Wendell Brase
UC Irvine
Associate Chancellor for Sustainability
Wendell Brase is the University of California, Irvine’s Associate Chancellor for Sustainability. For 27 years, he provided leadership for an award-winning sustainability program in his role as Vice Chancellor for Administrative and Business Services. UC Irvine received California’s highest environmental award, the Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Award, in 2008 and again in 2013; has earned numerous accolades for sustainability, including a 2009 Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Leadership Achievement Award and their 2014 Climate Leadership Award; was on Sierra magazine’s Top Ten list of greenest campuses for twelve straight years, coming in at No. 1 in 2014, 2015, 2018, 2020 and first in the U.S. in 2019; and in 2018 and 2021, UCI was recognized by the American Association for Sustainability in Higher Education with a STARS Platinum rating for its sustainability operations, academics, and research. The campus currently has 23 LEED Platinum and 11 LEED Gold buildings, among the most of any campus in the U.S. UC Irvine was first in the nation to attain President Obama’s Better Buildings Challenge, attaining the 2020 goal of improving energy efficiency of the entire UC Irvine campus seven years early, in 2013. In 2023, Brase received the International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories Phil Wirdzek Leadership Award.
Brase holds two degrees (S.B., S.M.) from the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
