Mia Bouska

“Understanding our carbon footprint is fundamental to sustainability,” Bouska explained. “By quantifying greenhouse gas emissions, we can identify where change is needed and take meaningful steps toward a more sustainable world.”

At ADM, Bouska’s work touches nearly every part of the company’s operations. She leads efforts to produce Product Carbon Footprints (PCFs) using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), builds tools and infrastructure to help teams measure and manage environmental impact, and collaborates across the supply chain to promote regenerative agriculture and decarbonization strategies for customers. She also helps shape ADM’s broader commercial sustainability strategy, ensuring that sustainability isn’t just a goal — it’s embedded in the company’s business decisions.

Her favorite part of the job? Tackling the challenge of making a vital industry more sustainable.

“The food and agriculture sector is one of the biggest contributors to global warming, yet it’s absolutely essential to feeding the world,” she said. “I get to drive change in one of the biggest multinational players in that industry. Along the way, I learn about and assess products across ADM’s diverse portfolio — from food and beverages to feed, industrial solutions and biofuels.”

That drive to create change has already earned her national recognition. The Trellis Group, an organization that empowers professional communities to confront the climate crisis, recently named her one of its 30 Under 30 honorees for her leadership in sustainability.

Bouska’s passion for the environment started long before she joined ADM. Growing up, she loved wildlife and snorkeling — early experiences that exposed her to the beauty and vulnerability of ocean ecosystems. Seeing coral bleaching firsthand sparked her curiosity. In high school, that curiosity grew into a fascination with the science behind environmental change, as she learned about the biological and chemical processes driving coral bleaching, ozone depletion, and other global challenges.

But it was a Purdue moment that set her career path in motion. During her junior year of high school, she attended an Environmental and Ecological Engineering (EEE) information session and saw a tagline she’s never forgotten: “Where passion for the environment meets Purdue Engineering.”

“The idea of not only learning about the environment but also developing a problem-solving mindset really resonated with me,” Bouska said. “EEE felt like the perfect way to combine what I cared about with the skills to make a real difference.”

Today, she’s doing just that — turning passion into progress and proving that Boilermaker engineers can change the world, one carbon footprint at a time.