Quoc Lap Nguyen is an MBA ’26 candidate and vice-president of the Ivey MBA Pride Club. In his blog below, he reflects on an unconventional learning experience that used podcasting to explore complex questions in sustainable finance.
Back in September, while I was weighing my elective options for the MBA program, Associate Professor Diane-Laure Arjaliès' Sustainable Finance course immediately grabbed my attention. I’ve always been curious about the sustainability of the financial markets. Specifically, I struggled to reconcile how a system built on ruthless profit maximization could ever truly address widening inequality or long-term planetary limits. It felt like a massive contradiction: can we really rely on the same machinery that drives wealth concentration to fix the very problems it often creates?
That question became the foundation of the course over the following 10 weeks. Those weeks were a whirlwind of foundational learning through case studies, simulations, and deep discussions. We covered a range of topics: from carbon credits and regenerative farming to taxation and Islamic finance. The material felt incredibly timely, especially given how politicized the environmental, social, and governance movement has become lately. The real highlight of the journey, however, didn't happen in the lecture hall, but inside Ivey’s podcast recording studio.
A different kind of final project
That emphasis on real-world complexity carried through to the course’s final project. Instead of a traditional paper, our MBA class had to work in teams to produce a podcast. Our team chose to tackle a heavyweight topic: the concentration of power of mega asset managers. The relevance of the topic became clear as we connected it to our own investing habits. We wanted to investigate the immense influence held by a triad of giants, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street. This topic feels especially urgent as investing becomes more accessible to retail investors like us and as the assets managed by these few firms have skyrocketed.
The process was a crash course in storytelling. We quickly realized that reading a research paper out loud makes for terrible audio. We had to find a balance between delivering hard data, like the trillions of dollars these firms manage, and keeping a natural, conversational flow to captivate listeners. Editing was also a challenge. We recorded a lot of material, and it took many revisions to cut unnecessary content without losing the key messages.
The deeper we went into the research, the more complex the picture became. After a few weeks of scriptwriting, studio recording, and editing, we were proud to present the final product to the class. The learnings were sobering. I realized that when I buy an S&P 500 ETF, I’m often signing over my voting rights to the asset manager. This creates a double-edged sword. On one hand, these massive firms can be powerful stewards, forcing companies to be more sustainable. On the other hand, this concentration of power means just a few people decide the fate of the market, potentially hindering real green innovation in favour of short-term gains.
Lessons from an unconventional assignment
Beyond the content itself, the format of the assignment reshaped how I learned. Podcasting turned out to be an incredible tool for learning. It forced me to simplify complex ideas and speak with intention, a skill that AI tools still struggle to replicate. I wrote a script for the first time and learned the art of engaging storytelling, even if I am still getting used to the sound of my own voice. The process pushed me far outside my comfort zone, and that is exactly where the real growth happened.
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