Join this engaging session featuring a dynamic panel of experts from diverse higher education institutions—spanning private and public, large and small campuses—who are driving innovative decarbonization initiatives. Panelists will share practical insights on the strategies they’ve implemented, the challenges they’ve navigated, and the creative solutions they’ve employed to achieve significant carbon reductions. Topics will include financing mechanisms, available technologies, and specific case studies from institutions like Swarthmore College, Tufts University, and the University of Oregon.
The session will also introduce participants to the Campus Decarbonization Academy, a six-month, cohort-based program designed by AASHE to equip sustainability, energy, facilities, finance, and planning professionals with the skills and knowledge to lead effective campus decarbonization efforts. The Academy provides actionable guidance on renewable energy adoption, electrification, stakeholder engagement, and accessing funding sources such as IRA and state resources.
This session is ideal for professionals seeking to understand and implement impactful campus decarbonization projects.
Moderator: Aurora Winslade, Director of Sustainability, Edison International
Aurora has twenty years of experience in higher education and private sector sustainability and clean energy work. Aurora serves as the Director of Sustainability for Edison International. Aurora serves as the main advisor and lead for the Campus Decarbonization Academy.Edison International and its subsidiaries, Southern California Edison and Trio, lead the clean energy transformation through a focus on clean energy, efficient electrification and advising the world’s largest organizations to navigate the energy transition. She provides leadership for the company’s sustainability strategy and helps advance one of the nation’s largest electric utilities, SCE, towards a clean energy future. She is a lead author of Edison International’s recent paper, Reaching Net Zero: Accelerating California’s Clean Energy Transition.
Aurora was previously the Director of Stanford University’s Office of Sustainability (2021-2023) and served as Swarthmore College’s Director of Sustainability from 2015-2021, where she launched and co-led the Swarthmore’s “To-Zero by Thirty-Five” energy infrastructure project, a plan to eliminate nearly all of the college’s Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions through an electrified, renewably-powered geo-exchange system. Prior to that, she founded new sustainability programs at the University of California Santa Cruz (2004-2012) and the University of Hawaii (2012-2014) and led Hawaii Energy’s Market Transformation Program (2014-2015). She was also a core part of Bard College’s Sustainable MBA teaching faculty from 2017-2023 as the instructor for Leading Organizational Change and has continued to teach internationally as a co-founder of Bard’s global certificate in Sustainability and Social Enterprise.
She has a B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz and an M.B.A. from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.
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