Asset & Wealth Management, Sustainability & Impact, Value Creation, Associate - New York

Asset & Wealth Management: Goldman Sachs Asset Management is one of the world's leading asset managers with over $2 trillion in assets under supervision. As a primary investment area within Goldman Sachs, we provide investment and advisory services for pension plans, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, endowments, foundations, financial advisors, and individuals.

Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Sustainability & Impact Team, Value Creation Associate - New York

Role Overview

• This role is part of the Sustainability & Impact team (S&I) and reports into the COO, Head of Sustainability & Impact (Americas). This role will focus on supporting the COO to build out the S&I team's approach to value creation, including management of the S&I team's Sustainability Optimization Center of Excellence as part of the Value Accelerator (VA), and to drive the team's research to identify sustainability levers to both manage risk and support value creation throughout the investment life-cycle.
• The VA is a centralized platform that partners with our portfolio companies to build enduring businesses and create incremental value by leveraging the GS network, our differentiated resources, and our highly distinguished operating advisors. The VA has six Centers of Excellence that offer dedicated supports focused on different value creation levers: Scaling Growth, Operational Excellence, Digital Transformation, Talent and Organizational Strategy, Finance and Strategy, and Sustainability Optimization, the focus of this role.
• The Associate will collaborate closely with other members of the S&I team (including ESG Business Leads embedded in each investing strategy), deal teams, the Value Accelerator team as well as external vendors and our advisor network to drive sustainability-focused value creation initiatives at portfolio companies and conduct sustainability research to develop new value creation tools.

Key Responsibilities:

• Identify needed value creation supports and develop corresponding sustainability optimization content for portfolio companies
  
  
  
  • Prioritize among sustainability-related value creation topics and create substantive, technical content from S&I, advisor, and VA team expertise
  • Create and manage VA project workplan to complete the prioritized topics and liaise with the VA team to integrate sustainability in other CoEs
  • Identify broader sustainability trends/updates to share with AWM Private's leadership
  • Build out and manage advisor network (e.g., onboarding, how to log hours, etc.) and work with consultants and tech experts to create content above
  
  
• Enable Portcos to engage directly with the VA and each other
  
  
  
  • Manage Sustainability Leaders Community among portfolio companies and identify other potential communities for them to join
  • Translate technical sustainability-related content into useable self-service tools for portfolio companies on topics such as decarbonization, sustainable procurement, employee engagement, etc.
  • Design and help facilitate online and in-person events for portfolio companies
  • Refresh VA connect website (internally and externally) to be more user friendly
  • Map out distribution/launch strategy for all CoE resources
  
  
• Measure effectiveness of sustainability value creation and report
  
  
  
  • Collect feedback from portcos on the above to help us better understand demand
  • Capture and log case studies of successful value creation among portfolio companies
  • Develop methodology to translate value creation efforts into financial impacts
  • Communicate progress to clients and key GS stakeholders
  
  
• Enable deal teams to more clearly integrate sustainability into value creation plans (VCPs)
  
  
  
  • Ensure sustainability integration is key part of VCPs where relevant
  • Liaise with deal teams and portcos to scope out relevant VA supports
  • Track VCPs, related KPIs and progress
  • Identify VC topics and help create substantive, technical content from investment team/portco perspective
  
  
• Support development and communication of sustainability value creation strategy
  
  
  
  • Conduct targeted research sprints to develop thought leadership pieces, primarily targeting internal audiences, on sustainability-driven value creation
  • Source original, innovative research ideas from across the S&I team, VA team, the broader firm, and other networks; manage the pipeline of research topics, pulling in other team members as needed
  • Develop and track KPIs in dashboard(s) that aggregate performance of platform-wide sustainability value creation efforts
  • Draft leadership presentations that provide progress updates on the work of the Sustainability Optimization CoE and effectively solicit targeted input from AWM Private leadership
  • Create client-facing materials that outline our approach to sustainability value creation and equip leaders to speak to our strategy
  • Complete other research, analysis, and communications tasks as assigned by the COO
  
  

Qualifications:

The ideal candidate will possess the following qualifications and key skills:

• At least 2-5 years of professional experience in banking, investing, and/or management consulting at a top-tier firm OR experience developing and/or implementing a sustainability strategy at a corporate (environmental or social)
• Collaborative, detail-oriented and organized with strong professional writing and presentation-creation skills
• Strong analytical abilities, including calculating the financial ROI of making sustainability improvements
• Thorough, mature and professional
• Familiarity with making practical tools for management teams to use
• Strong understanding of how sustainable business practices can drive commercial value; knowledge of related industry frameworks/standards and how to apply them to our portfolios
• Proactive team player in a fast-paced environment and a commitment to excellence, integrity and collaboration is a must
• Experience with ESG KPIs/metrics preferred
• Strong experience with Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint and Word with some awareness of business intelligence software and software tools
• Bachelor's degree from a top-tier school, MBA preferred