Adela J. Gondek teaches public and sustainability ethics at Columbia University, where she is a Lecturer in Discipline in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology, in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. A political scientist specializing in the field of political philosophy, she has done extensive curriculum design in the developing field of practical ethics. Dr. Gondek teaches ethics for public leadership in the Executive MPA program, and environmental ethics in the MPA in Environmental Science and Policy program, both in the School of International and Public Affairs. In the School of Continuing Education, she teaches ethics in the Master of Science in Sustainability Management program, and at the Earth Institute, in the undergraduate Sustainable Development Program at the Earth Institute. In the Department of Political Science, she has taught a course on concepts of justice in American political thought, and in the Core Curriculum Program of Columbia College, a course titled Contemporary Civilization.

In 2013, she was appointed as an Associate of the Centre for Business and Public Sector Ethics in Cambridge, England. Prior to her academic career, she served as a legislative analyst in the Massachusetts Senate, with expertise in consumer product safety and corrections reform. She received her Ph.D. at Harvard University and her B.A. at Goucher College. Recent publications include an article on Sustainability Ethics and Metrics (Earth Institute Website, November, 2013); an article on Sector-Based Sustainability Ethics (Consilience: The Journal of Sustainable Development, October, 2014); and in collaboration with two Chinese poets on whose work she wrote variations, Poems of Enlightenment (World Knowledge Publishing, Beijing, 2015). Dr. Gondek is currently doing research in the field of sustainability ethics.