Send news about sustainability leadership roles, promotions and departures to editor@trellis.net.
Amy Skoczlas Cole, who previously ran corporate partnerships for Conservation International and pioneered corporate sustainability strategy at eBay, was named director of the NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business on Oct. 9.
Skoczlas Cole replaces the founding director, Tensie Whelan, who will remain with the university as professor emeritus. Skoczlas Cole’s term is effective January 2026, when she will join NYU as a clinical professor.
The appointment comes after a search kicked off earlier this year when Whelan announced her intention to step down. Whelan, a Trellis columnist, was the president of conservation nonprofit Rainforest Alliance for more than 15 years before joining NYU in 2015.
Skoczlas Cole, whose interest in mainstreaming sustainability and conservation began 20 years ago, said universities have a key role to play in advancing that agenda.
“Recognition of the potential for sustainability to create tangible business value is nascent and fragile, and we’re still experimenting with how to scale it,” said Skoczlas Cole, explaining her decision to join NYU Stern. “Even more, there is a generational opportunity to reimagine the future of work, consumerism, supply chains and capital flows that is both better for people and the planet, fueled by private sector profitability.”
The Center for Sustainable Business, founded in 2016, developed a methodology called Return on Sustainability Investment that is used by thousands of corporate sustainability professionals and investors to evaluate greenhouse gas emissions reduction programs and projects meant to address environmental impact.
The center manages one of the best-known MBA specializations in sustainable business and also offers undergraduate specializations and bootcamps involving the private sector. More than 500 students have earned that specialization, while more than 1,500 have enrolled in Sustainability for Competitive Advantage courses.
Expect Skoczlas Cole to prioritize the deeper use of analytics and artificial intelligence to push participation among the student body much higher.
For the past five years, she was president of intelligence and influence at Farm Journal, a business-to-business media company specializing in journalism and content about the agricultural system. One of her projects, for example, involved using data analysis to predict which farmers and ranchers were most likely to succeed with regenerative agriculture and then delivering resources to help them.
“One area I hope to support the team in is delivering research to have impact at scale,” Skoczlas Cole said. “I don’t have a pre-defined idea of what this looks like, except to say that just about any company should be calculating how it can benefit from embedding sustainability into their core business models.”
