Mr. Soyka is an environmental management and strategy consultant and founder and President of Soyka & Company, LLC. He brings 30 years of experience in strategic planning, operations management, environmental/sustainability management, and EHS systems auditing, analysis, and improvement. He provides strategy and management consulting services to private and public sector clients focusing on improved EHS/sustainability, organizational, and financial performance using objective, fact-based analysis.
Mr. Soyka is a recognized environmental management and sustainability expert, and has authored numerous guidance manuals, handbooks, journal articles, project reports, and two critically acclaimed books on organizational sustainability.
Prior to founding Soyka & Company in 2003, Mr. Soyka served in executive positions in two national- scale, publicly traded consulting/engineering firms. He has developed and overseen hundreds of contracts and projects, ranging from producing quick-turnaround “think pieces” of a few days duration to multi-year, multi-million dollar engagements. Mr. Soyka is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and holds graduate degrees in Environmental Management and Business Administration from Duke University.
Mr. Soyka has a particular interest in ensuring that the next generation of citizen leaders is being developed and will be ready to assume important roles in moving us further toward a truly sustainable economy and society in the years ahead. To that end, he has volunteered his time and expertise as an expert reviewer of environmental/sustainability educational modules and materials on such key topics as solid waste management, energy, and risk assessment. In addition, Mr. Soyka serves as a member of the Advisory Board of the Sustainability Curriculum Consortium, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing together diverse voices to develop a coherent, comprehensive approach to delivering sustainability education at the college and graduate level across the U.S. and internationally.
A few of his career highlights follow.
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Providing strategy and planning advice and services to the E-Enterprise Leadership Council (EELC), a 20-person oversight body comprised of senior U.S. EPA (e.g., deputy assistant administrator) and state (environmental agency commissioner) executives as well as to E-Enterprise professional staff.
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Co-authoring a recommended organization-wide “greening” strategy for the U.S. Postal Service (USPS).
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Conceptualizing, building, and validating the first-ever end-to-end life cycle inventory model characterizing the environmental footprint of the U.S. mail system.
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Performing a penetrating analysis of barriers to magazine and catalog recycling, results of which enabled trade association clients to obtain regulatory agency approval for new national recycling campaigns, thereby removing the key barrier that had precluded such campaigns for approximately ten years.
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For the Energy Star® program operated by U.S. EPA and the Department of Energy, conducting ground-breaking research quantifying the financial benefits of energy efficiency (lighting) upgrades, as well as their direct relationship to corporate operating profitability. These results provided the basis for a major reorientation of the program.
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Devising a framework by which the benefits and costs of formal environmental management system (EMS) implementation within and across a large, complex organization could be estimated prospectively (to inform decision making), as well as in real time throughout the implementation process; he also published this framework in a leading professional environmental management journal.
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Directing a pioneering study defining and documenting a relationship between improved corporate environmental management practices and environmental performance, and market risk and stock prices. The peer-reviewed study received worldwide interest, and was profiled in several prominent business publications.
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For a $20 billion national energy company, formulating a comprehensive policy-setting framework and facilitating agreement among all company executives and managers. The framework was adopted by the Board of Directors and put into use nationwide, resulting in improved consistency, credibility, and market access.
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For one of the largest commercial banks in the U.S., developing benefit-cost relationships and a supply curve ranking options for reducing its carbon footprint.
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Periodically preparing and delivering invited lectures and short courses on environmental finance, sustainability, and other topics at leading academic institutions (e.g., University of Pennsylvania-Wharton School, National Defense University) and professional conferences.