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40 people who are redefining green

In This Series

  • Jim Cochran

    Art: Nat Damm Jim Cochran Farmer, Swanton Berry Farm Davenport, Calif. Despite what many consumers may think, organic rules don’t ensure fair treatment of workers—and tight profit margins mean that working conditions and pay on organic farms are too often no different from those in conventional operations. But Jim Cochran, 62, who launched California’s first […]

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  • Leslie Christian

    Art: Nat Damm Leslie Christian Founder, Upstream 21 and Portfolio 21 Seattle, Wash. “Small companies are critical to the future of our communities,” says Leslie Christian, 62—so she helped concoct an innovative way to support them. Upstream 21, whose board she chairs, is a Portland, Ore.-based regional holding company that acquires and supports small, locally […]

    Grist staff Technology

  • Valerie Casey

    Art by Nat Damm. Original photo by Brian Smale. Valerie Casey Founder, Designers Accord Oakland, Calif. Designer Valerie Casey, 37, wants to green not just her own projects but her entire industry. She started the Designers Accord—aka the “Kyoto Treaty of Design”—in 2007 to encourage the creative community to integrate the principles of sustainability into […]

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  • Robert Cialdini

    Art: Nat Damm Robert Cialdini Psychologist Tempe, Ariz. Robert Cialdini, 64, until recently a psychology and marketing professor at Arizona State University, wrote Influence, the classic book on persuasion. Lately he’s been researching the best ways to persuade people to save energy. In 2007, he coauthored a study [PDF] that found that giving people info […]

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  • Ambrose Carroll

    Art: Nat Damm Ambrose Carroll Pastor, Renewal Worship Center Denver, Colo. The Renewal Worship Center, founded in April 2009 by Rev. Ambrose Carroll, 40, is one of the first churches in the U.S. to have started up with an explicitly environmental emphasis; it also has a mission to reach out to all different kinds of […]

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  • Erika Allen

    Art: Nat Damm Erika Allen Projects Manager, Growing Power Chicago, Ill. Erika Allen grew up on a farm in Rockville, Md., working in the fields with her father. “We didn’t have a TV and we relied on a wood stove, but we were known as the ‘food family’ because we had so much food. We […]

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  • Chandrasekhar “Spike” Narayan

    Art: Nat Damm Chandrasekhar “Spike” Narayan Leader of Science and Technology Organization, IBM’s Almaden Research Center Silicon Valley, Calif. Spike Narayan and his team at IBM’s Almaden Research Center work on bleeding-edge technologies that are at the nexus of efforts to create a sustainable world—endlessly recyclable plastics, lithium-air batteries that could dramatically extend the range of electric cars, and […]

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  • Jack Newman

    Art: Nat Damm Jack Newman Cofounder and Senior Vice President of Research, Amyris Berkeley, Calif. He may look like an amiable Deadhead, but Jack Newman, 44—that would be Dr. Newman to you—is a Berkeley microbiologist who cofounded Amyris, a start-up that went from bioengineering a microbe to produce an anti-malarial drug to genetically tweaking a […]

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  • Brenda Palms-Barber

    Art: Nat Damm Brenda Palms-Barber Chief Executive Director, North Lawndale Employment Network Chicago, Ill. Brenda Palms-Barber never meant to start a green project. She just wanted to create jobs for the residents of Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood, 57 percent of whom have been incarcerated or had some involvement with the criminal justice system. As chief […]

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