting us,” he said.
Windloop received funding from the Yale Center for Business and the Environment, which they used to incorporate the company and purchase equipment. The team also worked with Climate Haven, a New Haven-based nonprofit directed by Casey Pickett ’10 MBA/MEM that supports climate tech entrepreneurs in the development and scaling of climate technology. They connected with their first industry partner, Avangrid, a Connecticut-based sustainable energy company, through the Yale Energy Conference.
“In this field, you'll never know enough,” he said. “I think being at Yale has been very crucial in that way, to give myself space to be wrong, engage in informative discourse, and have very intense arguments and discussions with my peers. That's been the biggest learning here.”