Jen Baldwin ‘10 M.E.M. has been appointed as the new Assistant Director of the Office of Sustainability, beginning her role on December 22.
Jen brings extensive experience in climate action and sustainability. While earning her Master of Environmental Management from Yale School of the Environment, she co-authored the school’s first Sustainability Action Plan and helped establish the Yale Community Carbon Fund, which enabled Yale community members to offset their carbon footprints by funding local sustainability projects.
Most recently, Jen served as an Environment Foreign Service Officer for USAID, managing multimillion-dollar initiatives to advance climate, energy, and environmental policy in Jamaica, Peru, and across Africa. Her knowledge in clean energy, deforestation, and disaster relief has driven significant global community development.
At the Office of Sustainability, Jen will manage employee engagement and sustainable transportation initiatives, and support sustainability data reporting.
We spoke to Jen about her new role and her return to Yale.
How does it feel to be back at Yale?
Returning to New Haven after 15 years in international development feels like coming full circle. The training I received at Yale proved invaluable as I supported communities and governments in the Global South to address climate change. Now, I’m eager to apply my experience overseas back home with Yale and in New Haven.
What are your main priority areas?
I am thrilled to be focusing on sustainable transportation for the university’s staff, faculty and students. I will be exploring how to make micromobility, mass transit, and electric vehicles more attractive to reduce climate emissions, air pollution, and traffic. I will also be working to reinvigorate employee engagement programming and supporting data collection to enhance how we measure and convey our impact to the Yale community.
What are you most excited about in your new role?
I greatly look forward to working with Yale’s brilliant and hardworking staff to identify new ways of improving campus sustainability. Please feel free to reach out with any ideas!
Contact Jen Baldwin at jen.baldwin@yale.edu.