Speaker Profile

Patricia A. Calkins is the vice president of Environment, Health and Safety for Xerox Corporation. She is responsible for developing and implementing sustainability policies and strategies throughout Xerox that help save hundreds of millions of dollars annually for the company worldwide. She is dedicated to strengthening Xerox’s position as a pioneer in sustainability and is committed to smart environmental management that demonstrates that doing what’s right for the environment is not a cost of doing business, but an opportunity to benefit the world in which we work and live.

Calkins joined Xerox in 1993 as a manager of resource conservation, developing plans to help the company capture energy and materials savings through more sustainable and efficient processes, facilities and product design. Since then, she has assumed increasingly responsible management positions in quality, business process management and product design, enabling the company to remain at the forefront of driving environmental improvement throughout the value chain.

Before joining Xerox, Calkins began her career as a chemist for AT&T and then moved on to initiate many of the company’s sustainability initiatives. During her tenure, she focused on how changes in product and process design could eliminate many environmental challenges, including eradicating the use of toxic chemicals in the electronics manufacturing process. For her efforts, she was recognized for her engineering excellence. In 1992, she joined Abt Associates as a senior scientist where she worked directly with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in developing marketbased voluntary sustainability programs. She also provided consulting services to corporations developing environmental leadership strategies.

Calkins earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in biology from Merrimack College, North Andover, Massachusetts, and a Master of Science degree in civil/environmental engineering from Tufts University. In 2001, she received her executive M.B.A. from the University of Rochester. Calkins currently serves as a member of the external advisory board for the University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Systems and is on several boards, including the Central and Western New York Chapter of the Nature Conservancy and the Golisano Institute for Sustainability at the Rochester Institute of Technology.




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