Profile: Who Is Terra.do’s Dr. Janice Lao?

Dr. Janice Lao says she’s on a mission to make business a force for good. Granted, that might sound like a hokey talking point to some, but hearing the environmental scientist and development economist talk, and looking at her accomplishments over the last two decades, you get the feeling it might really be possible.

“I believe the role of business is not in making the most money, but in solving some of the world’s biggest problems and earning a decent living from it,” she says.

The award-winning creator of Terra.do’s Supply Chain Decarbonization course, as well as our Corporate Sustainability Leadership Accelerator, Janice holds degrees from the University of Oxford and Prescott College in Arizona. We’ll talk more about her achievements below, as well as how she got to be such an interesting, uncynical, and warm-hearted person.

What’s Janice’s backstory?

Janice grew up in the Philippines, where she drew inspiration from her mother’s underground political activism in the 1980s amid efforts to oust a dictatorship: “I saw what perseverance, care for others, and standing for your beliefs can do. I saw her sacrifice so much for me and my brother and I knew that I wanted to live as passionately and as purposefully as she was,” she told Oxford’s alumni magazine in 2021.

“My mom is my superhero. She was born at a time when women were only beginning to work and have careers. She set me up to succeed so that no matter what life threw at me she was confident I was going to overcome it,” she says.

Janice was educated in the Jesuit tradition of social justice; she was 18 when she ran across an environmental science article in Reader’s Digest and felt “so taken by what we were doing to nature that was counterintuitive to enable humans to thrive,” thus realizing her calling was in sustainability. 

By 2004, that had led her to studies at Oxford, where the culture of debate taught her “to listen and hone into arguments and also find common ground even with people who I may not seem to have any commonality with, and do it in a kind and compassionate way.” This skill, alongside her math and science prowess, would prove vital in Janice’s career, winning buy-in from major companies to cut carbon emissions, as we’ll discuss below.

Supply chain and corporate sustainability maven

In developing and leading various Terra.do courses for professionals eager to step up climate action, Janice draws on her two decades of experience directing sustainability efforts in corporate contexts.

This work has drawn admiring nods from Esquire, Forbes, and others. In 2019, it earned her the UK’s Edie Sustainability Leader of the Year Award—a surprise she equates to “the Oscars of the international sustainability community.”

When companies take meaningful action, it can drive broader changes—something Janice caught Edie’s attention for demonstrating in her role architecting a sustainable development strategy for Cathay Pacific Airways:

“Janice heatedly debated and lobbied on its sharkfin ban in the face of opposition from high-profile stakeholders across the value chain. She also lobbied for a fairer carbon trading solution and mathematical model for airlines. Through sheer tenacity, she managed to convince the Asian airlines to help build on her model; then the European airlines, Middle Eastern and finally the US airlines to agree. This is now the basis for the United Nation’s ICAO carbon offset scheme, the only one in the world.”

This alone would be a signal achievement, but Janice has hardly rested on her laurels since, serving, among other roles, for four years as the director of corporate responsibility and sustainability with the luxury brand behind the Peninsula Hotels, and continuing her work finding greener ways forward for numerous others.

A mother of two, Janice has also coauthored books with each of her kids. Sparky & Benny’s Big Home Mystery, written with her daughter Esther and published in 2020, teaches children about climate change. (Sparky and Benny are two young whales who don’t want to lose their homes and don’t understand why adults aren’t doing anything.) In 2024, Janice and her son Isaac followed it up with Penguins Can Fly, Right?, which centers self-acceptance.

Her work with Terra.do

As an online school for people ready to learn and do more about climate change, Terra.do offers numerous specialized courses that tap into Janice’s expertise:

  • Our four-week Supply Chain Decarbonization course, taught by Janice, unpacks how organizations can measure and reduce carbon emissions from supply chains—and make them more resilient—in collaboration with stakeholders. (Janice reflected on why supply chains have such immense impact in a post on our blog.)
  • Janice also created our Corporate Sustainability Leadership Accelerator, an eight-week course for professionals keen to step up sustainability efforts within their organizations. It covers skills from lifecycle analysis to materiality assessment to sustainable design.
  • She also helped update the Corporate Climate Action class that’s part of our flagship 12-week Learning for Action course.

You can find out more about Janice on her website—and overview Terra.do’s many climate courses here.

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