Inaugural Executive Director of The Environmental Collaboratory Named

This message was sent to Drexel faculty and staff by the Provost on November 2, 2021. 

Dear Colleagues,

I am delighted to announce that, following a national search, Mathy Vathanaraj Stanislaus will join the University as Vice Provost and Executive Director of The Environmental Collaboratory as of January 3, 2022. The Collaboratory is an important interdisciplinary initiative that unites Drexel and the Academy of Natural Sciences to mobilize Drexel’s powerful research programs and community engagement to identify and implement solutions to environmental challenges.

A global thought leader in issues of sustainability, Mathy joins Drexel from the Global Battery Alliance — a multi-stakeholder initiative established at the World Economic Forum. There, he serves as policy director with a focus on establishing a globally transparent data authentication system that aligns government policies on decarbonization with private sector innovation. Previously, he served for eight years as the Senate-confirmed assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Land & Emergency Management for the Obama Administration, and prior to that, was the founding co-director of the New Partners for Community Revitalization in New York — an organization dedicated to strengthening low-income communities and communities of color by linking technical assistance, land use planning and finance through the redevelopment of city brownfields. A former long-term member of the Board of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, he has been a visiting scholar at The New School’s Tishman Environment and Design Center and a visiting assistant professor in Graduate Architecture & Urban Design program at Pratt Institute.

Mathy earned a JD from Chicago-Kent College of Law, with a specialty in environmental and energy law, and a BS in chemical engineering, specializing in materials science and design, from the City College of New York. He has received awards for his environmental advocacy and been published in outlets such as Bloomberg Law, The Hill and the World Resources Institute on topics including racism and environmental justice, the circular economy, the alignment between the scaling of electric vehicles and renewable energy with human rights and sustainability for local communities, and inclusive ways to address urban inequality to create lasting change.   

I would like to thank the search committee, members of which were drawn from a wide range of stakeholders across Drexel and the Academy. I would especially like to thank Senior Vice Provost Ros Remer for her work chairing the search, and Academy President and CEO Scott Cooper for initiating and championing the concept of The Collaboratory.

I look forward to welcoming Mathy to the Provost’s Office team and to supporting his efforts to leverage the extensive human capital of Drexel and the Academy, partnering with communities, companies, governments and nonprofit organizations — locally and globally — to address such environmental challenges as clean energy, environmental justice and climate adaptation in ways that are meaningful, measurable and scalable.

Sincerely,