Titles

• Senior Global Futures Scientist, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory
• Business Development Director, Rob and Melani Walton Sustainability Solutions Service

Biography

Raj Buch has been instrumental in collaboratively building ASU’s Rob and Melani Walton Sustainability Solutions Service since 2012, a hybrid, university-based sustainability solutions knowledge and discovery practice, with applied research and solutions development work. He currently serves in multiple inter-related roles at ASU.

As Director of Business Development, Raj drives the Solution Service’s efforts to co-create transformative solutions for sustainability challenges faced by organizations around the world by linking ASU researchers to funding agencies, and by fostering partnerships with the public and private sectors, foundations and NGOs.

As Circular Economy Practice Lead, he integrates various disciplines across the university to co-create and advance ethical circular economy knowledge, discovery and solutions, and by building collaborative networks with domestic and international governmental, philanthropic and private sector funders and implementing partners. In this role, Raj played a critical role in building the successful partnership with the $2.75 million City of Phoenix Resource Innovation and Solutions Network (RISN) program that led to research and applied projects to design systemic circular economy solutions at local and regional scales, including the RISN Incubator. He has also built curricula and taught classes on ethical circular economy for graduate students and professionals and conducted workshops.

As Director of Sustainability Practice with ASU’s International Development office, he leads ASU’s pursuit of sustainability-related funding opportunities with USAID and other international development funders, building the necessary partnerships with international development firms, and aligning ASU’s capabilities in the many sustainability-related sectors in the international development realm.

Raj is also a Professor of Practice at ASU’s Thunderbird School of Global Management where he has taught Global Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Business, and has also taught courses in Sustainability Assessment, Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory, International Development, and Introduction to Ethical Circular Economy in the School of Sustainability.

Prior to joining ASU, Raj became an accomplished aircraft engine design engineer and program manager, an energy solutions business development consultant, and an enterprise sustainability solutions developer. During his engineering and consulting business development career, he developed renewable and waste gas distributed energy solutions at Ingersoll Rand and Honeywell, delivering financial and energy efficiency value for clients. His Ph.D. research applied a participatory approach to strategically and systematically developing institutional sustainable energy systems.

Education

• PhD, Sustainability, Arizona State University, 2011
• MBA, Strategic Marketing, Arizona State University, 1995
• BSME, Mechanical Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 1985

Expertise

• green business practices
• circular economy
• monitoriing and evaluation
• industrial ecology
• international development
• Affordable and Clean Energy
• Climate Action
• Responsible Consumption and Production
• greenhouse gas emissions management
• sustainability assessment
• climate change and adaptation
• scenarios
• renewable energy
• strategic sustainability
• energy efficiency
• institutional sustainability
• strategic leadership