Changing the Rules of Business—From the Inside Out
For decades, corporate sustainability in America was more about optics than action—greenwashed annual reports, carbon-neutral pledges by 2050, and marketing over measurement. But one leader is rewriting the rules.
Sarah Delgado, the 41-year-old CEO of TerraMark Holdings, has emerged as a powerful force in transforming U.S. corporate sustainability into something measurable, accountable, and embedded into business DNA. Under her leadership, TerraMark—once a niche environmental consulting firm—has grown into a $4.7 billion powerhouse providing climate data, ESG compliance infrastructure, and transition strategies for Fortune 500 firms and small enterprises alike.
“Sustainability isn’t a department anymore,” Delgado says. “It’s a business model. It’s the operating system of the future.”
Early Roots: Environmentalism Meets Economics
Raised in El Paso, Texas, Delgado was the daughter of a union organizer and a public school science teacher. Her upbringing blended grassroots activism and scientific rigor, and both influences would shape her worldview.
After earning a dual degree in Environmental Policy and Economics from Stanford, Delgado joined the EPA, then pivoted to the private sector where she spent years frustrated by how little sustainability factored into real business decisions.
“Too many companies treated sustainability like a PR band-aid,” she recalls. “But the real opportunity was making it central to strategy.”
In 2014, she founded TerraMark with one goal: build a system where sustainability could drive—not drag—profit.
Building TerraMark: From Boutique Firm to National Force
TerraMark’s early years were modest—working with local governments, university campuses, and regional manufacturers on sustainability assessments and emissions tracking. But Delgado’s breakthrough came in 2019 when she introduced ImpactCore, a SaaS platform th