2024 GSPP Annual Conference Keynote with Kara Hurst, Amazon's Chief Sustainability Officer

The Goldman School was thrilled to bring Kara Hurst (MPP '98) back to campus to open this year’s conference. Kara and GSPP Dean David Wilson discussed Kara’s path from GSPP to Amazon, the impactful work she’s done as a global leader in sustainability, and her thoughts on fighting climate change through policy.

Bio:
Kara Hurst is the Chief Sustainability Officer at Amazon. In this role, she leads the worldwide teams working on environmental sustainability and social responsibility across the company. Kara joined Amazon in 2014 to build its sustainability roadmap and now oversees the company’s evolution toward more sustainable operations, transportation, products, and packaging, as well as its efforts around water stewardship, and reduced waste. Under her leadership, Amazon announced its commitment to be net-zero carbon by 2040 and co-founded The Climate Pledge, which now has over 500 signatories. In 2023, Kara was named one of the “100 Most Influential Climate Leaders in Business” by TIME.

Prior to Amazon, Kara was CEO of The Sustainability Consortium (TSC), a multi-sector group across academia, the retail industry and the public sector that was named one of Scientific American's "Top Ten World Changing Ideas" of 2012. Before TSC, she worked as Vice President of BSR, co-founded the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition, and worked in Silicon Valley as Executive Director of OpenVoice. In her early career, she held roles at the Children’s Health Council, the Urban Institute, and worked in the offices of San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.