Member of the UNU-IAS Advisory Board

Deputy Director of the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University

Melissa Brown Goodall is the Deputy Director of the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. In this role, she helps guide the Center’s overall strategy and oversee its academic programs, grant programs, fellowship and visiting scholar programs, and communications. Previously, she was the Senior Director of the Environmental Innovations Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania, a pan-university program intended to meaningfully impact the critical environmental challenges of our time, particularly biodiversity loss, climate change, and human vulnerability.

Before her time at Penn, Dr Brown Goodall has held several positions at Yale University – first with the School of the Environment, then with the Center for Environmental Law and Policy, and finally with the Office of Sustainability. Prior to her career in academia, she worked as a project manager for the UNDP and UNOPS.

Dr Brown Goodall is a Senior Fellow with the International Sustainable Campus Network, where is leads the global engagement strategy and the Global University Climate Forum and advises the Latin American Chapter. She earned her PhD in Environmental Studies and MS in Natural Resource Management and Organizational Administration from Antioch University and her BFA from New York University.