Merriam Haffar received her PhD at Ryerson University’s Environmental Applied Science and Management Program. She was a Vanier Scholar, under the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Her research focuses on the trade-offs that companies encounter in the practice of sustainability, and applying a systems-based perspective on the measurement of sustainability performance. Her work has been published in various journals, including the Journal of Business Ethics and Journal of Cleaner Production. Before joining her PhD program, worked in the environmental industry as an environmental, health, and safety consultant, and as an environmental laboratory manager, and is certified in greenhouse gas accounting and green building concepts (LEED).

During her postdoctoral fellowship at the Erb Institute, Merriam will be applying these qualifications to develop a decision-support tool at Ford Motors to aid managers in measuring, and assimilating, sustainability performance information. This proposed tool will help businesses in leveraging key sustainability performance information into operational improvements, product innovations, and strategic management decisions. This tool will also help managers to navigate the complex trade-off decisions inherent in this process. In doing so, this tool will ultimately help businesses enhance their triple-bottom-line, as well as helping strengthen their contributions to wider, systems-level sustainability.