Austin Whitman is the CEO & Co-Founder of The Change Climate Project. For more than two decades, he’s worked to build markets for clean energy, energy efficiency, carbon credits, and ecosystem services. Before co-founding The Change Climate Project in 2019, his work spanned finance, consulting, and regulatory policy. He studied business and environment at Yale and English literature at Dartmouth.

What Austin Brings to the Conversation

Austin brings firsthand experience at the point where climate standards become consumer-facing claims. At The Change Climate Project, he helped lead the transition from Climate Neutral Certified to The Climate Label, evolving both the certification requirements and how participating companies communicate their climate action.

That experience gives Austin insight into how changing accountability expectations affect the brands expected to implement them. Attendees will gain practical perspective on how to navigate certifications, translate technical climate work into defensible claims, and keep credible sustainability action visible without oversimplifying it or retreating from the conversation.