Dr. Pincetl has a PhD in Urban Planning from UCLA. She spent 10 years working in the nonprofit environmental justice sector and has taught in the Masters of Public Affairs at the Institut de Sciences Politiques in Paris. Pincetl is the Faculty Director of the Los Angeles Regional Collaborative for Climate Action and Sustainability (LARC), a Los Angeles regional organization dedicated to working across jurisdictions to achieve a better future. She was instrumental in making the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA its institutional home.

In recognition of her intellectual leadership in the field of urban sustainability, coupled with real-world problem solving as exemplified by the Energy Atlas, Pincetl received the prestigious Burrill Award from the American Association of Geographers at the annual 2019 meeting in Washington DC.

Pincetl has been awarded the 2020 Fulbright Distinguished Chair in the Geography Department at the University of Manchester. She has also been asked to join the Editorial Board of the journal Applied Energy, one of the most highly cited energy journals in the world.