Founder, Verde Impact
Attorney, Advisor, Author & Adjunct Faculty

Know Your Why.

Kristyn brings an athlete’s drive combined with a lived environmental and social ethos to the table to effect change and  collaborate on a more sustainable and equitable future.

Kristyn Noeth is the Founder & Managing Member of Verde Impact and advises executives and boards across EMEA, APAC, and the Americas.  She is an accomplished attorney, advisor, author, and go-to speaker, with more than 25 years in the field including leadership in global corporations, charitable organizations, and the White House.

Prior to launching Verde Impact, Kristyn held C-suite, executive, and legal roles in some of the most well-known companies and law firms in the world. Those positions include Chief Sustainability Officer, Chief Counsel for Sustainability, Head of Government Relations & Public Policy, and Chief Compliance Officer, Charitable Foundations at market-leading companies, including Nestlé, Hess, and USAA. She also worked as a counsel at Weil, Gotshal & Manges and other top law firms. Kristyn began her career as a Presidential Management Fellow in the White House, working on COP3 and the Kyoto Protocol and has subsequently been engaged in the primary global policy, legislative, and regulatory initiatives on climate and sustainability.

Noting a gap in the market for a go-to guidebook that covered the full ecosystem of business sustainability, Kristyn wrote and published The ESG and Sustainability Deskbook for Business: A Guide to Policy, Regulation, and Practice (Apress, 2024).  The book answers the question: “What can I read that will provide a comprehensive overview of sustainability in business?”  She has authored many other books, book chapters, technical reports, and articles since first being published almost thirty years ago.

A sought-after speaker, Kristyn has appeared on Bloomberg TV, CNBC, CSPAN, and ESG News, spoken at major conferences, and been interviewed for leading print publications including Bloomberg Law, The American Lawyer, New York Law Journal, Law360, and Springer Nature.  She gives talks at the intersection of global policy and sustainability, corporate leadership and governance, and driving responsible business practices.

Kristyn is a problem-solver, a program-builder, and a to-the-point leader.  Collaborating on the challenging issues and gaming out the strategy with like-minded people intent on making change in the world are what inspires her. She has been driven to make change to benefit people + planet since an early age and those values are what lead her to study and study sustainability and pursue it as a career way long before it was a burgeoning field. 

There were many roadblocks (still are) to advancing sustainability in business and Kristyn has always approached them with an athlete’s mindset. She leads with a combination of the grit that enabled her to break records as an All-American, National Champion, and NCAA Division 1 athlete and the hallmark dedication to team excellence as the (now long retired!) captain determined to see her team—and her teammates—win. It was through travel to national and international swimming competitions as a pre-teen that Kristyn began to see first-hand the disparities of the world. The Dedication and Preface that Kristyn wrote at the beginning of her book, The ESG and Sustainability Deskbook for Business, provide more of her origin story in sustainability and social impact.        

Instrumental in capacity building and good governance for charitable organizations, her representation has included private foundations and public charities. Kristyn served on the Board of Directors of the Alzheimer’s Association, Voss Foundation, CITYarts and MAG America, as well as on committees for UVA’s Athletic Foundation and the NYC Bar Association. She was the General Counsel to Voss Foundation, and the Chief Compliance Officer for The USAA Foundation and The USAA Educational Foundation.

Kristyn has also advised the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and has been pro bono counsel to approximately 25 nonprofits throughout her career. She received Federal Bar Council and New York City Attorney awards for pro bono 9/11 work on behalf of Answer the Call (f/k/a New York Police and Fire Widows’ and Children’s Benefit Fund).

Kristyn holds a Juris Doctor from Georgetown Law, where she was on Law Review and Moot Court, and Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Urban & Environmental Planning with a concentration in Public Policy from the University of Virginia (UVA), where she was a student-athlete. She was awarded two U.S EPA NNEMS Fellowships and was the Graduate Teaching Assistant for the “Environmental Policy” course while at UVA. Her Master’s thesis was entitled, “Applying Market Mechanisms to Address Social and Environmental Cost” and she developed the inaugural “Greening the Grounds: A Campus Sustainability Plan for the University of Virginia” as an independent study. Keenly interested in health and wellness as well as the intersection with sustainability, Kristyn also holds a Certificate in Wellness Counseling from Cornell University.

Committed to educating the next generation of leaders, Kristyn teaches the “Energy Law & Policy” course in the M.S. Energy Policy & Climate Program at Johns Hopkins University and the “Global Business Practices in Sustainability” course at UCLA Extension.