Celine Solsken Ruben-Salama

Celine is a business strategist focused on long-term value creation through innovation, risk reduction, efficiency, and long-term oriented sustainability planning. As American Express’ first Director of Sustainability/CSR, Celine was responsible for environmental affairs including strategy setting, implementation, and communications for the enterprise globally.​

She grew up in a zero-waste household with geothermal heaters, recycling and composting in Nairobi Kenya, Stockholm, Sweden, and New York, NY, USA. Today, Celine advises large organizations on strategy and communications for environmental, social and governance issues including: climate change management, opportunity and risk identification, resilience planning, supply-chain engagement, efficiency through IT implementation, and ESG/CSR reporting. Her clients include Fortune 100 companies, public sector institutions such as the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA), as well as non-profit organizations/NGOs such as the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) and the United Nations (UN). To date, over 80 of her articles have appeared in publications such as: Consilience, the Journal of Sustainable Development; Yahoo Green; treehugger.com; Inhabitat.com; Ecogeek.org; and CSR Now!.

In addition to advisory work, Celine teaches a class in Corporate Sustainability Reporting, Strategy and Communications in the MS Sustainability Management (SUMA) program at Columbia University. Prior to Columbia, she developed the curriculum for a class in Sustainable Marketing – where traditional marketing students learn to successfully market sustainable/environmentally preferable products and services to mainstream consumers. This class was taught to MBAs and college-level students at Baruch College, CUNY for five semesters. Celine holds a Masters of Public Administration with a focus on Environmental Science and Policy (MPA ESP) from Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), an MBA in Marketing and a BBA in Entrepreneurial Management from the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College, CUNY. She is a Wallenberg Fellow, and recipient of merit-based scholarships from the Swedish-American and Scandinavian-American Foundations.