Emma Stewart

Emma Stewart, Ph.D., leads WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities' global work on urban efficiency, climate and finance. This includes the Center's research and technical assistance to cities worldwide on climate planning and financing, clean and efficient buildings and vehicles, and waste-to-energy.Prior to joining WRI in 2018 Stewart was the Chief Business Development Officer at Impact Infrastructure, a software start-up automating social cost-benefit analyses in order to cost-justify greener infrastructure. She keeps one foot in the sustainable design software world in her role as an Advisor to start-up PlanitImpact.She also has served as the Head of Sustainability Solutions at Autodesk, where she led the design software company’s efforts to make sustainable design easy, insightful, and cost-effective for its millions of engineering and design customers. In 2009, Emma founded Autodesk’s Sustainable Design Living Lab program, which uses Autodesk facilities as a testing ground for new software to rapidly green existing buildings. In 2008, she founded its Sustainable Operations program, which was named best-in-class by the Carbon Disclosure Project. She co-developed Autodesk’s C-FACT methodology (a Corporate Finance Approach to Climate-stabilizing Targets), an open-source, science-driven, business-friendly approach to greenhouse gas target-setting.Prior to Autodesk, she founded and directed the Environmental R&D Division at Business for Social Responsibility, where her team designed corporate initiatives to analyze and adapt to horizon issues such as payments for ecosystem services, water footprinting, carbon offsets and trading, voluntary supply chain standards, and sustainable product design.