Meet the 2023 Award Winners
The 2023 Women in Sustainability Leadership Awards
honored ten amazing, inspiring and determined women. Meet them below!
Lucia Athens
Chief Sustainability Officer, City of Austin
Lucia Athens is the City of Austin’s first Chief Sustainability Officer, working as a champion for many ground-breaking achievements that support Austin’s reputation as a leading green city. With more than two decades of green building and public service experience, and recognized internationally as an authority on sustainability, Lucia describes herself as a “spark plug for positive change” and a “practical idealist.” She is also author of the Island Press book “Building an Emerald City: A Guide to Creating Green Building Policies and Programs.”
Her new book “The Sustainability Revolutionists: Heroes and Hope for Our Planet’s Future” delivers a masterclass in one of today’s most elusive concepts. This collection of tales, surrounding a pantheon of relatable super-heroes, draws a roadmap to guide you through a challenging subject. Sustainability is a journey. The Sustainability Revolutionists takes you on an unforgettable trip, full of faraway places and inspiring people. Based in research and reporting, these stories of sustainability in action deliver a healthy dose of optimism for the challenging times we live in. With equal measures of wisdom and hope, this book is a manifesto for the Sustainability Revolution.
Jessica Bailey
President & CEO of Nuveen Green Capital (NGC)
As co-founder and CEO of NGC, Ms. Bailey grew the company into a national lending platform operating in over 30 states, which has raised and deployed over $1B in capital. The organization has experienced double-digit annual originations growth since founding. In 2021, she led Greenworks to a successful acquisition by Nuveen.
Ms. Bailey has 20 years of experience in leadership roles within non-profit, public, and private high-growth companies. Prior to co-founding Greenworks Lending, Ms. Bailey was with the CT Green Bank as the Director of Commercial and Industrial C-PACE, where she joined in 2012. There she designed an award-winning, state-wide PACE program, allowing building owners to access financing to perform clean energy improvements on their properties, which became the model for numerous other state’s C-PACE programs.
From 2004-2012, Ms. Bailey worked at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, an $800M foundation. As the Fund’s program officer for sustainable development, she co-managed a portfolio of grants focused on combating climate change and promoting clean energy.
Prior to joining the RBF, she spent time working at the United Nations, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and on a research project in Ecuador.
Ms. Bailey received her master’s degree from Yale University and bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and four children.
Alex Cattelan
Chief Technology Officer, Brunswick Corporation
Alex Cattelan is currently the Chief Operating Officer for Fermata Energy, a leader in V2X Solutions. In this role, she is responsible for directing Fermata Energy’s operations, including Engineering, primarily focusing on accelerating the commercial expansion of its innovative V2X bidirectional technology platform.
Cattelan has more than three decades of experience leading electric propulsion and advanced mobility programs in boating, power sports and automotive applications for organizations such as Brunswick Corporation, Polaris Industries, Stellantis, Johnson Controls, AVL and General Motors. For the majority of Alex’s career, she has been passionately focused on commercializing innovative sustainable mobility solutions and their supporting infrastructure.
Nancy Clanton, PE, FIES, FIALD, LC, LEED Fellow
CEO Clanton & Associates, Inc.
Nancy Clanton is CEO of Clanton & Associates, a lighting design firm specializing in sustainable and regenerative design. Nancy is a registered Professional Engineer. Nancy is a member of the National Academy of Science committee on the assessment of solid state lighting. Nancy is International Standards Organization (ISO) 205 WG 7,USA delegate. Nancy received the 2018 Edison Report Lifetime Achievement Award, 2014 ACEC Colorado Outstanding Woman Engineer Award, the International CleanDesign Award and the 2021 CU Engineering Distinguished Alumni Award.
Anisa Kamadoli Costa
Chief Sustainability Officer, Rivian / President and Trustee, Rivian Foundation
Anisa is an ESG and philanthropy executive with a track record of connecting environmental, social, and governance issues to business performance, reputation, and shareholder value. She currently serves as Chief Sustainability Officer at Rivian as well as President and Trustee of the Rivian Foundation. Previously Anisa worked at Tiffany & Co. for nearly two decades, serving as its first-ever CSO, and Chairman and President of the Tiffany & Co. Foundation. Her career has focused on catalyzing collaborative, mutually beneficial relationships among an array of stakeholders, scaling programs and impact, and effectively communicating strategy and purpose to diverse constituencies and audiences.
Lindsay Dahl
Chief Impact Officer for Ritual
Currently the Chief Impact Officer for Ritual, a traceable supplement brand, Lindsay spearheads the brand's sustainability, impact, traceability and advocacy work. As a Certified B Corporation, Ritual sets a new standard for traceable science and sourcing in the supplement industry and Lindsay helped roll out their rigorous Made Traceable standard and first-of-its kind consumer tool called the Certificate of Traceability, where people can see all ingredients, supplier names, manufacturing locations, tests conducted, and packaging materials uses for all Ritual products.
