Dive Brief:
- Sustainability nonprofit Ceres announced last week that Mindy Lubber, the organization’s CEO and president, will step down at the end of 2027, according to an Oct. 1 press release. Lubber has held both roles since 2003.
- The Ceres board of directors will conduct a national search process to find her replacement, with Lubber remaining in her position until then.
- Ceres has grown in size and recognition under Lubber’s leadership. Ceres’ board co-chair Tony Davis — also the CEO and sustainable investment firm Inherent Group — said in the release that Lubber “has mobilized and led an unstoppable movement for a cleaner, more just, and resilient economy.”
Dive Insight:
Lubber said in an Oct. 1 LinkedIn post that she’s seen Ceres, founded in 1989, grow “from a bold idea into a global voice for business and investor action on climate, nature, water and sustainability,” over the past three decades.
While Lubber will remain in her role for more than a year before stepping down, the announcement came now “because Ceres and this mission deserve a transition built on care, not urgency,” she said on LinkedIn. She called serving as the organization’s leader “the thrill, the privilege and the honor of [her] lifetime.”
Prior to becoming Ceres’ president and CEO, Lubber previously served at the Environmental Protection Agency as a regional administrator under President Bill Clinton from 1999-2001. Lubber also helped found sustainable investment firm Green Century Capital Management in 1991. The firm was founded by nine public interest research groups, and Lubber also served as director of the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, according to her LinkedIn bio.
“We're living through real turbulence — economic, political, environmental — and it would be easy to read that as a reason to pull back. I read it as the opposite,” Lubber said on LinkedIn. “The case for resilient, equitable, long-term-minded business and investment has never been more urgent, precisely because so much else feels uncertain.”
As part of that turbulence, she was called in to testify before Congress in 2024, following a House report that alleged Ceres was part of a “climate cartel” that was “colluding on decarbonization.” At the hearing, Lubber combatted those allegations and reinforced that Ceres supports “a voluntary, private-sector-led process in which investors and businesses work to adapt to a changing world.”
Lubber is a nationally recognized sustainability leader and has been honored by the United Nations, American University, Barron’s Magazine, Industry Leaders and the Skoll Foundation — which honors and supports social innovators and entrepreneurs.
Ceres said it will disclose more information on the search and transition “in the coming year,” according to the release. The organization’s board of directors in charge of the replacement search was expanded over the summer to include New York City Comptroller Mark Levine and former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy and three other energy transition and finance experts.
