Las Vegas Sands Welcomes New Global Sustainability Manager

Brandon Morrison grew up outside of Philadelphia where he would spend summers at the Jersey Shore. Spending time at the beach and being out on the water each summer growing up helped foster his passion for the environment. Over the years, Brandon took notice of the high turnover of vacation rentals and the staggering amount of trash that people would leave behind at the end of their vacations. He even witnessed people toss aside their perfectly good beach chairs if they knew they were leaving the next day. These experiences left Brandon with a desire to protect the environment.

As he got older, Brandon began to realize that most businesses have a significant reliance on the environment. He recognized that it was difficult to find a product, process, or service that isn’t in some way linked to the environment.

Brandon enrolled at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster Pennsylvania, where he continued to pursue his interest in the environment by majoring in Environmental Science. This foundation provided him with a comprehensive understanding of the core physical sciences such as biology, chemistry and geology.

At the advice of his advisor, a former Environmental Protection Agency official for over 20 years, Brandon applied and was accepted into the Masters Program at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina where he ultimately obtained his Masters in Environmental Management, with a focus on Costal Environmental Management. While at Duke, Brandon worked on a Masters Project that analyzed the Panama Canal expansion and what effect it was having on gulf ports in the United States. Through this project, Brandon gained experience looking at supply chain and logistics.

Toward the end of his Masters Program at Duke, Brandon began working with Jay Golden, founder of The Sustainability Consortium – a global organization dedicated to delivering more sustainable products to consumers. Jay encouraged Brandon to stick around and pursue his doctorate degree. He took Jay’s advice and the two began studying the concept of bio-based economies, switching from fossil fuel to renewable resources and analyzing the environmental and economic impacts of this notion.

This led Brandon to a more narrowed focus on renewable energy, where he began analyzing the production of wood pellets in the southeastern United States. He and Jay partnered with arguably the largest renewable energy company in the world that exports wood pellets after cutting down trees and grinding them up, which is a huge export market for the European Union based on their incentives for renewable energy and decreasing carbon emissions. Brandon obtained and analyzed the company’s primary data for his Ph.D, as well as for several journal articles that he penned.

Brandon also conducted work for the United States Department of Agriculture. A report was published recently that he co-authored in which he quantified the economic impacts of a bio-economy. His analysis consisted of a state-by-state breakdown of how many jobs would be supported by this concept, as well as the economic impact of such. Subsequently, United States Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack issued a press release about the report.

Brandon graduated in May 2016 with his Ph.D in Earth and Ocean Sciences from Duke University and was most recently working as a post-doctoral researcher at the same university this past summer.

He ultimately landed in the hospitality industry here at Las Vegas Sands, a perfect fit for him since the tourism industry also has tremendous turnover, much like the vacation rentals from his childhood on the Jersey Shore, but with a much larger impact footprint. This creates a unique opportunity for Brandon to create initiatives through Sands ECO360 that have a positive global effect.

Brandon’s primary focus at LVS will be data analysis, where he will be analyzing environmental utility data from each of our properties on a monthly basis, which includes energy and water consumption, as well as waste management, and then summarizing this data into reports. Additionally, he will also be writing Sands ECO360 quarterly newsletters, assisting with Sands ECO360 annual reports and CDP Climate Change Response. Brandon’s background and contributions will greatly help the LVS Global Sustainability team with efficiencies.   

Brandon enjoys spending time with his black lab, rooting for the Duke Blue Devils and is acclimating to the city of Las Vegas.

Please join us in welcoming Brandon Morrison to the LVS family.