Widely recognized as one of the nation’s most experienced consumer safety activists and sustainability professionals, Lindsay spearheaded the passage of over 20 state and federal laws banning toxic chemicals from consumer products. Lindsay has transformed safety and sustainability practices for major brands including her work building the mission team for Beautycounter, the largest clean beauty brand and Ritual, the nation's top selling online prenatal vitamin. A seasoned strategist and sustainability thought leader, Lindsay has been the driving force behind: transforming shady labor practices in the mica industry, developing the strictest safety standards for the beauty industry, mainstreaming traceability for supplements, and demystifying the science behind a rapidly growing clean consumer product category. Prior to joining the private sector Lindsay worked for leading environmental non-profits in Washington D.C., where she was a lead lobbyist for two of the largest federal regulatory reforms in recent history: updating the Toxic Substances Control Act and the passage of the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulatory Act.
Meredith Elbaum
Executive Director, Built Environment Plus
For the past 25 years Meredith has advanced the sustainability of the built environment as a bridge between people and resources. At Sasaki, an international planning and design firm, she did this as an architect and a pioneer Director of Sustainable Design. In this vein, she helped found USGBC Massachusetts, now Built Environment Plus(BE+) and co-convened the first national summit of sustainable design leaders, an ongoing professional network. She championed transparency with the Health Product Declaration Collaborative and mitigated carbon at the University of Missouri. Currently Meredith educates, researches, advocates, and leverages group genius to further BE+’s mission. She found her passion at Rice University and MIT. Hiking, biking and swimming with her family brings her joy.
Jessica Hellmann
Executive Director & Ecolab Chair, Institute on the Environment / Professor Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota.
Dr. Jessica Hellmann is Executive Director and Ecolab Chair in Environmental Leadership at the Institute on the Environment, as well as Professor Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, at the University of Minnesota. Her research examines the impacts of climate change on natural and human systems, greenhouse gas emission reduction, and climate adaptation. She was among the first to propose and study techniques to reduce climate impacts on species and ecosystems through ecosystem management, and she currently leads the Climate Adaptation Science Center for the US Midwest. She works with governments, corporations, and non-profits to build investments in renewable energy and adaptation and has co-authored several climate assessment and adaptation planning efforts, including the biodiversity and ecosystem portions of the Chicago Climate Action Plan and the 2014 National Climate Assessment. In 2018, she co-founded Geofinancial Analytics, a private venture that benchmarks methane emissions in the oil and gas sector for financial investors and insurers. She serves on the boards of the National Audubon Society (a US conservation group), the Science Museum of Minnesota, and COMPASS (an NGO advancing societal engagement of scientists). Hellmann holds a BS from the University of Michigan and a PhD from Stanford University; she served as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Biodiversity Research; and she was formerly a faculty member at the University of Notre Dame.
Sarene Marshall
Chief Sustainability Officer, Galway Sustainable Capital (GSC)
Sarene is responsible for evaluating ESG risks and impacts of Galway investments as well as measuring, reporting on, and improving sustainability performance of Galway’s portfolio.
Before Galway, her career involved roles at the Inter-American Development Bank, Urban Land Institute, the Nature Conservancy, Mercer Management Consulting (now Oliver Wyman), and World Wildlife Fund. Her focus has included climate change mitigation and resilience, corporate sustainability through emissions reductions and zero-waste initiatives, strategic planning, change management, and globalization.
Ms. Marshall holds an MBA and MA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and Lauder Institute. Having lived and worked extensively in Latin America, is a fluent Spanish speaker.
Vice President, ESG, Warner Music Group
Samantha Sims serves as VP, ESG at Warner Music Group (WMG). Since joining the company in 2021, Sims established WMG’s global ESG platform. She continues to drive strategy, set targets, and implement programs - including co-founding the industry’s first working group to tackle climate change.
Building on nearly 20 years of experience in corporate sustainability, Sims joined WMG from PVH Corp. (parent company of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger), where she served as VP of the Corporate Responsibility Strategy and Sustainable Innovation. During her tenure, she built the company’s environmental program across direct operations, the supply chain, product development and through non-profit partnerships. Sims was also instrumental in the company’s ethical sourcing and ESG reporting efforts, as well as managing collaborations with the PVH Foundation, DEI and People teams.
Earlier in her career, Sims was a founding team member of EY’s Americas Climate Change & Sustainability Consulting Services and worked across industries ranging from banking to cleantech.
Sims received an MPA from New York University’s Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service and her BS from the Boston University School of Communications. She resides in New York with her husband and two daughters.