Public scholar: Sarah Farahdel
How can we design a Sustainability Assessment Framework to help organizations select, prioritize, and understand the relationships between sustainability indicators, fostering improved decision-making in achieving sustainability goals?
Sarah Farahdel holds a doctorate from Concordia’s Institute of Information Systems Engineering. Her research focused on improving how organizations assess their sustainability performance. She holds a bachelor's and a master's degree in industrial engineering from Concordia and has more than ten years of industry experience in various domains including, management consulting, program management, procurement and strategic sourcing and supply chain.
Motivated by her work experiences, Sarah identified a common challenge among organizations as they struggled to navigate sustainability initiatives effectively. She observed that many relied solely on expert judgement to prioritize their sustainability indicators and understand the trade-off and synergies amongst them.
Her research analyzed limitations in existing sustainability assessment frameworks in literature and further integrate data-driven approaches including machine learning and simulation design to address these gaps. Sarah is committed to sharing her knowledge, both in academia and as an educator, teaching graduate engineering students about supply chain design and simulation modeling techniques. She also continues to advocate for women in STEM fields, having previously held several leadership roles in this area.