About
Carnegie Mellon University is leading innovative work on Sustainable Futures. The focus is on addressing local and global challenges including socioeconomic needs and demographic disparities using the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework. We will leverage AI to close data gaps and data lags. CMU’s Sustainable Futures plans to collaborate with global partners and local communities to design people-centered data systems that reveal pressing local needs, and where possible, identify local solutions as well as recommend policies that drive tangible social impact. The work is meant to elevate new models to help democracies deliver and inspire new approaches to solving critical socioeconomic needs.
Drawing on previous research and strategic convenings, the work on Sustainable Future includes the establishment of a Community of Practice (CoP) that includes senior rights experts and data scientists from inside and outside CMU who are driving a paradigm shift in how we research and work on human rights using the SDGs.
Ambassador Sarah Mendelson, Distinguished Service Professor of Public Policy and Director of Sustainable Futures, leads this working partnership with Helen and Henry Posner, Jr. Dean of the University Libraries Keith Webster and Associate Dean of Digital Infrastructure Sayeed Choudhury.
About Sarah Mendelson
Ambassador Sarah E. Mendelson has served as a Distinguished Service Professor of Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University since 2018. From January 2018-August 2024, she was Head of CMU's Heinz College in Washington, DC. Her career spans over 30 years as a scholar and practitioner focused on development and human rights. She served as the US Representative to the UN’s Economic and Social Council (2015–2017), leading initiatives on human rights and humanitarian affairs, and held senior roles at USAID (2010–2014) leading democracy, human rights, and governance work. Earlier, she worked in Moscow with the National Democratic Institute, taught at Tufts University, and designed and led the Human Rights Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. An expert in policy innovation, she now focuses on advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through research and leading a Community of Practice composed of senior rights experts and data scientists.
Recently Published
Higher Education and SDG16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions (Open Source)
Edited by Sarah E. Mendelson (2025)
Traditional approaches to teaching, researching, and advancing human rights need a refresh. The Sustainable Development Goals, the Leave No One Behind ethos, and the SDG16 agenda for peaceful, just, and inclusive communities offer a refreshed way to research and teach human rights and social justice in the twenty-first century.
Exploring how to ground an emerging paradigm shift and field build the next generation so that they approach human rights with a different lens and set of skills, this edited collection presents local case studies from cities and communities and considers their meaning for the rights movement globally. Emphasizing the need to reduce silos between domestic and international work, the chapters build on local “right to the city” activism and the global human rights cities movement to examine a local-global approach informed by city-level data, analyses, and practice.
This book is part of a series on Higher Education and the Sustainable Development Goals. Adopting a solutions-based approach, each installment focuses on how higher education is advancing delivery of Agenda 2030.
Upcoming Events
Challenges and Opportunities to Sustainable Development in the United States and Beyond.
Now past the midpoint to 2030, the world needs to accelerate action toward sustainable development with intentionality, especially concerning justice, gender, climate, and equity. But how? What is the role of local efforts versus global ones? What is the role of AI? How does work in cities differ from work in rural areas? Where are bright spots in the world on these topics?
In this series, we have invited to campus a series of speakers who will tackle, from different angles, these questions and more. These events will take the form of fireside chats hosted and moderated by Amb. Sarah Mendelson, Distinguished Service Professor of Public Policy and Director, Sustainable Futures.
- February 19, 2025, 12:30-1:50: Sayeed Choudhury, Associate Dean for Digital Infrastructure, Carnegie Mellon University Libraries and Executive Director of OFAI on generating open-source unstructured community-level data in an effort to leave no one behind, in A301 Hamburg Hall, Heinz College, OR on Zoom.
- March 12, 2025, 12:30-1:50: Anthony Pipa, Senior Fellow, Center for Sustainable Development, the Brookings Institution, and Michelle Moore, CEO of Groundswell and author of “Rural Renaissance," on leading work on rural development and access to federal funds, in A301 Hamburg Hall, Heinz College.
- April 1, 2025, 12:30-1:50: Kaysie Brown, Associate Director, Climate Diplomacy and Geopolitics, E3G, leading work to keep climate high on the geopolitical agenda across governments and with key decision makers, in A301 Hamburg Hall, Heinz College.
- April 9th, 2025, 12:30-1:50: Fireside chat with Ambassador Elizabeth Cousens, President and CEO of the UN Foundation, a leading figure on climate change and recharging multilateralism in a challenging geopolitical era in A301 Hamburg Hall, Heinz College.
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