Leadership for a Sustainable Future: Reflections on the UNH Alumni Sustainability Awardee Panel
Attending the UNH Sustainability Awards, hosted by the Sustainability Institute, was an inspiring reminder of how leadership, collaboration, and imagination shape our path toward a sustainable future.
Listening to the Alumni panel emphasize “using your agency in how you engage with your community” reframed sustainability as a shared responsibility built on everyday choices and collective action. One of the speakers, Eric Gibbs reminded us that “we have changed coal percentage use from 50 to 10 over the course of my career” which offered a powerful antidote to the doom and gloom that often surrounds climate conversations.
Sustainability, in his view, is as much about hope and persistence as it is about data and policy.
Equally striking was Dr. Jennifer Jenkins’ vivid depiction of a sustainable future “a city where things are quiet, the air is clean, and there are windmills and solar panels everywhere” was a reminder that the fight for sustainability is not only technical but also imaginative. Meanwhile, Jennifer Moore grounded the discussion in moral clarity, saying that her work began from a sense of “fairness to other people and the environment.”
Across their stories, a unifying thread could be seen: sustainability is not a distant ideal, but an evolving practice of nurturing rather than controlling, of seeing interconnection rather than isolation. The panel left us hopeful and challenged me to cultivate those same skills of empathy, vision, and courage in my own journey toward a more equitable and sustainable world.
