SRI Talk: Integrated Action for the SDGs

Dr. Naoko Ishii is a professor and executive vice president at the University of Tokyo, where she is also the inaugural director for the Center for Global Commons, whose mission is to catalyze systems change so that humans can achieve sustainable development within planetary boundaries. She believes academia can and should play an active role in mobilizing movements towards shared goals of nurturing stewardship of the global commons. Before joining the university, Dr. Ishii was CEO and chairperson of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) from 2012-2020. She formed GEF’s first mid-term strategy, GEF 2020, focusing on the transformation of key economic systems. Dr. Ishii entered Japan’s Ministry of Finance in 1981 and served as Deputy Vice Minister of Finance from 2010-2012. She holds a B.A. in economics and a Ph.D. in international development, both from the University of Tokyo.

Dr. Cyrus Wadia is the current Head of WW Product Sustainability at Amazon where he is leading a retail transformation by raising the sustainability standards for all product sold on Amazon as well as making it easier for customers on Amazon to discover and shop for those products. Prior to Amazon, Cyrus was the Vice President, Sustainable Business & Innovation for Nike where he was responsible for Nike’s rapid acceleration of sustainability in new product innovation, enterprise risk mitigation, and the modernization of Nike’s brand and consumer engagement strategy. Cyrus served as an Assistant Director in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy between 2010 and 2015. There he advised the Obama administration and introduced new budgetary and legislative initiatives in: energy, climate, advanced materials innovation, manufacturing, and mining. In this role, Cyrus was responsible for the creation and expansion of more than $1 billion in new budgetary initiatives and led the development of the nation’s first policy framework and strategy on critical minerals. Between 1996 and 2010, Cyrus held many leadership roles as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, a senior program officer at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and the founding member and Co-Director of the Haas School of Business Cleantech to Market initiative. Cyrus holds holds a Ph.D. in Energy & Resources from U.C. Berkeley, and an M.S. and S.B. in Chemical Engineering from MIT.

Andrea Hinwood (B.Sc., M.AppSc., PhD) is an environmental scientist with expertise in environmental exposures and impacts on human health. Since May 2017, Prior to her recent appointment in the UN as UNEP Chief Scientist, Andrea has been serving as the first Chief Environmental Scientist at the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) in Victoria, Australia. In this role, she has developed and implemented programs to enhance EPA’s role as an evidence-based scientific organization and to prevent pollution and waste impacts on communities and the environment.  She has held other roles in academic and State government providing strategic advice to the government on a wide variety of environmental matters, including ozone depleting substances, air quality, fire and smoke management, biodiversity impacts and emerging contaminants. 

Ms. Loyzaga is the president of the National Resilience Council, a science and technology based public private partnership in the Philippines, aimed at the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement. She is a member of the United Nations International Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) Science and Technology Advisory Group (STAG) and Asia Pacific Science and Technology Academia Advisory Group (APSTAAG). She likewise serves on the Science Advisory Board of the Integrated Research on Disaster Risk International Center of Excellence-Taipei (IRDR ICoE).

Josh was trained as an ecologist, evolutionary biologist, and conservation biologist. He has 20+ years of active research focused on climate impacts on plants and animals; the influence of fragmentation, connectivity, invasive species and mutualism loss on populations and communities; the evolution and functional significance of chemical defense in plants; and other topics. Before joining Future Earth as the Director of the US Global Hub, Josh was the founding director of the Luc Hoffmann Institute, a global research center integrated within the International Secretariat of the World Wide Fund for Nature in Geneva Switzerland. While there, Josh started the Luc Hoffmann Fellows programme and launched over a dozen research projects, including work on the Food-Energy-Water nexus in Southeast Asia, Development corridors in East Africa, global mapping of threats to biodiversity and the development of regionally-appropriate low-carbon sustainability targets for urban areas. Prior to his work at the Luc Hoffmann Institute, Josh was the Maggie and Doug Walker Endowed Professor of Natural History at the University of Washington, with appointments both in the Department of Biology and the College of the Environment, which he worked to create.