Marilu Hastings, Vice President, Sustainability Program

Marilu Hastings is Vice President, Sustainability Program for the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation in Austin where she leads all of the foundation’s strategic grantmaking programs. Current programs include clean energy, shale sustainability, water, and sustainability education. She has a 25 year career specializing in the interaction of science, public policy, and philanthropic investment.

Marilu convenes high-profile, collaborative efforts to promote Texas’s transition to sustainability, including initiatives to modernize its oil & gas regulations, address ongoing drought, and adopt clean energy policies. She is also a sought-after strategic and organizational-development advisor to non-profit organizations, foundations, and academic organizations.

Marilu leads a number of national efforts with other prominent U.S. foundations to develop environment grantmaking strategies, define program evaluation protocol, and co-convene conferences and workshops on key issues related to water, natural gas, clean energy, and sustainability science.

Prior to moving to the foundation, Marilu held leadership positions from 1996 to 2008 at the Houston Advanced Research Center, a non-profit research organization founded by George P. Mitchell. Her work focused on enhancing the integration of social sciences into environmental decision-making. She analyzed the dynamics of environmental decision-making within the oil & gas industry, especially in sensitive and remote environments.

Marilu is a member of the Energy Institute Advisory Board of the University of Texas at Austin; a member of the Science Advisory Board of the Environmental Law and Policy Center in Chicago; a trustee of the Regional Endowment for Sustainability Science, and a stakeholder advisor to the Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program, a Regional Integrated Science Assessment Team of NOAA. Marilu is a Fellow of the Houston Advanced Research Center.

Marilu earned a Bachelor of Arts in economics and political science from Duke University, an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Master of Public Affairs from the University of Texas at Austin.