Rebecca Pearl-Martinez

Rebecca Pearl-Martinez is the Executive Director of the Boston University Institute for Global Sustainability (IGS). She has over two decades of experience working to advance the social and equity dimensions of renewable energy and climate change policy in partnership with UN agencies, international organizations, governments, and industry. Her expertise on the ways in which energy systems can be responsive to gender concerns has helped guide how organizations such as USAID, Sustainable Energy for All, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Oxfam, and others approach this topic. She co-founded the Global Gender and Climate Alliance at UNDP, the Environment & Gender Index at IUCN, and the climate change initiative of Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO). She started her career with community development initiatives and the United Nations in Latin America, and leading the Women’s Major Group process for Rio+10 (World Summit on Sustainable Development).

Pearl-Martinez was a Senior Fellow at the Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy during 2020-2021. Previously she served as Research Fellow and Head of the Renewable Equity Project at the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy (CIERP) at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and Visiting Lecturer on climate change governance at Tufts University. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Geography at Durham University in England, focusing on urban energy transition and auction design in Chile. In 2016, she received the C3E Advocacy Award (Clean Energy Education & Empowerment Initiative) from the U.S. Department of Energy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford University.

She works with faculty and senior fellows affiliated with IGS to develop and secure funding for interdisciplinary research projects, and co-leads IGS research initiatives on climate and health sponsored by National Institutes of Health (NIH) and energy justice in offshore wind development sponsored by Department of Energy (DOE). Other research pursuits include national utility-scale procurement processes in the context of Latin America’s renewable energy boom, and the challenges faced by industrial legacy cities in the US and Global South in realizing their energy transition goals.

Pronouns: she/her

Twitter: @Enviro_Rebecca