What Comes Next: Candra Sutama’s Leap Toward Sustainability

After 21 years at SLB, starting as a Field Engineer and eventually moving into a global leadership role in Paris, Candra Sutama had built a career that on paper, looked complete.

Recruited straight out of her engineering degree in Indonesia, she spent her entire career at SLB, growing within a structured and demanding organization. Over two decades, she moved across roles, countries, and responsibilities, steadily climbing the ladder to eventually becoming Principal in the Global Operations & Technical Excellence Center. Yet despite this trajectory, a deeper question began to surface: “It was all I knew. At some point, I felt I needed a fresh perspective and to find out what comes next.”

At the same time, growing awareness around climate change and the role of fossil fuels pushed her to reflect more seriously on her impact and personal values. Even though her desire to transition into a more sustainable field became clear, the path forward was not.

Candra applied to the HEC Executive MBA while considering a career change, encouraged by colleagues who had previously attended HEC Paris. The program’s structure—classes every other weekend—allowed her to manage an already demanding professional and personal life.

Her cohort played a big part in her EMBA experience. “Everyone had already achieved something in their career and were asking the same questions: what’s next for me? Is there something I can do for society? What is fulfilling for me as a person?,” she shares. “It was a very interesting space where everyone was really questioning what to do next.”

She joined the Energy specialization, despite already having strong experience in oil and gas. For Candra, this was not about deepening technical expertise, but about broadening her understanding of the global energy landscape. The specialization helped her reframe energy beyond fossil fuels and explore its critical role in society: “I still want to be in energy, because I believe that energy is important and critical. The whole world needs energy, it’s just that we need it clean.”

Initially contributing as a senior partner during her EMBA, she then joined ECADIN as a full-time COO, a sustainability nonprofit that supports enterprises and organizations in accelerating green transformations by connecting expertise, knowledge, governments, business actors, and financing. “It was a huge leap of faith—from a big corporate environment to a not-for-profit. The EMBA really helped me build clarity on what I wanted to do.

Today, she serves as COO while also pursuing a PhD at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, focusing on public-private partnerships for geothermal development in Indonesia. Her work now focuses on policy, economics, and energy transition, mirroring her growing interest to shaping sustainable systems at scale. She also has a desire to give back where she can one day teach and help the next generation better understand complex topics like energy transition and climate change, making them easier to understand and apply.