Gillian Lui

Gillian is a trained environmental scientist committed to advancing interdisciplinary climate solutions. She’s focused now on elevating environmental and social sustainability as business bottom lines.

She began her professional career as the Climate Research Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and The David and Lucile Packard Foundation. In this position, she advanced The Packard Foundation’s US$50M annual climate grantmaking portfolio on land use, innovation, and energy solutions, with a focus on agricultural supply chains in Southeast Asia. This work convinced her of the need to drive business solutions to climate change and inspired her transition to corporate advocacy non-profit Ceres, where she helped Fortune 500 consumer brands manage social and environmental supply chain risk. Building on her background in academia, philanthropy, and non-profits, Gillian completed an MBA at Yale School of Management (SOM), where she focused on sustainable and inclusive supply chains; business innovations in sustainability; and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) risk management. She also co-led the Business & Environment Club and Wilderness Club at SOM, and was a 2020 Environmental Defense Fund Climate Corps Fellow. Gillian is currently a Sustainability Manager at REI, where she designs and drives solutions to help REI cut its operational and supply chain emissions by more than half by 2030, and maintain carbon neutrality.

Gillian holds an M.Phil in Forest Conservation from the University of Cambridge, where she was the 2013-14 Keasbey Memorial Foundation Scholar. At Cambridge, she published peer-reviewed research applying remote sensing technologies to analyze tropical deforestation. She also holds a B.A. with Honors in Environmental Studies and Biology, with a Mathematics minor, from Middlebury College, where she studied bioenergy for her senior thesis and held research fellowships with the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.