Karen Weigert

About Karen Weigert

Karen Weigert is a nonresident senior fellow of global cities at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Outside of her work at the Council, she is also the director of the Baumhart Center for Social Enterprise and Responsibility at Loyola University. In 2011 she was appointed chief sustainability officer for the city of Chicago, working to guide the city's sustainability strategy and implementation, and bringing innovative and practical solutions throughout the work of the city.

Prior to her appointment, she served as senior vice president of ShoreBank (later Urban Partnership Bank) where she built a national consumer group that generated deposits to support environmental sustainability and community development in low to moderate-income urban neighborhoods. Before her work in community banking, Weigert was a strategy consultant at McKinsey where she served clients on topics including transportation, finance, energy, and land use. She began her career as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs and later served as an appointee in the Clinton administration focused on global environmental issues and agriculture.

Weigert is a producer and writer for the documentary film Carbon Nation which is focused on solutions to climate change. She is also a former board member of CNT, Foresight Design Initiative, and Earth School Educational Foundation. Weigert graduated from the University of Notre Dame (Phi Beta Kappa) and Harvard Business School.