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About IESG

We deliver the tools you need to understand and mitigate your climate impact.

Our
purpose.

We are passionate about international education and climate action. We want to see an international education sector that thrives and that considers, and mitigates, its climate impact.

Our purpose

01
The overarching problem is climate change: with record-breaking extremes of temperatures and climate-related events recorded each year, its impacts are felt worldwide.

International education is a force for good, but it requires students to travel to study. It is inevitably part of the problem.

International educators are actively engaged in climate action. But until now there has been no comparative assessment of policies, strategies and practice, and no common means of measurement, reporting and comparison of Scope 3 emissions in this arena. At the institution level, measurement is a start. But, if we want to learn from and act on data, external comparisons are necessary to track and compare the impact of changes made.

This is the specific problem that we have set out to solve.
02
The Climate Action Barometer (CAB) is a rolling comparative study, developed by our core team of world class experts in sustainability and climate action, international education and benchmarking. We are also working with a Founders’ Group of universities in Australia and New Zealand and a global advisory group of academics and practitioners.

There is no public reporting of institution-level findings – universities decide for themselves what to do with their own data, working with the benefit of anonymised comparisons.
03
04
05
Where great universities lead, others follow. Our strategy is to challenge others across the world of international education to follow the lead of our Founders Group. The positive impact of this comparative process for climate action will multiply across regions. The comparative insights will grow, as great practice examples are shared between more universities. And as the body of data grows, the benefits will extend to the whole international education sector… and our planet.

Our people

Co-Founders.

Ailsa Lamont

Climate action. Sustainability.

ailsa@ie-sg.org

Ailsa was a senior leader in Australian universities before switching focus to help our sector act on climate. She has trained with Al Gore as a Climate Reality Leader and served as a NAFSA Senior Fellow for Sustainability.
Ailsa was co-founder and inaugural president of CANIE: Climate Action Network for International Educators. In 2023, she was awarded the International Education Association of Australia (IEAA) Excellence Award for Distinguished Contribution to International Education.

Emily O'Callaghan

Governance. Advisory.

emily@ie-sg.org

Emily is CEO and co-founder of MixAbroad, a global platform measuring the impact and experience of education abroad programs and internationalisation at home. She has over two decades of experience in international education, working across policy, advocacy and research in higher education, engaging with government, institutions and industry stakeholders worldwide. She is an Asialink Leaders Program alumna, a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and an International Education Association of Australia (IEAA) Senior Fellow. Emily serves on the Executive Board of the Climate Action Network for International Educators (CANIE).

Our people.

John Crick

Director, Partnerships (UK & Europe)

john@ie-sg.org

John has held senior positions across the international education sector for more than two decades. His journey from marketing and international student recruitment through to operations, immigration and compliance has led him to take a keen interest in Sustainability and Net Zero in the #intled sector. As an Associate member of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (AIEMA), Climate FRESK and Small99 CRAB facilitator, John is now focused on helping institutions right across the sector drive meaningful change in this critical area.

Gemma Morrison

Director, Partnerships (US, Canada)

gemma@ie-sg.org

Gemma is dedicated to strategising climate action to mitigate GHG emissions and adapt to climate change. She holds a B.S. in Earth Science from Pennsylvania State University, focusing on sustainability leadership. With experience studying sustainability abroad, she is eager to create similar opportunities for future leaders. Gemma has worked as a student consultant through the Local Climate Action Program, developing emissions inventory and climate action planning skills. She also served as a Sustainability Assistant for Penn State Global, coordinating student programs and sustainability projects.

Estrid Jonsson

Emissions Expert. Climate Eye

estrid@ie-sg.org

Estrid is a fourth-year international student studying MEng Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Aberdeen. Having previously worked for the Sustainability Team in Estates and Facilities at the University of Aberdeen, she developed a methodology to calculate student travel emissions now adopted by the EAUC: The Alliance for Sustainability Leadership in Education.

Ivan Hasjim

Lead Analyst

ivan@ie-sg.org

Ivan is a skilled Business Analyst with a strong background in data analytics in international education. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Melbourne, where he has been working since he completed his degree. As a former international student he is passionate about the international education field and how to best use data to improve the student experience.

Advisory board

Advisory board.

Dr Adrienne Fusek

Adrienne Fusek, Ed.D. is the Executive Director and Founder of In Good Company (IGC) and a lecturer at San Diego State University (SDSU), where she teaches Sustainability and Environmental Science. Prior to shifting focus to advance climate justice in her local community, Adrienne served in various international education roles for 18 years. Her work includes serving as a founding board member of CANIE where she co-founded the Climate Justice working group and was the lead author of the COP26 Glasgow Paper and CANIE Accord. Adrienne also co-wrote the guidelines aligning education abroad with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals with the Forum on Education Abroad.

Carmen Primo Perez, Advisory Board, International Education Sustainability Group_edited.jpg

Dr Carmen Primo Perez

Carmen is the Senior Sustainability Officer at the University of Tasmania, where she has been a sustainability professional since 2012 and she is committed to help the university advance in all sustainability matters. She has a passion for climate change issues and education for sustainability, partly because of her background as an academic in environmental sciences, discipline in which she worked as an academic for 10 years in both Spain and Australia. Carmen is also a Director of Australasian Campuses Towards Sustainability (ACTS) and a Steering Committee member of STARS (Sustainability Tracking Assessment and Rating System).

Robin Shields, Advisory Board, International Education Sustainability Group

Professor Robin Shields

Robin Shields is a professor and Head of the School of Education at the University of Queensland in Australia. His research examines how new sources of data and statistical models can be used to understand global trends in education, and his recent work has focused on how international education is implicated in the crisis of global climate change. Professor Shields has held grants from major international funders, and he is currently Global Ambassador for the Climate Action Network for International Education (CANIE) and chair of its Academic Advisory Board.

Christopher Ziguras, Advisory Board, International Education Sustainability Group

Professor Christopher Ziguras

Chris is Director of the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne where his work focuses on the internationalisation of higher education. He has worked extensively with industry bodies, professional associations and government agencies on a wide range of projects and partnerships to jointly undertake research, teaching, professional development, policy advocacy, student mobility and work placements. Chris was President of the IEAA (2015-18) and in 2022 received the IEAA Award for Distinguished Contribution to International Education. He currently chairs the Academic Board of the Centre for Higher Education Internationalisation at Università Cattolica Del Sacro Cuore, Milan.

partner-list

CAB climate leaders to date.

Cardiff University
Charles Darwin University
Curtin University
Denmark Technical University
Edith Cowan University
Flinders University
INTO Partnerships
Kings Education
Lancaster University
London Metropolitan University
Monash University
Murdoch University
Navitas
Newcastle University
Queen’s University Belfast
Royal Holloway University
San Diego State University
Swinburne University of Technology
University College Dublin

Texas A&M University
University of Auckland
University of Colorado Boulder
University of Edinburgh
University of Illinois
University of Manchester
University of Melbourne
University of Newcastle
University of Otago
University of Reading
University of Salford
University of Southampton
University of Sydney
University of Tasmania
University of Technology Sydney
University of Western Australia
Utah State University
Victoria University, Melbourne
Western Sydney University

About IESG

We deliver the tools you need to understand and mitigate your climate impact.

Our
purpose.

What is the problem we are trying to solve?

How are we doing that?

What are we measuring?

Do we have a target?

What's our strategy?