Emmanuel Stefanakis is Fulbright Specialist affiliated with the Technical University of Crete (TUC) and assigned to complement its vision of becoming a ‘green university’. He has demonstrated leadership in sustainable development as entrepreneur and as planner/designer, senior advisor, and executive for organizations in over 40 countries. Emmanuel applies the principles of “Design with Nature” and ‘Ekistics’ to shape the way we occupy and modify the earth. He is committed to the integration of regenerative ecosystems for economic, environmental, and human benefit while reducing the risks of potential natural hazards. As an entrepreneur, he has formed for-profit companies that implemented sustainable development strategies including affordable green housing communities and recycling of industrial byproducts for organic food production.

As a Founder at EchoStone, he directed all sustainability policies and initiatives, physical planning and design, and partnerships that constructed several sustainable affordable communities in Africa and Central America – all of which were ‘EDGE Advanced’ certified under the World Bank/IFC Green Building Program. Emmanuel also designed and built the first LEED Platinum certified homes in Massachusetts (12th in the USA). He has planned economic development projects in the United States, Middle East, Africa, the Caribbean, and Central America, including more than 50 new towns, representing $200 billion in construction value. Among them is the first sustainable, agricultural-themed new town in the Caribbean that would create 200,000 jobs and 10,000 housing units in balance economically, environmentally, and socially. His clients have included Fortune 100 corporations, international development organizations including, USAID, United Nations Development Programme, Titan, the World Resources Institute, World Bank, EBRD, and the Central Bank of Haiti.

Emmanuel has served on several nonprofit advisory boards including the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University, the Center for Climate Action Innovation and Engagement (CCAIE) in Nigeria, U.S. Dept of Commerce, Joint Science & Technology Cooperation Advisory Council of US-Greece Initiative for Technology Cooperation in the Balkans, and the Citizens Advisory Committee on Climate Change in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has been a volunteer mentor to numerous start-ups through the MIT Venture Mentoring Service, MITEF Greece, MIT Sloan School $100K Competition, Clean Tech Open, and Mass Challenge.

In the academic sector, he has served as a director of master’s degree programs in public administration at the Harvard University Kennedy School, as president of a college focused on sustainable agriculture, as visiting faculty at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and at the Arthur D. Little Management Education Institute MBA Program (now Hult International Business Program). He has lectured at numerous universities. Emmanuel earned a master’s in public administration from Harvard University concentrated on sustainable development economics, a master’s in Landscape Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania focused on ecologically deterministic planning and design, a bachelor of science in environmental design from University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and studied architecture at the University of Manchester (UK).