Not Buying It: How to Overcome Our Urge to Overconsume

2026 Symposium on Sustainability Keynote

Ashlee Piper is a sustainability expert, TV personality, author, and globally recognized speaker whose work has appeared in more than 310 television segments—including The TODAY Show, Good Morning America, LIVE with Kelly & Mark, and CNN—and in outlets such as VOGUE, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Marie Claire, The Atlantic, and Newsweek. Her 2018 book, "Give A Sht: Do Good. Live Better. Save the Planet.", has been praised as a “sustainability Bible,” and she has consulted for major companies including Airbnb, LUSH, Nissan, and Eileen Fisher, served as a cabinet-level advisor to two Massachusetts Governors, and judged the Marie Claire Sustainability Awards. Piper has spoken at the United Nations, SXSW, and delivered a popular TED Talk; she also created the award‑winning #NoNewThings Challenge, which was published as her second book in 2025. A former Professor of Sustainability Marketing at Loyola University Chicago and eco‑instructor for LinkedIn Learning, she holds degrees from Brown University, the University of Oxford, and IIN/Columbia University. She lives in Chicago with her beloved 18‑pound rescue cat, Skip, in a home that’s 98% secondhand.

This event is part of a Women’s and Gender Studies Lecture Series funded by the Mellon Foundation’s Affirming Multivocal Humanities Grant, which was awarded to Dr. Winfrey and the WGS program in the fall of 2023.

The University Book Store will be onsite selling Piper's books at the event.

This lecture recording can be found on the Available Recordings page approximately two business days after the event and will remain accessible for three weeks.