Sightings | Alumni Profile
Nicholas School Alumnus Santiago Lobeira (MEM '99) Practices
Sustainability at Work and at Home p.3
by Lisa M. Dellwo
Now, a year later, Sustenta’s product line includes
aromatherapy candles and soaps, organic teas, and Mexican
cactuses. The partners buy sustainable and/or organic products
from artisans and handcrafters and then package them in a
manner that allows an organization’s logo to be added inexpensively.
Television networks, airlines, banks, and pharmaceutical companies
buy Sustenta’s products to hand out at conferences or to serve
as holiday or thank-you gifts for clients.
One Mexican singing group bought Sustenta products
to help promote a campaign to protect turtles. And that is
key. According to Lobeira, the companies who buy their products
are using them to communicate a message that they are environmentally
friendly. Lobeira and Ruíz will help organizations develop
slogans and ways of using their gifts to further this message.
How did this son of the big city come to embrace
environmentalism? An avid runner (he ran the Chicago Marathon
last year with fellow MEM graduate Dave Shurna), Lobeira grew
to love the natural places where he competed in triathlons
as an undergraduate. He was shocked one day while preparing
for a training run to hear that the air quality was so bad
in Mexico City that residents were urged to stay indoors.
“With the years, I realized that if I wanted
to improve the quality of life in my city, the change had
to come from within myself.” Thus began a journey that brought
him to the Nicholas School and eventually back to Mexico City,
where he has a “passion to promote sustainable living through
my work and lifestyle.”
“Mexico is a place where the kind of thing we
teach at the Nicholas School is very relevant,” says Robert
Healy, an environmental economist at the Nicholas School who
specializes in land-use policy in developed and developing
countries. According to Healy, Mexico is developed, has a
good infrastructure, and is receptive to the U.S. environmental
groups who maintain a presence there. He has seen a growing
number of students from Mexico enrolling in the Nicholas School
and taking advantage of its joint programs with other schools
such as the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy.
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