Greg Norris

Vice President for Life Cycle Sustainability

In his role as Vice President for Life Cycle Sustainability, Greg Norris draws on more than 25 years of experience trailblazing sustainability methods, helping individuals develop their capabilities, and helping organizations thrive while delivering positive sustainability impacts. With GBA, he leads programs that help manufacturers learn and perform life cycle assessments (LCAs) to quantify and reduce their footprints. Norris invented the concept of “Handprints,” positive sustainability impacts outside the scope of the footprint, and at GBA, he is bringing this approach to communities and to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) so that companies and communities can pursue local and planetary goals in tandem.

At MIT, Norris directs SHINE (the Sustainability and Health Initiative for NetPositive Enterprise). He has also taught Life Cycle Assessment for the past 25 years at Harvard. Norris co-founded and is the Director of Science at Earthster.org, a web-based platform democratizing LCA. He is a Fellow of the Mind and Life Institute, which seeks to build a scientific understanding of the mind to reduce suffering and promote well-being. In 2012, Time Magazine named his work on Handprints as one of “10 ideas that are changing your life.”

He served as Chief Scientist with the International Living Future Institute, where he helped design, launch, and advance the Living Product Challenge. In 1996, he founded Sylvatica, which applied and advanced LCA methods and tools through 2010. He founded the non-profit New Earth in 2003 to promote collaboration between industry and civil society on community-driven sustainable development. Norris served as a member of the Royal Government of Bhutan’s International Expert Working Group, comprised of 60 experts from around the world, commissioned to draft a new global development paradigm during 2013-2014 to promote human flourishing as a global goal through pragmatic international public policies.