3 Key Takeaways from EY Sustainability Summer Internship
Read student Marko’s reflections on sustainability over his summer internship at EY.
Hello everyone!
My name is Marko Fickert Ariza, and I am a fourth-year Geography and Management student at the University of St Andrews. Throughout my degree so far at St Andrews, I have developed a passion for understanding how businesses respond to climate change and sustainability related risks and opportunities. Therefore, this summer I had the great privilege to undertake a 5-week internship at the EY Climate Change and Sustainability Services (CCaSS) team in Madrid, Spain. In this post, I share with you my three takeaways from this incredibly eye-opening experience at the EY Madrid CCaSS team. I hope you enjoy it!
1. Sustainability is not a topic of tomorrow but a topic of today. During the EY ImpACT week 2025, I learned that sustainability is a central concern for Spain’s largest companies, including Telefónica, Repsol and Ferrovial. Such companies are experiencing financial impacts from climate change and responding to rapidly evolving corporate sustainability reporting legislation. A key takeaway from the ‘Del cumplimiento a la estrategia empresarial’ (‘From compliance to business strategy’) roundtable session was how those companies that integrate sustainability into their business model today, are better positioned to navigate tomorrow´s sustainability-related risks and opportunities, whilst creating long-term value for stakeholders.
2. The importance of a good teamwork culture. One of the aspects of my internship I enjoyed most was the teamwork culture at CCaSS, where everyone helped each other out and people showed curiosity for learning from each other. Throughout these 5 weeks, I was given by different team members an overview of the projects they were involved in. Alongside informal coffee corner conversations, this showed me how each team member brings different experiences, skills and knowledge to CCaSS. Therefore, a teamwork culture that encourages people from different backgrounds to share their diverse perspectives can lead to improved problem solving, helping build a better working world.
3. Nature and biodiversity loss poses risks but also opportunities for businesses. In developing a client proposal on nature and biodiversity reporting, I learnt that the degradation of natural environments is creating risks for companies. Such risks include physical risks (e.g. water shortages disrupting supply chains) and transition risks (e.g. a company´s negative impacts on nature harming its brand reputation). Conversely, businesses have an opportunity to build business models and value chains that reverse nature and biodiversity loss. Since limiting global warming to 1.5°C is not possible without addressing nature loss, having businesses seize nature-related opportunities could help drive the world towards a nature-positive future.
Finally, I am incredibly thankful to the entire EY Madrid CCaSS team for this invaluable opportunity to grow and connect with amazing individuals. A special thanks to Juan Azcarate Venegas and Monique M. Bonilla Domingues for the mentorship and confidence they have given me in developing a client proposal on nature and biodiversity reporting, the main project I worked on during my internship.
If you have any questions about my internship at the EY Madrid CCaSS team or would simply like to connect, feel free to contact me either on LinkedIn at Marko Fickert Ariza or send me an email at: [email protected]
Thank you!