William McDonough is an internationally renowned designer and one of the primary proponents and shapers of what he and his partners call ‘The Next Industrial Revolution.’ Time magazine recognized him in 1999 as a ‘Hero for the Planet’, stating that “his utopianism is grounded in a unified philosophy that -in demonstrable and practical ways- is changing the design of the world.” Time Magazine again recognized Mr. McDonough and Michael Braungart as “Heroes of the Environment” in October 2007. In 1996, Mr. McDonough received the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development, the nation’s highest environmental honor; and in 2003 earned the U.S. EPA.

Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award. In 2004 he received the National Design Award for exemplary achievement in the field of environmental design. In October 2007, Mr. McDonough was elected an International Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Mr. McDonough is the founding principal of William McDonough + Partners, an internationally recognized design firm practicing ecologically, socially, and economically intelligent architecture and planning in the U.S. and abroad. He is also principal of MBDC, a product and systems development firm assisting prominent client companies in designing profitable and environmentally intelligent solutions.

Mr. McDonough is a Venture Partner at VantagePoint Venture Partners in San Bruno, California. Mr. McDonough is a Consulting Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. As of January 2010 Mr. McDonough transitioned from U.S. Chairman and member of the Board of Councilors of the China-U.S. Center for Sustainable Development, a position he has held since 2001, to Chairman Emeritus of the U.S. Board of Councilors. He is on the Advisory Board of the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership. From 1994-1999, Mr. McDonough was the Edward E. Elson Professor of Architecture and Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia.

Mr. McDonough's leadership in sustainable development is recognized widely, both in the U.S. and internationally, and he has written and lectured extensively on his design philosophy and practice. He was commissioned in 1991 to write The Hannover Principles: Design for Sustainability as guidelines for the City of Hannover's EXPO 2000, and in 1993 to give the Centennial Sermon at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. More recently, Mr. McDonough and Michael Braungart co-authored Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, published in 2002 by North Point Press.

Yves Béhar is the founder of fuseproject, an integrated design agency dedicated to the development of the emotional experience of brands through story-telling. The diverse experience and mediums practiced by the fuseproject design teams span products, environments, graphics, packaging, apparel and strategy. Béhar’s designs and creative positioning is contributing to areas as diverse as technology, furniture, sports, lifestyle and fashion, for clients such as Herman Miller, MINI, Nike, Cassina, Microsoft, Johnson and Johnson, Swarovski, Birkenstock, Toshiba, Sony, One Laptop Per Child, Target and Coca Cola.

Béhar’s approach combines the application of new technologies and unique functions with a humanistic perspective. By fusing poetry with pragmatism, innovative ideas are applied to the products: bringing story and message into the product experience. This unique approach has been internationally recognized in museums and competitions alike. Béhar’s work has been featured in two solo shows in 2004 – one at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and another at the Musée de design et d'arts appliqués contemporains in Lausanne, Switzerland. Yves has most recently been recognized as one of TIME magazine’s 25 visionaries for 2007 and also as one of Creativity magazine’s Creativity 50 for 2008. He is also a recipient of the prestigious National Design Award for industrial design, awarded by the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Museum. Other awards have been received from IDEA/BusinessWeek, Red Dot, ID Magazine, D&AD and If Industrie Hanover, and his work can be found in the permanent design collection of the Musee National D’Art Moderne/Centre Pompidou, NY MOMA, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the SFMOMA, the Munich Museum of Applied Arts and the Chicago Athenaeum Museum as well as in private collections.

Prior to founding fuseproject in 1999, Béhar held the position of design leader at frogdesign and Lunar design in Silicon Valley, developing product identities with clients such as Apple computers, Hewlett Packard and Silicon Graphics. Béhar studied industrial design in Europe and the US, and holds a B.S. of Industrial Design from the Art Center College of Design. Yves Behar is also chair of the Industrial Design Department at CCA (California College of the Arts).

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From his youth in Australia to career experiences in Europe, Africa and all parts of the United States, Terry has developed expertise in business, farming, education, non-profit, the environment, the arts, and government.

A United States Coast Guard-licensed ship captain, Terry has long been drawn to the undersea world, starting in the 1960s with a family-run tropical fish breeding business in Australia and continuing with studies on conch depletion in the Bahamas, manatee populations in Florida coastal waters, and mariculture in the Gulf States with Texas A&M University.

