Dissertation Award

Anastasia R. O’Rourke is completing a Ph.D. at Yale University where her research focus is on Cleantech venture capital investing and environmental strategy of entrepreneurial firms. She is an experienced consultant and researcher having worked in Sweden, France, the U.S. and Australia. She has authored over 20 reports, articles and white papers on trends in Cleantech investing and environmental business. Anastasia serves as a member of the Yale Endowments’ ‘Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility’, is a co-founder of the ‘Cleantech in Connecticut Network’, and was an expert panelist for the development for the UN’s ‘Principles for Responsible Investment’. 

At Yale she helped create and co-taught two classes for Masters students: ‘Business Plans for Environmental Ventures’ and ‘Capital Markets and the Environment’. Prior to living in the U.S., Anastasia worked in France at INSEAD Business School as a researcher and project director on the topics of corporate social responsibility and environmental finance. In Australia she was a Senior Research Consultant at the Institute for Sustainable Futures where she consulted to local and state authorities on environmental performance metrics and led a team of 11 researchers on a major project for on container deposit legislation. She was an Information Officer at the EcoDesign Foundation in Sydney where she developed the ‘Green Products Database’ and consulted to the Sydney Olympics ‘Green Games’ design.

 Anastasia earned a M.Sc. (Environmental Management & Policy) from the IIIEE at Lund University in Sweden (2000) and a B.A. (Hons 1st Class and University Medal) from Sydney University, Australia (1997). She is an Australian citizen and currently lives in New Haven, CT.