This article was originally published by HBS Alumni Stories.

The HBS Business and Environment Initiative (BEI) and the HBS Club of Washington, DC (HBSDC) recently co-hosted a fireside chat on climate and inequality, featuring HBS Professor Debora Spar, Senior Associate Dean for Business in Global Society, and Audrey Choi (MBA 2004), the Former Chief Sustainability Officer at Morgan Stanley.

The chat, titled Inequality and Climate Change: Implications for Business Policy and Action, attracted 85 alumni and guests to the University Club in DC on February 26, according to co-organizers Raj Patil (OPM 42, 2012), president of the HBSDC, and Patrick Coady (MBA 1966), who is the events chair for the club’s Environment and Climate Initiative.

The conversation focused on helping business leaders and policymakers understand the disproportionate impacts of climate change on low income and marginalized communities. Spar and Choi touched on a range of issues, including the vital importance of trees for poor urban areas, the changing needs for insurance due to climate change, and the impact of climate change on the real estate industry.

“This was our tenth event on environment and climate, and definitely a marquee event for us,” says Patil. “We had people from government, policy, banking, and industry associations. It was a diverse group, and we saw many young alumni as well.”

Coady says the program was part of the BEI’s Alumni in Climate Networking Series, aimed at engaging HBS alumni in conversations around climate leadership and solutions. “We’ve worked closely with the school and the BEI on other events, to get ideas and connect with faculty,” he says. “We worked with them to invite interested alumni from around the DC area, and it was certainly encouraging to us that so many people attended.”

In addition to hosting several virtual events for the Climate Networking Series, the BEI took the series on the road this year, for in-person conversations on climate solutions. So far, it has hosted events with alumni clubs in Boston, New York, San Francisco, and Switzerland as well as DC. Stops in Chicago and London are forthcoming, and plans are underway for more clubs visits in the future.

“This networking series came about after we hosted the Accelerating Climate Solutions Conference at HBS last May,” says Courtney Fairbrother, associate director of the BEI. “It was meant to give alumni a roadmap for addressing climate change. More than 300 alumni attended. Coming out of that, we wanted to find a way to continue to engage alumni. The goal of the whole series is to bring together alumni who are working on climate solutions and make sure they can connect with each other and with the school.”