On land, Terry managed the largest sheep ranch east of the Mississippi, assisting the University of Minnesota in developing new methods of livestock disease control. Terry also managed a multi-million dollar real estate company, owned/operated a successful recreational services business, and assisted the west African nation of Nigeria with the creation of their first solid waste recycling program.

An accomplished author, Terry’s latest book, Lives Per Gallon: The True Cost of Our Oil Addiction (Island Press), is a timely examination of our dependence on oil and a strategy to evolve to more sustainable energy sources. He has also authored a series of best-selling “Ultimate Guides” to pools and spas (McGraw-Hill) and several theatrical works on the life of William Shakespeare. Terry is an avid airplane and helicopter pilot and speaks German, Dutch and Spanish.

In 1993, Terry founded the Santa Monica BayKeeper and served as its Executive Director for six years. He co-founded Waterkeeper programs in San Diego, Orange County, Ventura, and Santa Barbara. He also served for five years as Executive Director of the Environment Now Foundation in Santa Monica, CA and co-founded the Frank G. Wells Environmental Law Clinic at the School of Law, University of California Los Angeles.

In the summer of 2003, Terry helped Arnold Schwarzenegger win the historic recall election and become Governor of California. He was appointed as the Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency in November, 2003, and Cabinet Secretary, the Chief Policy Advisor to the Governor, in December, 2004. He continues to advise the Governor on energy and environmental policy. In April, 2007, he was named the Cullman Senior Fellow and Director of the Climate Policy Program of The New America Foundation, a non-profit, post-partisan, public policy institute. In September, 2007, he was appointed as an Operating Advisor to Pegasus Capital Advisors. Pegasus Capital Advisors, L.P., is a private equity fund manager that provides capital to middle market companies across a wide variety of industries.

Terry currently travels throughout the United States and the world, lecturing and providing private consulting services to a variety of clients, including several Governors and Canadian Premiers on climate and energy policy.

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As Director of the California Department of Conservation, Bridgett Luther oversees a department within the Resources Agency with more than 600 employees in 15 offices around California.   The Department of Conservation has a wide variety of programs, including:

• LAND RESOURCE PROTECTION - Protects California's agricultural land, track land-use changes and supports grassroots environmental programs.
• RECYCLING - Oversees the state beverage container recycling program.
• GEOLOGICAL SURVEY - Studies and maps earthquakes, landslides, mineral hazards and mineral resources.
• MINE RECLAMATION - Oversees the cleanup of old mines and ensures that currently operating mines comply with state regulations.
• OIL, GAS AND GEOTHERMAL - Oversees oil, natural gas and geothermal energy production.

Ms. Luther has a long history of involvement in environmental protection.   While a resident of North Carolina, she helped create the first recycling program in the history of Mecklenburg County.   She also led campaigns to create neighborhood parks and acquire land to protect the region's water quality.   She founded the Carolinas office of the Trust for Public Land, a national land conservation organization. After moving to California five years ago, Ms. Luther was the national development director for REP America (Republicans for Environmental Protection), which supports pro-environment Republicans.   She was appointed Director of the California Department of Conservation in 2005.

Zem has been a contributing eco-editor at House & Garden, Domino, Architectural Digest and 7×7 Magazines. She received the 2009 Global Green Millennium Founder’s Award for her contributions as a Global Green board member, Co-Chair of Global Green’s San Francisco Committee, and Founder of Global Green’s Successful Annual Fundraiser and Ecofashion event. Mentored by William McDonough, Zem is a certified BuildItGreen design and strategy consultant and Cradle to Cradle enthusiast who helps companies and individuals create beautiful, smart, sustainable spaces and practices. Zem is the eco-luxury specialist for Planet Green’s Alter Eco and regularly contributes to various media. Much of her penchant for superior design came from her years at splendora.com and living in Milan, Paris and London.

Her love for the earth, however, can be traced back to her early upbringing on a Palo Alto commune. As a mother of two, Zem is committed to improving all families’ health, education and access to well-vetted information. To that end Zem is an active board member of Global Green, Healthy Child Healthy World,Teens Turning Green, and Architecture for Humanity.

