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Sarah Federman, Ph.D.

Sarah Federman, Ph.D.

Vice President, Landscape Decarbonization

Biodiversity + Forest Ecology and Management + Climate-smart Agriculture

Sarah leads Carbon Direct’s nature-based solutions group. As Director of Landscape Decarbonization at Carbon Direct, Sarah and her team work with clients to build equitable and rigorous decarbonization strategies focused on ecological resilience, biodiversity, and agricultural sustainability across food, fuel, and fiber value chains.

Dr. Sarah Federman has cross-sector expertise in analytics, agricultural sustainability, and the science underpinning biodiverse and resilient landscapes.

Dr. Federman contributed as a lead author and coordinator to R&D roadmaps for landscape resiliency and climate-smart innovation for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of the Chief Scientist. While at the USDA, she also supported a federal interagency R&D strategy with the Department of Energy focused on the circular carbon economy. In the private sector, Dr. Federman led, developed, and implemented data-driven continuous improvement frameworks for an indoor agricultural technology startup, as part of a broader strategy to enable responsible vertical scaling. 

Dr. Federman has deep expertise in the ecological dynamics supporting the structure and function of tropical forests. Her work includes peer-reviewed recommendations for forest conservation and management of critically endangered species. She has managed multilateral teams and collaborations in Peru, Madagascar, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Dr. Federman holds a Ph.D. from Yale University’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and a M.S. in forest science from the Yale School of the Environment. Her graduate studies were supported by the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Student Research Fellowship Program. 

Education

PhD
Yale University Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

MFS
Yale School of the Environment

BA
Barnard College

Awards

AAAS Science Technology & Policy Fellow, USDA Office of the Chief Scientist

John Spangler Nicholas Prize for best dissertation, Yale University Ecology & Evolutionary Biology 

George Gaylord Simpson Prize, Yale Peabody Museum

National Science Foundation Graduate Student Research Fellow 

Strachan Donnelley Student Award for outstanding thesis, Yale School of the Environment 

Princeton in Latin America Fellow 

Centennial Scholar, Barnard College