One way to describe Leith Sharp is to include her on the roster of hugely influential people who you've never heard of.

I wasn't aware of her myself until recently, when I started looking for the best people around Boston to interview about the state of green building in Boston, for a story I'm doing for GreenSource magazine. Turns out that, as founding director of Harvard's Green Campus Initiative, she's one of the obvious, top-shelf voices to consult.

The kicker is that, just as I'm learning about her, I found out that she's leaving town. She's been at Harvard since 2000, when she was recruited from the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, Australia, to establish Harvard's green initiatives.

From nothing, she has created a team of two dozen professionals who function as an in-house resource at an institution that is consistently ranked among the most ambitiously, most successfully green in the nation. Harvard has about 600 buildings, she told me, and about 50 are either LEED-certified or LEED-registered, which means the owner/builder/renovator has declared the intention to meet LEED standards.

She was very cordial and helpful during our conversation, so it was disappointing to hear, as we wrapped up, that she's decided to seek a new challenge that will include returning to Australia.