Logan Day ’15 gives current Loggers an inside look at the tech start-up world with engaging internships.
When Logan Day ’15 first set foot at the University of Puget Sound with plans of playing baseball and becoming an English teacher, he had no idea he would find himself working for a renewable energy start-up company. After switching majors a few times, Day graduated with a double major in business and comparative sociology. Employment brought him to Portland, Oregon where he landed a job in the human resources department at Nike thanks to a connection from another Puget Sound alum. Day worked four years at Nike before jumping over to renewable energy developer, EDP Renewables, for two additional years, but a connection he made at Nike would play a pivotal role in his next chapter. Nike’s previous director of renewable energy left to start his own company, Ren Energy, in 2017, and in 2021 he asked Day to join as head of operations.
Ren Energy hopes to make a significant impact in reducing manufacturing emissions by working across several brands rather than trying to tackle one at a time. With 90% of corporate carbon emissions tied to their supply chains, Day realized that if they wanted to address climate change, they had to work at the root of the problem.
“That was the big idea—to bring brands together to work on renewable energy projects in an aggregated approach, to help speed things up and do things at the scale that’s necessary to really make a dent in terms of carbon emissions, and impact global warming,” says Day.
What began as a sustainable energy consulting company has since transformed into a software platform that maps a given company’s supply chains to reveal their total energy consumption and carbon footprint among their factories, data centers, and other facilities. The software provides their clients with an adaptable and comprehensive way to see where they should prioritize pivoting to renewable sources, and gives them the tools to take real action.
In April 2022, Day was invited to be a guest speaker at Puget Sound’s Business Leadership Program to share his story of entrepreneurship with BLP students interested in sustainability. Meeting with the students spurred his interest in finding an opportunity to share more of his knowledge. He told Professor of Business & Leadership Lynnette Claire to reach out if any of her students were interested in doing internship work. That fall, Claire introduced Day to four eager interns.
