Cassia Elizabeth Jayani (formerly known as Cassia Patel) is a marine ecologist, environmental engineer, and sustainable design expert. She has built and led programs to catalyze ocean conservation and regeneration through community empowerment, cross-sector coalition-building, sustainable business leadership, and policy advocacy. Cassia is a lifelong environmental and ocean advocate with degrees in Environmental Engineering from Columbia University ​and Biology from Wesleyan University.

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After serving five years as the Program Director for the international non-profit Oceanic Global, she is now a Board Member. At Oceanic Global, Cassia applied her experience in implementing metric-based building standards LEED, WELL and RESET to spearhead the development of the Blue Standard. A first of its kind cross-industry standard by Oceanic Global, the Blue Standard (Blue) empowers industries and businesses of all sizes to achieve measurable impact that protects our blue planet and establishes universal accountability for sustainable business leadership. Through her leadership, Oceanic Global has impacted policy around the world including serving as an active civil society contributor to the United Nations Global Plastics Treaty process, facilitating the realization of plastic bans in the U.S., the U.K., Spain, Italy, and Barbados, and supporting the designation of the Hudson Canyon as a U.S. National Marine Sanctuary as well as Shinnecock Bay as the first Mission Blue Hope Spot in New York.  

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Cassia has spoken as a sustainability (regeneration) and ocean conservation thought-leader at UN World Oceans Day, COP27 side events, UNEP International Marine Debris Conference, Our Ocean, Necker Island, NEXUS Global Summits, AIA International Region Conference, Caribbean Sustainable Tourism Accelerator hosted by Haiti Tech Summit, Greening the Islands, Travel Unity Summit, The Explorer’s Club, Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Springer Nature, Salesforce, Tradeweb, and Les Roches University among many others. She has served as a subject matter expert judge and mentor for ConservationX Labs, Conrad Experts, MIT Solve, and UN Global Compact challenges. 

 

As an author, Cassia was an ecological advisor on renowned green architect Ken Yeang’s book, “Saving the Planet by Design”, is featured for sharing a review of his more recent book "At One with Nature", wrote Chapter 18: Supplier Relationships & Sustainability Standards in Professor Willy Legrand’s textbook, “Critical Questions in Sustainability and Hospitality”, and is a regular author on the HospitalityNet Sustainability Panel. In her capacity at Oceanic Global: she compiled and wrote a case study from Oceanic Global's work in Barbados with the UNDP Blue Accelerator Lab for the UNEP x GWA Gender Mainstreaming in Coastal and Marine Ecosystems Management Report as well as compiled and wrote the Roundtable Series: Creating a Common Agenda for Our Shared Ocean Summary Report to share outcomes with a wider community and carry the work forward.

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Cassia is currently the Chief Impact Officer at responsible finance startup, Anthropogenic, where Cassia is at the forefront of infusing truth, trust, transparency, and real-time response into impact-linked finance, enabling a global transition to an impact-driven, regenerative economy.