ESG career journey series: Marla Pourrabbani

March 4, 2024

There has been a push to understand the risks and opportunities related to climate change and use that insight to help increase resilience within organizations and society.

—Marla Pourrabbani, Audit & Assurance senior manager, Deloitte & Touche LLP
 

The view from above

As Marla Pourrabbani peered out of the helicopter high over the Sierra Nevada mountains, Audit & Assurance-related work was the furthest thing from her mind. As a climate scientist, Marla was there to study water and evaporation in reservoirs in one of the world’s most diverse watersheds. The network of reservoirs supply drinking water to millions of California residents. It also irrigates millions of acres of some of the nation’s most productive cropland.

“I was a staff researcher at the university where I earned my Ph.D.,” Marla explains. “At that time, I was in the field to understand trends in soil moisture and stream flow in the mountain range—and the implications for water availability in California.”

So how did she get from academia to professional services? “It wasn’t a straight path by any means,” she says. Her first move was to an insurance company. “I assessed physical climate risks—hurricanes, wildfire, floods—to help price property insurance for different kinds of buildings.”

Those same skills, it turns out, are applicable to many other industries. As a senior manager in Deloitte’s Audit & Assurance business, Marla advises a wide variety of organizations to develop strategies that address and consider climate change. “I think about it from two angles. One is what the organization is doing to contribute either to climate change or to the low-carbon energy transition. The other is what climate change, and the global transition to a low-carbon economy, mean for an organization.”

Advancing the conversation

Environmental concerns are hardly new in the commercial sector. But historically, Marla says, organizations often viewed them in terms of efficiency for bottom-line savings. Now she’s seeing a greater sense of urgency around the climate crisis. “What’s their carbon footprint? How does climate change impact their workforce, operations, or products? Those are some newer conversations that we’re having.”

This trend dovetails with rapid development in the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure landscape. “We’ve seen a number of regulations go into action abroad, along with proposed regulation here in the United States.” To help comply with these disclosure requirements, organizations will need data—often, a significant amount of data.

That’s prompted Deloitte’s Audit & Assurance team to incorporate scientific specialization and data analytics into their services. There’s a lot of value we can deliver by bringing new, diverse specialization to our traditional Audit & Assurance services to advise on complex sustainability challenges.”

What’s their carbon footprint? How does climate change impact their workforce, operations, or products? Those are some newer conversations that we’re having.

Marla enjoys quantitative analysis and modeling of climate data. She’s also passionate about communicating the consensus on climate science to different audiences—non-technical as well as technical—while connecting the dots between climate change and pillars of civil society like infrastructure, economic stability, and public health. “In general, there has been a push to understand the risks and opportunities related to climate change and use that insight to help increase resilience within organizations and society.”

Then there’s the impact of providing decision-useful information. “When that sustainability report or climate disclosure goes live, and the client tells me about the positive feedback they’re getting from their investors and other stakeholders and how they’re addressing the climate crisis, it’s satisfying professionally as well as intellectually.”

A time for collective action

One surprise about working at Deloitte has been the ability to tap into a broad, deep knowledge base. “I bring knowledge about physical climate change,” Marla observes. “But when it comes to questions like how much air conditioning an organization will need in the future, or how much it will cost to rebuild a bridge, I need to collaborate. And with 400,000-plus colleagues around the world, there’s going to be someone with just the specialization I need.”

Collaboration is critically important in a role like hers. “There’s so much to learn, and if you don’t ask questions, you’re not going to have information you need to do your job effectively.” Beyond that, working with other people “really helps you refine your expectations for quality.” The social connection is another bonus. Marla describes her ESG team members as “brilliant, friendly, helpful, committed. They’re good colleagues, but then also good people.”

These days, Marla’s work is more likely to take her into sleek urban high-rises than to the remote, rugged locations of her field-scientist past. And it’s easier to find her chasing her two young children around playgrounds than climbing glaciers or swimming in the Arctic Ocean (as she did while in Alaska studying the effects of climate change). But her wandering spirit is intact. “There are a lot of beautiful places out there. And if we take action on the climate crisis now, we may be able to preserve their beauty for many generations to come.”

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