Susan Leal

Susan Leal is a water utility expert and author. She specializes in identifying realistic and creative solutions to the water and wastewater challenges. Leal speaks regularly about our most pressing water and sustainability issues and has appeared on regional NPR stations around the United States. She is currently is an Associate of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University.

Leal just completed a two-year fellowship at Harvard; while a Senior Fellow, she co-authored Running Out of Water (published by Macmillan August 2010). The book takes a proactive approach and focuses on the solutions to our looming water crisis. Not a doom and gloom book, instead, it features case studies to improve water security and provides a prescription for solving our water crisis. For several years, Leal ran the San Francisco Bay Area regional water and power utility providing water to 2.5 million people. She led the charge for a dramatic upgrade of the utility’s seismically unsafe water system and San Francisco’s outdated wastewater system. She is a Senior Counselor of Rabin Strategic Partners and a member of the advisory board of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley.