Executive Director
Dan Vermeer is Associate Professor of the Practice and executive director of the Center for Energy, Development, and the Global Environment (EDGE) at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. As Center Director, Dr. Vermeer develops world-class educational programming, directs research and thought leadership, and builds coalitions around urgent social and environmental challenges. He also teaching classes on energy innovation and sustainability strategy, and collaborates with leading companies and organizations including Bank of America, ABB, NextEra, GM, World Wildlife Fund, DTE Energy, Walmart, NRG, Ingersoll Rand, and other private and public organizations. His areas of expertise include sustainable development, climate change and business strategy, ocean sustainability, water stewardship, food production and waste, and value chain analysis. His latest research is on climate change in the MBA education and the blue (ocean) economy.
Beyond Duke, Dr. Vermeer serves on Sustainability Advisory Board of Trane Technologies, and on the corporate boards of the Research Triangle Cleantech Cluster and Conservation X Labs. He also serves on the Award Nominating Committee for the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability (ARCS), and participates in several innovation-focused multi-stakeholder alliances with USAID, RTI International, and SeaAhead.
Dr. Vermeer joined Duke from The Coca-Cola Company, where he led the Global Water Initiative, an industry-leading effort to protect the company’s primary ingredient. As part of this work, he founded Coca-Cola’s Community Water Partnerships program, resulting in over 500 public-private partnerships in 90+ countries, and designed a industry-leading methodology for measuring risks across Coca-Cola’s global manufacturing facilities. During his tenure at Coca-Cola, he also launched the company’s Sustainable Agriculture program to manage lifecycle impacts of agricultural supply chain inputs, and led the Sustainable Value Chain initiative to embed sustainability across business functions, including finance, strategy, operations, marketing, and procurement.
Dr. Vermeer plays a leading public role in advocating for business sustainability through speaking, research, and institution-building. He is the founder and chief architect of the Global Water Challenge, a multi-partner organization for innovative water and sanitation initiatives, co-author of the CEO Water Mandate (signed by more than 140 global companies), and lead contributor to several policy documents issued through the World Economic Forum, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, and the United Nations Foundation. He holds a Masters degree from the University of Virginia and Ph.D. from Northwestern University.
Videos
- “Business Leadership in the Decisive Decade” (2021)
- “The Ocean 100: Diving into the Growing Ocean Economy” (2021)
- “Reshaping the Ocean Economy,” TEDxDuke (2020)
- “Climate Change: How to Tackle a Wicked Problem” (2018)
- “Power Shift: The Business Role in Addressing Climate Change” (2016)
- “EDGE Chats” interview with Dan Vermeer (2015)
Articles
- Read EDGE blog articles by Dan Vermeer
- Clean Energy Pathways article series, in partnership with Deloitte (2021-22)
- “The Ocean 100: Transnational corporations in the ocean economy” (co-author), ScienceAdvances (2021)
- “A new guide to managing environmental risk,” Dialogue (2014)