This story is part of a series of features highlighting the managing directors of the University's strategic initiatives. The managing directors are key (senior) staff members who work directly with the faculty directors to help implement and operationalize the vision for the initiatives, oversee initiative staff, and serve as thought partners for the faculty directors.

For Kevin Fink, sustainability is about more than building solutions to environmental challenges. It’s inherently about justice. And that’s why he sees Notre Dame as the perfect institution to lead the charge.

Fink is managing director of the University’s Just Transformations to Sustainability Initiative—a name he knows is a mouthful. But every word is important, he noted, and together they represent Notre Dame’s unique approach to sustainability, one that focuses on the intersection of the world’s economic, social, and environmental systems.

“If we could magically eliminate the issue of climate change, many of the key sustainability challenges in our world would remain: natural resource depletion, social and economic inequality, and global food insecurity, to name a few,” Fink said. “We want our work to focus on this concept of justice and all the different ways that sustainability issues in the world disproportionately affect poor and marginalized populations.

“That's why the word ‘just’ is in the title. We want to promote and advance solutions that support the earth and the environment, while also upholding the human dignity of each person.”

The word “transformations” is there, Fink said, because in order to achieve meaningful progress, we need to transform our own thoughts and actions, as well as our policies, systems, and structures from local to global levels.

“Our global systems are broken, and if we truly want to pursue just solutions, we need to be seeking transformative change,” he said. “Band-Aids aren’t going to do it. So, we talk a lot about how the core of our work is transforming how we think, act, and grow as a society. That’s why we’ve gone with this name that’s a little hard to get out—because each word keeps us moving in the right direction.”

Fink, a double Domer, has experience tackling some of the toughest global challenges. While earning his undergraduate and master’s degree in civil engineering at Notre Dame, he researched seismic resiliency—the ability of communities to withstand and recover from earthquakes—around the globe.

After completing his graduate degree, he began his career as a project engineer for the City of South Bend, where he implemented public works projects centered on neighborhood development and safety. But Fink soon felt called to return to the University and its mission.

“I've just always been drawn to the idea of connecting my professional work to helping people in need and to making a positive difference in the world,” he said. “So, I found myself drawn back to Notre Dame because of the work it was doing globally to be a force for good in some of the most marginalized and impoverished corners of the world.”

Fink joined the University’s Pulte Institute for Global Development as a project manager in 2017 and assumed the role of associate director of operations & finance for the institute in 2019. He spent seven years at Pulte, managing programs that used scientific and engineering innovations to tackle issues related to global poverty, education, health, migration, and sustainable agriculture.

After learning about the JTS Initiative, which launched in January with the hiring of Director Arun Agrawal, Fink came on board as managing director in March.

“We’re at an exciting moment right now, where we’re working on finalizing our vision and strategic plan and creating an atmosphere for the JTS team that’s focused on collaboration and growth,” Fink said. “I feel blessed to be working with Arun and some truly incredible colleagues, and I think one of the most important aspects of my role is to help cultivate an environment where every person on our team can thrive personally and professionally.”

Key priorities for the initiative include building a robust, cross-disciplinary research portfolio and developing values-based educational opportunities for Notre Dame students. The JTS team is also focused on building critical partnerships both locally and around the world.

The initiative’s Nurturing Excellence in Sustainability at Notre Dame program has awarded funding to three cross-disciplinary faculty teams leading research on pressing sustainability issues—including forest conservation in the Amazon, watershed management in the Midwest, and energy-efficient housing in South Bend.

In partnership with the Vatican, they will offer a new immersive summer abroad program in integral ecology for Notre Dame students, co-taught by Agrawal, the Pulte Family Professor of Development Policy in the Keough School of Global Affairs, and Rev. Dan Groody, C.S.C., vice president and associate provost for undergraduate education. The course will be taught at the Borgo Laudato si’, an educational center outside of Rome established by Pope Francis that demonstrates how the principles of Laudato si’ can become a reality.

And, in August, the initiative convened the first gathering of the newly established Midwest Sustainability Platform for Research and Curricular Innovation, a group of sustainability scholars and leaders from universities across the Midwest who are seeking to address sustainability problems facing the region.

For Fink, a native of Milwaukee, it has been sobering to see the ways in which the changing planet is changing lives, even in the Midwest, which is comparatively sheltered.

“As the impacts of these sustainability challenges become more amplified and more visible, it has become a really clear and easy choice to dedicate my professional life to this,” he said. “Even if the effects are minor or manageable in my lifetime, as a father, I think about what things will look like in my kids’ adult lives, and their kids’ adult lives. It just creates a sense of urgency that I think we, as a global community, need to have right now.”

Get involved

Connect with the Just Transformations to Sustainability Initiative

Learn about the Notre Dame Seminars on Sustainability Series

Meet the first three JTS research teams

Additional features

Arnie Phifer, Bioengineering & Life Sciences Initiative

Joel Day, Democracy Initiative

Angie Appleby Purcell, Ethics Initiative

Originally published by Carrie Gates at ndworks.nd.edu on October 14, 2025.