New York, NY, August 5th, 2025 — The Pacific Institute today announced Matt Kistler has joined its team as CEO of the Water Resilience Coalition (WRC), an industry-driven, CEO-led initiative in partnership with the UN Global Compact and the CEO Water Mandate. This milestone appointment marks a pivotal moment for the WRC as it scales up its ambition to drive measurable, collective impact across the world’s most water-stressed basins.
The Water Resilience Coalition unites global companies to build a water-resilient future for businesses, communities, and nature. In just five years, the WRC has been joined by over 40 member companies, catalyzed on-the-ground collective action in over 20 critical basins, launched a global platform to monitor progress toward water security, and initiated an investment portfolio with five companies committing investments to a USD$150 million fund.
Matt brings more than 25 years of executive experience at the intersection of business transformation, corporate strategy, and sustainability. A respected leader in the field, he has held senior roles across global retail, consumer goods, and business consultancy. His previous leadership positions include serving as Chief Sustainability Officer at Walmart and President of McDonough Innovation, in addition to roles in marketing, merchandising, product development, and strategy at Kraft Foods, Sam’s Club, and Walmart.
As CEO, he will lead the WRC’s next phase of growth, deepening engagement with corporate leaders, accelerating basin-level collective action, and mobilizing private-sector investment toward the Coalition’s goal of achieving collective positive water impact in 100 priority basins by 2030.
“As Secretariat of the Coalition, the Pacific Institute has helped guide the Water Resilience Coalition from concept to global movement. With dedicated leadership now in place, we’re entering a new era of scale and impact, and we look forward to continuing to support the Coalition as it accelerates progress toward a water-resilient future.”
— Jason Morrison, Head of the CEO Water Mandate and President of the Pacific Institute
The Water Resilience Coalition will celebrate its 5th anniversary in 2025, marking the halfway point toward its 2030 goals. With a dedicated CEO at the helm, the Coalition is poised to expand its reach and deepen its impact—proving that bold corporate leadership can be a transformative force for water, climate, and communities worldwide.
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About the CEO Water Mandate
The CEO Water Mandate is a partnership between the UN Global Compact and the Pacific Institute that mobilizes business leaders on water, sanitation, and the Sustainable Development Goals for corporate water stewardship. Mandate endorsers commit to continuous progress against six core elements (direct operations, supply chain and watershed management, collective action, public policy, community engagement, and transparency) and in so doing understand and manage their own water risks. Established in 2007, the CEO Water Mandate was created out of the acknowledgement that global water challenges create risk for a wide range of industry sectors, the public sector, local communities, and ecosystems alike
About the Water Resilience Coalition
The Water Resilience Coalition is an industry-driven, CEO-led initiative of the CEO Water Mandate that aims to elevate the long-term mounting crisis of global water stress to the top of the corporate agenda and to preserve the world’s freshwater resources through collective action in water-stressed basins and ambitious, quantifiable commitments.
About the UN Global Compact
The ambition of the UN Global Compact is to accelerate and scale the global collective impact of business by upholding the Ten Principles and delivering the SDGs through accountable companies and ecosystems that enable change. With more than 20,000 participating companies, 5 Regional Hubs, 64 Country Networks covering 85 countries and 9 Country Managers establishing Networks in 16 other countries, the UN Global Compact is the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative — one Global Compact uniting business for a better world. For more information, follow @globalcompact on social media and visit our website at unglobalcompact.org.
About the Pacific Institute
Founded in 1987, the Pacific Institute is a global water think tank that combines science-based thought leadership with active outreach to influence local, national, and international efforts in developing sustainable water policies. From working with Fortune 500 companies to frontline communities, our mission is to create and advance solutions to the world’s most pressing water challenges. Since 2008, the Pacific Institute has also acted as co-secretariat for the CEO Water Mandate, a global commitment platform that mobilizes a critical mass of business leaders to address global water challenges through corporate water stewardship.