Latest Articles

Anita Maltbia

Art: Nat Damm Anita Maltbia Director, Green Impact Zone Kansas City, Mo. Anita Maltbia is spearheading the transformation of 150 square blocks of Kansas City, Mo., from blight to bright. The Green Impact Zone project, which she directs, is resuscitating this economically depressed African-American neighborhood by putting local residents to work weatherizing the zone’s 2,500 homes and […]

Dorothy Le

Art: Nat Damm Dorothy Le Planning and Policy Director, Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition Los Angeles, Calif. Dorothy Le wants to get you out and about on two wheels. Not sure where to start? Watch her series of videos on how to find the bike that’s right for you. At the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, she works to make […]

Rob Jones

Art: Nat Damm Rob Jones Cofounder, Crop Mob Carrboro, N.C. Like a growing number of young folks across the country, Rob Jones, 27, likes to get his hands in the dirt, making his foodshed and community more robust and vibrant. Once each month, Jones and a band of young agrarians alight upon an area farm. […]

Leanne Mai-ly Hilgart

Art: Nat Damm Leanne Mai-ly Hilgart Founder, Vaute Couture Chicago, Ill. Leanne Mai-ly Hilgart, 27, launched Vaute Couture last year with a line of chic, eco-friendly, cruelty-free, ethically and locally produced coats that are warm enough for Chicago winters. As a vegan, model, and MBA, she brings a unique perspective to her work—and strong values […]

Zakiya Harris

Art: Nat Damm Zakiya Harris Founder and Executive Director, Grind for the Green Berkeley, Calif. Zakiya Harris, 32, founded Grind for the Green in 2007 to use hip-hop to move youth of color from the margins to the epicenter of the green movement, helping steer them toward educational opportunities and green careers. The group puts […]

Matt Golden

Art: Nat Damm Matt Golden President, Founder, and Chief Building Scientist, Recurve Sausalito, Calif. Matt Golden, 35, has become a golden boy of the nascent energy-efficiency industry. He started Recurve—formerly called Sustainable Spaces—back in 2004 before retrofit was hip. While Recurve works on a software-driven solution to scale up the energy-efficiency business from mom-and-pop shops […]

Cisco DeVries

Art: Nat Damm Cisco DeVries President, Renewable Funding Oakland, Calif. Sure, you’d love to have solar panels on your roof, but where would you get tens of thousands of dollars to install them? Cisco Devries, 36, has come up with an innovative answer: Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) is a new type of financing program […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]