James Young, Former Student

We interviewed James Young, a Masters student in 2021-22, to find out more about why he chose the course and his internship with York County Council.

James initially studied economics and worked for a couple of years in finance after graduating, but found that finance wasn’t giving him the job satisfaction he needed. James was passionate about sustainability and decided that moving into this field would give him the opportunity and ability to make a difference and have a real-world impact.

James chose the YMP MSc in Sustainable Business programme for a number of reasons. Firstly the programme was aimed at a wide range of students, not just those with a background in geography. It also had a nice balance between business and geography, which suited James’s background with his BSc in Economics. The YMP MSc would also provide him with the opportunity to explore options in the sustainability sector beyond consultancy. James is from York, and welcomed the idea of studying at the university in York and being taught by Maastricht University faculty through the York-Maastricht Partnership teaching collaboration. As James said “Maastricht’s a great university and having their School of Business and Economics on board bolsters the learning that you get”.

James relished the opportunity to get involved with the public sector through the group and individual internships, and also thoroughly enjoyed the group project with Hollybank Trust, which gave him the opportunity to feel like he was really making a difference because you’re working with children, young people and adults with quite complex needs.

James enjoyed the flexibility the programme offered, and he went on to undertake a thesis internship at York Council. James did his internship at the council within the Carbon Reduction Team, with the focus of his project being the effect of climate change on supply chains. He’d previously seen how vulnerable supply chains were during the pandemic, and wanted to explore this area a bit more and in relation to climate change. He’d also seen a report on priority risk areas and supply chains was an area at risk, so James’s thesis linked this to the sustainability work he was doing with York Council to examine the issue from a York context. Although climate change is a global problem on a global scale there are also things that happen on a local scale that were missing in the supply chains report.

York is vulnerable to flooding and was also affected by the heatwave this year which highlighted a lot of issues the city faces in relation to sustainability, climate change, and resilience.. James initially thought the issues would be related to the transportation of goods due to problems with delays, road and infrastructure but he found on speaking to businesses that a much bigger concern is the supply of labour. The biggest environmental concern for businesses was that,, if there is flooding and roads are inaccessible, then staff are unable to get to work, so although shops and restaurants may have received their stock, their staff may be unable to travel and so the business remains closed. This caused James to change the focus of his final report from a process argument to one with more of a human dimension to it, and as James described it himself, the shift in direction “was a happy accident really”.

James also thoroughly enjoyed the SUBLIM summer conference in Maastricht, which provided students with the opportunity to present their progress so far in their individual projects to their fellow students, lecturers, employees within the York Maastricht Partnership and to some of the industry partners they had worked with on both their individual and group projects.

Having previously only worked in the private sector, James thoroughly enjoyed working in the public sector and he found it eye opening. He noted that government offices receive a lot of criticism, but he found there were people working really hard on lots of projects tackling the different issues faced whilst also being under a lot of scrutiny. The Climate Resilience Report he wrote was subsequently used as an annex to a presentation at one of the York Council meetings.

James said “it was a great experience which allowed me to deal with many different topics. I also got exposure to a broad range of people working in sustainability, such as members of the farmers union and circular economy experts, that’s been the internal impact on me.”