Nurit Katz, Chief Sustainability Officer; University of California, Los Angeles

UCLA’s first Chief Sustainability Officer, Nurit Katz is working to foster partnerships among academic, research, and operational departments to facilitate creating a world class living laboratory for sustainability at UCLA. Nurit also serves as an Instructor for UCLA Extension’s Sustainability Certificate Program. For six years Nurit also served as Executive Officer for UCLA Facilities Management.

Before starting her CSO position Nurit founded the UCLA GSA Sustainable Resource Center to provide resources for the community on sustainability. In her first role at UCLA she worked with the Center for Research, Education, Training, and Strategic Communication on Minority Health Disparities, now the BRITE Center. She then served as President of the Graduate Students Association and assisted Dr. Charles Corbett in developing a new interdisciplinary graduate certificate program – Leaders in Sustainability. After graduation she helped launch the UCLA Center for Corporate Environmental Performance.

Prior to UCLA, Nurit worked in environmental and outdoor education in a variety of roles including for the LA County Department of Parks and Recreation and the Americorps Garden Education Program.

Nurit enjoys wildlife photography and urban ecology research and serves as the Outreach Coordinator for the Los Angeles Raptor Study.

Nurit holds an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management, a Masters in Public Policy from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, and a BA in Environmental Education from Humboldt State University.

Nurit was honored as one of 100 Inspirational Alumni for the 75th Anniversary of UCLA Anderson. Her course Principles of Sustainability I was recently included in LA Weekly’s Best of LA 2012 as one of the 10 Best Classes in LA. In 2017 she received the Dean’s Award from UCLA Extension for outstanding instruction and contributions to the UCLA Extension community. Nurit was recognized as one of the top 100 business trailblazers in the Women Worth Watching 2015 issue of Profiles in Diversity Journal.

In 2010 Nurit completed a full Ironman distance triathlon with Team in Training in support of the Leukemia Lymphoma Society.