O’Shannon Burns

O’Shannon is a researcher and sustainability consultant with 15 years’ experience shaping mission-driven businesses and embedding regenerative principles into operations with a focus on climate action, conservation, environmental justice and sustainable travel and tourism.

Through her consulting practice Ochre, she collaborates with organizations to create custom sustainability strategies and build the systems and programs needed to operationalize sustainability into their work. Ochre has collaborated with The World Bank, Disney, TED, the National Geographic Society, Regenerative Travel, and dozens of small businesses on sustainability strategy and management.

O’Shannon is part of Cornell University’s Sustainable Tourism Asset Management Program at the SC Johnson College of Business. O’Shannon co-developed a framework for sustainable tourism destination management that now underpins the online, self-paced eCornell course on Sustainable Tourism Destination Management. She holds a Master’s in Sustainability from Harvard University, a BS in Physical Geography with a focus on Climate Science from Penn State, and an executive certificate in Training and Facilitation from Georgetown University.

Previously, she spent a decade as staff at National Geographic collaborating with explorers as they conducted field work, spearheading sustainability initiatives, and operating exploratory educational travel experiences on all seven continents. While there, she created and was then appointed to National Geographic Partners’ first full-time sustainability position, overseeing sustainability for the company’s travel business, and serving as an internal sustainability leader and expert.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oshannonburns/