Beth Rattner believes something her Permaculture teacher said on day one: “The problem is the solution.” Now, discovering exactly how the problem is the solution takes a fair bit of creativity. If the problem is that we have let our collective fear drive the destruction of natural systems, including our natural selves, how do we use those forces for good, instead? One answer seems to be to support humans — for all corporations are actually comprised of individuals — to make healthy things that restore the planet, communities, and individual health. This is part of her mission as Executive Director of the Green Products Innovation Institute: to encourage informed capitalism and help companies (again, people) make beneficial choices.

Beth has taken her lead from environmental visionaries William McDonough and Michael Braungart, with whom she worked for years on the forthcoming sequel to Cradle to Cradle. She infused that same thinking into her client engagements with Blu Skye Sustainability Consultants, where she managed the Microsoft engagement, among others. Formerly with Hewlett Packard, Beth helped establish its Emerging Market Solutions (EMS) group, a group established to amplify ecological, social and economic development for the Bottom of the Pyramid and adjacent economic markets, while returning profitable incremental annual revenue for HP. Prior to HP, she worked for a Kleiner-Perkins start-up, Icarian, and America Online's AOL.com division, architecting business development strategies and deals.

Beth is a California attorney with her J.D. from Loyola Law School and a B.A. in Political Science from U.C.L.A. She finds personal restoration in time spent out-of-the-box and certainly out-of-doors.

Christopher Gavigan is Chief Executive Officer of Healthy Child Healthy World. For more than a decade, he has dedicated himself to improving the lives of children and families. He holds degrees in environmental science and geography from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and has extensive graduate training in child psychology and education. He has worked as an ecology and sciences teacher in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area, and as a child and family specialist. He is the founder of Pinnacle Expeditions, an outdoor leadership program for teenagers.

Since joining Healthy Child Healthy World, Gavigan has launched public awareness campaigns, strategic partnerships, and educational programs that have educated millions about daily choices and actions that impact our children’s health and our planet’s future. He is the best-selling author of "Healthy Child Healthy World: Creating a Cleaner, Greener, Safer Home".

Growing up in Iowa, I have always had a deep appreciation of the relationship between humankind and the environment. I strive to ingrain this awareness into everything I do. I believe that how we develop our landscape is such an integral part of our culture and that what we build, and how we build, should improve the environment rather than harm it.

After receiving my undergraduate degree from Iowa State University and my Masters from Princeton University, I was fortunate enough to work for both Frank Gehry as well as for Michael Graves. Both of these brilliant architects have engaged in product design as a means for bringing good design to the masses, Graves with his product work with Target and Gehry with his work for Tiffany & Co., Swatch and others.

When I relocated to Northern California, I found a lack of affordable, sustainable, well-designed homes. I soon realized I could make a difference through my architecture. In 2002, I founded Michelle Kaufmann Designs and began my effort to make thoughtful, sustainable design accessible to all. Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to become a leader in the green design community. My commitment to sustainable living and design remains constant throughout all of my work, of which I’m very proud, including my sustainable home designs as well as through designing custom homes and holistic, green communities.

This blog is the beginning of a new and exciting chapter in my life. My commitment to sustainable green living is so strong that I feel a need to expand the scope of my work to reach beyond the world of design and architecture. My mission is to make green living accessible and achievable for all.

I am an architect and a consultant. I am working as an architect with a number of clients on single-family homes, eco-resorts, and multifamily communities. Some of the projects are site built, but most utilize modular construction. I am also working as a consultant with modular companies and builders. Take a look around this website. And if it looks like a good fit, please contact me.

I am proud to be on the Advisory Board of Architecture for Humanity (a fabulous organization), a guest blogger for Treehugger, and a collaborator with one of our “Green Godfathers” Sim Van Der Ryn at Ecological Design Collaborative.

Coming Soon

Adam Lowry, who began his career in product design by inventing two United States patent-pending products for use in the automotive industry, has now developed an innovative set of formulas for household surface cleaners. Adam's "cocktail approach" has transformed the chore of cleaning into a safe, easy and more satisfying experience.

Stuart Rudick has been a practitioner, leader and investor in the health and wellness community for over 30 years. He was a founding partner of Uplift Equity, a private family office that focused on investments in health and wellness. While at Uplift (2003-2006), Mr. Rudick led the firm's investments in Nutrition 21 (NXXI) and Organics to Go. He also was an active investor in the firm's media and entertainment platform comprised of Better Life Media and Video Action Entertainment. Mr. Rudick led the firm's incubator investments in The Balance Company, Connor Medsystems, Daily OM, Endovention, Mix1, Savacor, Inc., and Unistraw.

