Heather Burns

CEO

CT Sustainable Business Council

Heather Burns is the Founder and CEO of the Connecticut Sustainable Business Council, where she oversees the organization’s work at the nexus of climate change and business. In her role, she provides business members with advice about how to embed and leverage ESG for strategic benefit.

Before founding the Council, Heather spent more than ten years as a sustainability consultant collaborating with companies such as AT&T, Disney, and Merck. She is the former Vice Chair of NSF 391.1, the first ANSI Sustainability Standard for Professional Services. She has advised USEPA in developing a methodology to identify sustainability standards and ecolabels for government procurement decisions.

Heather became interested in sustainability in 1999 while living in Koh Tao, Thailand, and working as a dive master. Diving every day in the same waters, she realized that the fishing and tourism industries could benefit the local economy if they implemented sustainable business practices. In 2000, she co-founded Save the Reef Foundation, a non-profit organization educating local fishermen on environmental impacts — an organization that still exists today.