Susan Moisio
Senior Vice President & Global Market Director, Water at Jacobs
Senior Vice President and Global Market Director for Water at Jacobs, leading more than 9,000 water professionals and one of the industry's loudest advocates for the "One Water" approach.
Compiled by Antoine Walter - from insight gathered on and off his (don't) Waste Water microphone!
Susan Moisio is the Senior Vice President and Global Market Director for Water at Jacobs, where she leads a team of more than 9,000 water professionals across every region. A Professional Engineer who started out in Cincinnati's sewers, she is a leading champion of the "One Water" approach to managing the whole water cycle, and Global Water Intelligence named her one of the industry's top 40 influencers (as of 2026).
Susan Moisio did not start at the top of the org chart, she started in the collection system. Her first job was at the Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati, where she spent roughly 16 years as an engineer on the unglamorous end of the business: the pipes and pumps responsible for getting water where it has to go, which, as she puts it, "does not always happen well." That operator's-eye view is the thing to understand about her, because everything she argues for later comes from having been the person on the hook when the sewer backed up into someone's home.
Susan Moisio became an influencer in the water world almost by being told to. In her first week at the Cincinnati utility, the director called her into his office and put her on a Water Environment Federation committee, and she has been in service to the industry ever since. Decades later Global Water Intelligence, the sector's bible, named her one of its top 40 most influential people in water (in 2019). Her own explanation of how that happens is refreshingly unsexy: "that's how you become an influencer, you give back."
Susan Moisio is now the Senior Vice President and Global Market Director for Water at Jacobs, the global engineering firm, where she leads a team of more than 9,000 water professionals across drinking water, wastewater, conveyance and storage, water resources and industrial water. She runs it as what Jacobs calls a "One Water" team, and the idea is simpler than the jargon: instead of treating drinking water, wastewater and stormwater as separate problems with separate budgets, you manage the whole water cycle as one connected system. "If we just focus on the plants," she says, "we're missing something."
Susan Moisio frames the climate squeeze on utilities not as a burden but as an opening. When a city has to hit net zero, she reads it as an invitation to ask what you could do differently, and she has the proof points to back it up: she points to VCS in Denmark, a wastewater operation that reached energy neutrality back in 2013 by redirecting the carbon in its own waste stream, then kept going until it was energy positive and selling power back to the grid. Her teams have worked with Singapore's PUB for 35 years and on California's Delta Conveyance project, the kind of decades-long, whole-system jobs that only make sense if you believe water is managed as one thing.
“I hope in 10 years that we truly operate things as a system, that we don't look at things as stormwater and drinking water and wastewater in the river, but that we truly think of it as One Water. We're going to have to get there as a planet, it's incumbent upon us to lead the way.”
The rapid-fire lesson she gave me says the rest: the hard thing she learned, she told me, was that she needed to be "more bold." Coming from someone already running a 9,000-person team, that is either alarming or exactly the right instinct for where water has to go.
On (don’t) Waste Water
Susan Moisio was a guest on the show once, with a leadership conversation about managing the whole water cycle:
The company
Frequently asked
- Who is Susan Moisio?
- Susan Moisio is the Senior Vice President and Global Market Director for Water at Jacobs, the global engineering firm, where she leads more than 9,000 water professionals. A Professional Engineer with over 30 years in the field, she is a leading advocate of the "One Water" approach to managing the whole water cycle.
- What is the "One Water" approach Susan Moisio champions?
- One Water is the idea that drinking water, wastewater and stormwater should be managed as a single connected system rather than as separate problems with separate budgets. Susan Moisio runs Jacobs' global water team on this principle, arguing that pulling back to the whole-system view is where the right investment actually goes.
- How did Susan Moisio get into the water industry?
- Susan Moisio started her career at the Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati, spending about 16 years as an engineer in the collection system, the pipes and pumps that move water. In her first week, the utility's director put her on an industry committee, and she has served the water sector ever since.
- What is Susan Moisio known for in the water industry?
- Susan Moisio is known for leading one of the largest water teams in the world, more than 9,000 people at Jacobs, and for championing the One Water approach. Global Water Intelligence, the sector's leading publication, named her one of the water industry's top 40 most influential people in 2019.
- Is Susan Moisio the same as Jacobs?
- No. Susan Moisio is a person, the Senior Vice President and Global Market Director for Water at Jacobs; Jacobs is the global engineering and professional-services company (NYSE: J) she works for. She leads its global water market, but Jacobs is a publicly traded firm founded in 1947, not a venture she founded.
- Where can I listen to Susan Moisio?
- Susan Moisio was a guest on the (don't) Waste Water podcast in 2022, on the episode "Why is One Water the Best Way to Manage our Vulnerable Water Cycle?" The episode covers Jacobs' 9,000-person One Water team, net-zero water and her career; it is linked above to read or listen.