Edeltraud Guenther is a professor in business management and currently serving as Director of the United Nations University Institute for Integrated Management of Material Fluxes and of Resources (UNU-FLORES) in Dresden. Her main research focus is environmental management, accounting, and economics with a particular emphasis on corporate responsibility. She explores how environmental management and sustainable development are correlated and which instruments are important for economic-ecological optimisation in the decision-making process of companies.

After finishing her Business degree and doctoral studies at the University of Augsburg, she was appointed as Professor of Environmental Management and Accounting at the Faculty of Business and Economics at Technische Universität Dresden in 1996. During her time at TU Dresden, she founded and led the Centre for Performance and Policy Research in Sustainability Measurement and Assessment (PRISMA). She further completed various visiting professorships at prestigious universities worldwide, including Kobe University (Japan), University of Virginia (USA) as well as Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST). She also joined the expert Hightech Forum "Sustainable Management" which is consulting the Federal Government of Germany on how to implement and advance the new High-tech Strategy.

Prof Guenther acts as an advisor to a number of international organisations, including the European Union, German Federal and State Ministries, the Federal Environment Agency as well as the German Research Foundation. She has authored, co-authored and edited almost 200 articles and more than 60 books, focusing on successful environmental management.