Program Faculty
The Sustainability Opportunity is led by world-renowned faculty, professors of practice, and experts in their field.
Note: these are previous faculty for The Sustainability Opportunity. Subject to change.
Shirley-Ann Augustin-Behravesh
Shirley-Ann Behravesh is an assistant professor in global sustainable enterprise with the Thunderbird School of Global Management. Dr. Behravesh is also a senior global futures scientist with the Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation. She holds degrees in management, finance, manufacturing engineering and sustainability. Her research focuses on strategies to encourage adoption of sustainability and innovation practices within organizations and communities. Having grown up on a small island in the Caribbean, Dr. Behravesh is particularly interested in building resilient communities through grassroots innovations in small-island states and the developing world. She teaches courses in innovation, entrepreneurship and sustainability. Dr. Behravesh works with and advises organizations in the field of sustainability and sits on the Climate Action Advisory Council for the City of Tucson.
Bruno Sarda
Bruno Sarda holds more than a decade of leadership experience in the field of corporate sustainability. He is a Principal in the Climate Change and Sustainability Services at Ernst & Young. His recent roles include Executive Director of the HOW Institute for Society, President of CDP North America and Chief Sustainability Officer for NRG, a top integrated power company. Bruno’s direction laid the foundation for NRG to become the first power producer ever to set an ambitious science-based target in line with 1.5°C of global warming. Prior to NRG, Bruno was Director of Sustainability and Social Responsibility at Dell, where he oversaw a strategy that drove the promotion of human rights and environmental sustainability throughout Dell’s supply chain — including hitting a milestone of one million trees planted — and significantly enhanced Dell’s ESG disclosures. Bruno is also a faculty member and senior sustainability scholar at Arizona State University. Bruno’s expert analysis is regularly featured in mainstream business news, including The New York Times, Bloomberg and elsewhere. He was named one of the “most influential sustainability voices in America” by The Guardian and was chosen by Environmental Leader as one of the top 50 sustainability leaders in the U.S. for 2017.
Alycia de Mesa
Alycia de Mesa is an instructor of communications and storytelling for the ASU School of Sustainability graduate programs in sustainability leadership and an adjunct professor of marketing and entrepreneurship at Benedictine University. Over her 25-year career as a national and international brand and digital marketing advisor, she has worked with businesses from start-ups to Fortune 100 companies. Alycia is a writer for various business news publications and the author of the books such as Before The Brand: Creating the Unique DNA of an Enduring Brand Identity and Brand Avatar: Translating Virtual World Branding into Real World Success. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from ASU.
George Basile
George Basile is an internationally recognized creative thinker and practitioner in the field of sustainability working to reframe sustainability as a “decision challenge”. Basile started out on a traditional academic career path, with a BS in physics from University of California-Irvine followed by a PhD in biophysics from University of California-Berkeley and a post-doc at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He has held teaching positions at Berkeley and Stanford, and helped develop undergraduate and graduate sustainability programs in the United States and EU. He currently serves on the boards of nonprofit organizations and new ventures, and advises Fortune 500 clients and startups on sustainable strategies, operations, tools and actions. He served as the R&D head of The Natural Step, an accelerator of global sustainability and the Executive Director of the Decision Theater at ASU. Basile is widely published and is a sought after speaker focusing on creating strategic alignment between business drivers and emerging market needs.
Kevin Dooley
Kevin J. Dooley is a distinguished professor of supply chain management in the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, and a senior sustainability scientist in the Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation. As chief scientist of The Sustainability Consortium, Dooley leads a global research team that works with over 100 of the world’s largest retailers and manufacturers to develop tools that measure and track progress on critical product sustainability issues. He has published more than 100 research articles and co-authored an award-winning book Organizational Change and Innovation Processes. Dooley has provided training or consultation for over 200 companies in the areas of sustainability, supply chain management, quality, and technology and innovation. He obtained his PhD in mechanical engineering at the University of Illinois.