Theo joined CISL in February 2010 as the first Course Director for the new Master’s in Sustainability Leadership. Since then, he has overseen the development and growth of CISL‘s portfolio of postgraduate programmes. In addition, he contributes to CISL’s Foresight initiatives, such as establishing the Prince of Wales Global Sustainability Fellowship Programme. He represents CISL on several education and research-related University committees and working groups and is a Fellow of Homerton College.
Before embarking on an academic career Theo spent 15 years working in industry and as a consultant in the fields of environmental management and sustainable development. His initial degrees were a BSc Eng (Civil) and a MSc Eng (Environmental) from the University of the Witwatersrand. From 2003 to 2006 he took a career break to complete PhD at the University of Cambridge. His PhD research was conducted at the Centre for Sustainable Development at the Department of Engineering and involved an investigation into the 'Sustainability Assessment' of capital projects. After another short stint working in industry, he returned to the Department of Engineering in 2008 as a Senior Research Associate. In this role he oversaw the establishment of an industry-funded research programme into energy efficiency in the built environment, and supervised research by Master’s and PhD candidates.