Andi Sutton
Community development and organizing; rural sustainability; community engagement; creative placemaking; community-engaged research and partnership development; communications; welcoming communities and inclusion
Background & Expertise
Andi Sutton is the executive director of the Southeast Regional Sustainable Development Partnerships at University of Minnesota Extension. In this role, she works in communities in Southeast Minnesota and throughout the state supporting and catalyzing rural, community-initiated sustainability projects with strategically developed University of Minnesota collaborations. Sutton has also served as communications and program manager at the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she directed all outreach for the program and fueled cross-disciplinary research and international collaborations to meet water, food and climate systems challenges. Additionally, she ran a multi-university institution in Boston, the Consortium for Graduate Studies in Gender, Culture, Women, and Sexuality at MIT, devoted to advancing Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies graduate education. Sutton is also an internationally exhibiting public artist whose work focuses on environmental, social and cultural issues. Among her Southeast Minnesota leadership roles are serving on the Region 10 Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy Advisory Committee, Southern Minnesota Initiative’s (SMIF) Economic Development and Inclusive and Equitable Communities Grant review committee and Lake Pepin Legacy Alliance’s Arts Committee.
Featured Project: Andi Sutton
Carbon Credits for Food Recovery
Challenge
Food waste plays a significant role in landfill carbon emissions and at the same time 10-20 percent of Minnesota households are food insecure. The duality of waste and food insecurity are symptomatic of a broken food system. Carbon markets are one proposed solution to mitigation that have largely gone untested in the food sector. At the start of this project carbon markets did not have a standard methodology for verifying the carbon savings of recovered food.
Meet the Project Team
Project Leads
All Projects Featuring Andi Sutton
IonE’s 2025 Impact Goal Grants Fund $1.13 million in Sustainability Research
Since 2019, IonE's Impact Goals grantmaking program has supported actionable sustainability research with more than $4 million in critical funding. This year, we’re excited to announce seven new projects, which will receive a total of $1.13 million. Our 2025 projects bring the Impact Goal grant portfolio to some $5.5 million in dispersals to 52 interdisciplinary teams across the state and the University of Minnesota (UMN) system, all working toward solutions to pressing environmental challenges.