Dan Esty is the Hillhouse Professor at Yale University with primary appointments in the Yale Environment School and the Law School and a secondary appointment at the Yale School of Management. He also serves as the Director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy (www.yale.edu/envirocenter) and on the advisory board of the Yale Center for Business and the Environment (www.yale.edu/CBEY), which he founded in 2006. Professor Esty is the author or editor of ten books and dozens of articles on environmental and energy policy -- and their connections to corporate strategy, sustainability performance measurement, competitiveness, trade, and economic success. His prizewinning volume, Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage, has recently been named the top-selling “green business” book of the past decade.
From 1989-93, Professor Esty served in a number of senior positions in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, DC. During this time, he led EPA’s regulatory review process and helped to negotiate the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change. From 2011-14, he returned to government service as Commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Known for his innovative work at the business-sustainability interface, Professor Esty has also provided strategy advice to companies, governments, international organizations, NGOs, and foundations around the world. He is the founder of a fintech company called Constellation Research and Technology that seeks to provide investors with better analytics concerning corporate environmental/social/governance performance in support of expanded sustainable investing.