Mr. Rudick was the founder and general partner of Mindful Partners, L.P., a hybrid public and private market hedge fund in 1993. While leading Mindful Partners, he successfully exited private investments in EarthLink (ELNK), Genvec (GNVC), Homegain, Market Wire, Netcentives (NCNT), Saba Software (SABA), Unicru/Guru and Vixel Corp (VIXL). Mr. Rudick's most recent liquidity events include Connor Medsystems (CONR) (acquired by Johnson & Johnson), Grouper Inc. (acquired by Sony) and Savacor Inc. (acquired by St. Jude Medical).

Before founding Mindful Partners, Mr. Rudick was an Associate Director at Bear Stearns Inc. from 1984 to 1993, where he originated the firm's early investment efforts into cellular communication companies. He also facilitated the funding of private environmental companies through Global Environment Fund. Before joining Bear Stearns, he was a partner with Shearson Lehman/Davis Skaggs from 1980-1984.

Mr. Rudick earned a BS in Business Administration from the University of Colorado and has attended the University of Lancaster, UK and MBA course work in Finance at Golden Gate University. He has served as Director of the University of Colorado Alumni Association and was a founding Board member and Chairman of the Waterkeepers (Baykeeper) of Northern California. He has been an active supporter of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Rainforest Action Network and Friends of the Earth.  He is an advisor to BluePlanetRun.org and a fundraiser and supporter of the Outward Bound program for at risk youth.  He also serves as a Foundation Board Member of the Mill Valley Public Library. Mr. Rudick enjoys balancing his free time with his wife Julie and their 13-year young daughter Mia, when he is not cycling, skiing, windsurfing or practicing Qigong.

As Principal for the Lauren Heine Group, and a Senior Science Advisor with Clean Production Action, Lauren advises organizations seeking to integrate green chemistry and engineering into product and process design and development activities – eliminating toxics and the concept of waste, and moving toward economic, environmental and community sustainability. Specific areas of expertise include the development of technical tools and strategies for communicating product environmental attributes, green chemistry metrics, and facilitation of multi-stakeholder initiatives – particularly those that are technically-based.

From 2003-2007, Lauren served as Director of Applied Science at Green Blue Institute where she continues her association as a Senior Fellow. Lauren initiated and directed the development of CleanGredients™, a unique, web-based information platform, developed in partnership with the US EPA Design for the Environment Program that promotes green chemistry and environmentally preferable product formulation by providing information on key human and environmental health, safety and sustainability attributes of cleaning product chemicals. Dr. Heine was previously Director of Green Chemistry and Engineering at the Portland, OR-based, Zero Waste Alliance (ZWA) and a Fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science in the Green Chemistry Program of the Industrial Chemicals Branch of the U.S. EPA in Washington, D.C. Prior to that, Lauren taught Organic Chemistry labs at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, ME. Lauren earned her doctorate in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Duke University.

Dean Kamen is an inventor, an entrepreneur and a tireless advocate for science and technology. His roles as inventor and advocate are intertwined -- his own passion for technology and its practical uses has driven his personal determination to spread the word about technology’s virtues and by so doing to change the culture of the United States.

As an inventor, he holds more than 440 U.S. and foreign patents, many of them for innovative medical devices that have expanded the frontiers of health care worldwide. While still a college undergraduate, he invented the first wearable infusion pump, which rapidly gained acceptance from such diverse medical specialties as chemotherapy, neonatology and endocrinology. In 1976 he founded his first medical device company, AutoSyringe, Inc., to manufacture and market the pumps. At age 30, he sold that company to Baxter International Corporation. By then, he had added a number of other infusion devices, including the first insulin pump for diabetics. Following the sale of AutoSyringe, Inc., he founded DEKA Research & Development Corporation to develop internally generated inventions as well as to provide R&D for major corporate clients.

In the year 2000, Dean was awarded the National Medal of Technology. Presented by President Clinton, this award was in recognition for inventions that have advanced medical care worldwide, and for innovative and imaginative leadership in awakening America to the excitement of science and technology. He was also awarded the Lemelson-MIT Prize in 2002, and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in May 2005.

In addition to DEKA, one of Dean's proudest accomplishments is founding FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), an organization dedicated to motivating the next generation to understand, use and enjoy science and technology.