Ava Wonn (MBA ’24) has been obsessed with people’s garbage since high school.
An Advanced Placement environmental sciences class sparked a passion for reducing the amount of food Americans threw away. Then, a part-time job with a UGA-based startup CIRT (Can I Recycle This?), helped refocus her efforts on the world’s plastics problem.
“I thought, ‘OK, that sounds interesting,’” said Wonn, who was an environmental engineering undergrad when she took on a role as a recycling information intern. “I was already fascinated by food waste, so expanding my focus to solid waste seemed like a natural step. And I was right — I absolutely loved it.”
Today, she is a data product manager for CIRT, founded in 2018 by engineering graduate student Katherine Shayne and Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor of Environmental Engineering Jenna Jambeck.
CIRT has a sustainability mission, but it’s a business-to-business software firm, Wonn explains. She helps consumer packaged goods companies — such as Anheuser-Busch InBev — analyze and minimize their pre- and post-consumer waste streams. As part of this service, CIRT helps consumers determine how to recycle products and packaging based on location.
“We help them reduce their packaging waste,” she said. “We map different recovery programs — whether that’s recycling or compost — across North America. Then we help companies match up their product distribution footprint with these programs and educate consumers on how to best dispose of our clients’ products so they don’t end up in the environment or a landfill.”
Wonn works directly with companies to find recycling and waste stream solutions to meet their sustainability goals.
“Working for CIRT — even as a student — I had a lot of interaction with larger companies,” she said. “Because it’s a startup, I was brought into customer meetings — whether to help pitch the product or understand how they wanted to use it.”
Wonn paired her environmental engineering bachelor’s degree with a Terry College of Business Pathway MBA to ramp up her business acumen. The program allows UGA undergrads majoring in math, science or engineering to earn an MBA with one additional year of coursework. The MBA allowed her to translate her environmental know-how for the business world and grow her CIRT.
“It’s the nature of CIRT being a startup, but there were not a lot of defined structures or processes in place,” Wonn said. “I have been able to work with our team and utilize the skills I learned in organizational behavior and strategy classes to formalize some of the processes for how we do things.”
Her MBA helps interpret her engineering knowledge base for the businesses she’s working with — making those large client calls run more smoothly.
“Just understanding more about how to present yourself professionally and what businesses are looking for in these conversations is huge,” Wonn said. “That’s not something you’re accustomed to doing right out of engineering school.”
In addition to elevating her work with CIRT, Wonn used her MBA education to learn about and advocate for B Corp certification — a designation that a company is meeting high accountability standards to its workers, the community and the environment.
She sits on the board of B Local Georgia, a nonprofit that builds a community around B Corp businesses and supports companies in achieving certification.