Alumni in the Spotlight - Nina Pimblett

With this edition of the magazine focusing on climate and the environment, we caught up with Nina Pimblett who left Trinity in 2014 to study Geography at the University of Nottingham. It was here that she developed a particular interest in climate change and was nominated for a Royal Geographic Society prize for her dissertation on the link between traffic-related air pollution, sociodemographic risk factors and chronic respiratory disease.

After university, she joined KPMG on their Corporate Audit Graduate scheme where she completed her ACA qualification to become a Chartered Accountant. In her final year of the graduate scheme, Nina was seconded to the ESG Reporting & Assurance team where she specialised in assuring carbon emissions.

Nina Pimblett, class of 2014

You’ve just joined the Climate Risk and Strategy team at KPMG, what do they do and how do they add value to the climate change discussion?

The Climate Risk & Strategy team helps clients across corporate and financial services respond to the systematic challenges posed by climate change. To do this, the team focuses on two key areas – Climate Risk and Decarbonisation Strategy. Whilst on this team, I have had the opportunity to work across both areas and have enjoyed them equally.

Climate Risk – Climate change presents businesses with both risks and opportunities. My team performs ‘climate risk analysis’ to quantify these so that our clients are better placed to make strategic decisions in line with their business needs and regulatory requirements. To do this, KPMG has an exciting tool called Climate IQ which runs scenarios to assess how risks (e.g. flooding or government policies) will impact selected performance indicators (e.g. profit) over time.

Decarbonisation Strategy – Businesses are increasingly looking to reduce their contribution to climate change and identify how to demonstrate this to the wider public.

My team helps clients analyse and assess the range of mitigation and adaptation strategies available to address climate risks (including the adoption of net zero strategies, carbon market participation and transition planning), implement these strategies and ensure that this is clearly reported to their stakeholders.

What are the biggest challenges you face in what you do?

One of the biggest challenges we face is that companies vary massively in their climate strategy ambitions, with some companies wanting to be leaders in the field and others just want to do the regulatory minimum. This means that we must really understand our client’s ambitions to make sure that we develop appropriate strategy options, otherwise they won’t use them.

What impact did Trinity School have in where you are today?

I was lucky to have two amazing geography teachers at Trinity – Mr Brookman and Mr Snelling. I loved all their lessons and think that they did an excellent job of teaching us about the human element of physical geography – which is what I now think about every day. I am very grateful for the effort that they invested in our lessons to make them so enjoyable.