Brook Byers, EE 1968, HON Ph.D. 2010, is a founder at Kleiner Perkins. In addition to his Georgia Tech degrees, Byers received a Master of Business Administration from Stanford University in 1970.

Byers has been closely involved with more than 50 new technology-based ventures, over half of which have become public companies. In 2007, the University of California, San Francisco awarded him the UCSF Medal, its honorary degree equivalent. In 2008, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2009, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Venture Capital Association.

Byers has provided volunteer leadership and service to Georgia Tech through his involvement on multiple boards including the Georgia Tech Advisory Board, the Campaign Georgia Tech Steering Committee, and the 40th and 50th milestone reunion committees for the Class of 1968. Currently, he serves as an honorary chair of the Transforming Tomorrow: The Campaign for Georgia Tech Steering Committee. Byers received the Georgia Tech College of Engineering Distinguished Alumnus award in 1998 and an honorary Ph.D. in 2010.

Drawing upon his professional work on energy/climate and healthcare innovation and reform, Byers has made strategic philanthropic investments in his alma mater to address these critical issues. Together with his wife Shawn, he has demonstrated a profound commitment to the Institute’s efforts towards sustainability through their transformative support of the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems (BBISS) at Georgia Tech. The couple also has provided philanthropic support for need-based undergraduate scholarships, graduate fellowships, and the Pathways to Policy and Master of Sustainable Energy and Environmental Management programs in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy.

Sustainability is an oft used and defined term. In the context that it applies to the BBISS, its origins are mostly frequently linked to the Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future, 1987 (or by its more common name the Brundtland Report). There, sustainable development was defined as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Since then, sustainability has been defined and redefined numerous times to emphasize (or de-emphasize) or otherwise more deeply describe one or more aspects of the term. Here in the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems, we have adopted our own simplified definition of sustainability as a guide for all our work. If we are to live sustainably, we must create an anthrosphere that exists within the means of nature. That is, within the anthrosphere – the place where humans live – we must use only those resources that nature can provide and generate only those wastes that nature can assimilate.

Perhaps the person most responsible for introducing the concept of sustainability to Georgia Tech was Dr. Jean-Lou Chameau. During his time at Georgia Tech serving first as the Chair of the School of Civil Engineering in the early 1990s, and later as the Vice-Provost for Research, Dean of the College of Engineering, and finally Provost and Vice-President for Academic Affairs before leaving to become the 8th President of the California Institute of Technology, Chameau was a champion for sustainability and led the charge for the creation of the Center for Sustainable Technology in 1992. With the strong support of alumnus Ray Anderson, founder and former Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of Interface, Inc. Chameau was the force behind sustainability being adopted as a guiding principle in Georgia Tech’s strategic plan in 1995. As sustainability continued to grow at Georgia Tech, the CST was renamed the Institute for Sustainable Technology and Development in 1999 and, with strong support of President Wayne Clough and alumnus, the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems in 2009.

BBISS is continuously looking for more and better ways in which to form collaborative relationships with and between others. We’re all about “big picture” and “teamwork.” What are you doing now and how do you think you fit into the larger landscape? Talk to us.

Please use our contact form to help us direct your inquiry.