Data-driven Sustainability Strategy
How I led diagnostics, stakeholder engagement and SDG analytics to create the University of Aysén’s sustainability roadmap
Overview
In 2023, the University of Aysén hired my consultancy, Realiza, to design a comprehensive sustainability strategy. I led the diagnostic, stakeholder engagement and data analysis process that mapped the university’s academic, operational and research activities against the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and translated that into a concrete management model for decision-makers.
Challenges
The university had sustainability scattered across departments, with no shared metrics, no integrated data, and no decision-making framework. Leadership knew sustainability was important, but they didn’t know where they stood, what mattered most, or how to prioritize actions.
My Role
- Coordinate the consulting team
- Designing the diagnostic methodology
- Facilitating stakeholder workshops
- Building and cleaning the datasets
- Analyzing SDG alignment
- Producing the visualizations and final strategic model
Methodology
1. Stakeholder-driven diagnosis
I ran in-person workshops (World Café) with students, faculty and territorial actors to capture how sustainability was understood and practiced across the ecosystem. I processed, analyzed and visualized the results.
2. Data-driven SDG mapping
I built and cleaned a publications and research database, then classified it using international SDG criteria (Jayabalasingham et al., 2019) with Python, SQL and AI-assisted tagging. The results were turned into visual dashboards using Illustrator and RAWGraphs.
3. Strategy & management model
I translated both qualitative and quantitative insights into a sustainability management model that the university could actually operate.
Results
