Meet Sustaira: Quinten van der Leest – Building the Future of AI for Sustainability
At Sustaira, we're bringing together talented people who believe technology can help solve some of the world's biggest sustainability challenges. Today, we're excited to introduce Quinten van der Leest, our new Lead Sustainability AI Engineer, who will lead the development of AI capabilities across the Sustaira platform.
We sat down with Quinten to learn about his journey, what inspired him to join Sustaira, and how he sees AI transforming the future of sustainability.
Where do you call home?
Born and raised in North Queensland, Australia by Dutch parents, then moved to Melbourne for education and my professional roots, calling it home for 10 years; to now be living in Rotterdam, a city I'm slowly falling in love with. Australia will always be home, but I'm committed to exploring Rotterdam and my Dutch heritage.
What drew you to Sustaira?
I have always had a passion for working for businesses that are doing their part to address society's largest challenges, and Sustaira does that in spades. Also I've always been drawn to small businesses and amazing individuals that keep them running. Pairing all that with the opportunity to build Ai capabilities in a green field, and own it end-to-end, was an opportunity I couldn’t miss!
What’s your role at Sustaira (and what excites you about it)?
My role is the Lead Sustainability AI Engineer, to bring AI capabilities to the platform that support and enable our users across the ecosystem. I'm excited to be living at the coal face of this constantly developing technology, that is only as valuable as it is applied to solve real problems, reliably and measurably.
What does sustainability mean to you, personally?
At the highest level, Sustainability is the discipline of measuring positive and negative externalities of business operations to enable the design of change portfolios to make the business more measurably sustainable.
At a more grounded level, it's one of the core forces of our society trying to ensure the next generation can have the same opportunities and quality of life that we do today, I can’t think of a more human endeavour!
What opportunities do you see for AI to accelerate sustainability goals?
From what I’ve seen so far, the biggest wins come from taking the friction out of the daily grind so people can focus on their strategy, approach, and change portfolio. A few key areas we’re tackling:
Intelligent Document Processing: Sustainability teams spend a painful amount of time on pure admin like hunting through systems, reading invoices, and pulling out numbers. We’re building AI automation (with a human in the loop) to handle that heavy lifting and give practitioners their time back.
Emission Factor Mapping: This area is notoriously tricky. Ask two different consultants for a mapping and you’ll probably get two different answers! Consistency within an organization is what matters most. We’re building core tooling that uses continual learning, so the AI gets smarter and aligns with your specific data and preferences over time.
Smart Reporting: We’re using AI to help professionals navigate complex disclosure requirements, making it easy to pull grounded answers and re-use existing information across the entire platform without starting from scratch every time.
Tell us a little about yourself. What are some fun facts or things people might not expect?
Other than being born in the Tropical world of North Queensland, I am also a Singer/Songwriter who has self written, recorded and produced 2 demos, they really are demos, so if i share these with you its really a sign of trust :) . More generally, I like Saunas, live music, cooking, exploring new cultures and meeting new people!
We're delighted to welcome Quinten to the Sustaira team. His passion for AI, deep technical expertise, and commitment to solving real sustainability challenges will play a key role as we continue expanding the AI capabilities of the Sustaira platform.
Welcome to the team, Quinten!
