Lori Leonard is a professor and serves as senior associate dean, effective July 1, 2025. She was the inaugural chair in the Department of Global Development at Cornell University. For more than a decade, her research has focused on sustainable development and environmental themes, motivated in part by her work in Chad, one of the countries most impacted by climate change and extreme heat. She conducted a 12-year field study of oil and gas extraction in Chad, based on following families living in the oilfields, and has written books on its impacts on social and economic life and on Chad’s development prospects. Currently, she is preoccupied with waste and is working on a number of projects to promote more circular societies. These include a research project on used car markets and the regulation and repair of ‘junkers’ in West Africa; a project that explores possibilities for diverting food waste to animal feed in upstate New York in the wake of legislation banning food from landfills; and a circular economy initiative at Cornell (CE@CU) that includes new courses and engaged learning opportunities for students. She has lots of other interests, including rehabbing old houses, gardening, cooking, watching true crime shows, reading great novels, hiking, and learning how to repair just about anything.