{"id":363595,"date":"2017-03-21T02:30:30","date_gmt":"2017-03-21T06:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grist.org\/?post_type=grist-50-profiles&amp;p=363595"},"modified":"2017-03-21T02:30:30","modified_gmt":"2017-03-21T06:30:30","slug":"chris-castro","status":"publish","type":"grist-50-profiles","link":"https:\/\/grist.org\/grist-50\/profile\/chris-castro\/","title":{"rendered":"Big ideas are hard to pull off. Chris Castro connects key players in his city, and beyond."},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"g50-profile__stats-block profile__stats-block--profile-363595 \">City Sustainability Director<br \/>\nOrlando, Florida<br \/>\nAge: 28<\/aside>\n<p>As the head of Orlando\u2019s urban sustainability initiative, Chris Castro has to stay ahead of the curve on things like clean-energy financing and the city\u2019s burgeoning tech scene. Under Castro\u2019s leadership, Orlando was named an automated-vehicle proving ground by the Department of Transportation and was one of five cities named a winner of the Smart Cities Council Readiness Challenge for its work on smart transportation.<\/p>\n<p>But \u201csustainability director\u201d is only one of the green hats Castro wears. \u201cGovernment,\u201d he says, \u201calong with the independent, private, and nonprofit sectors &#8212; and civil society &#8212; all play a prominent role in making our future what we want it to be.\u201d Accordingly, he keeps busy in all of these sectors. Back in 2008, he founded IDEAS for Us, a micro-granting platform that seeds and scales projects that solve environmental crises.<\/p>\n<p>[pullquote share=&#8221;true&#8221; tweet=&#8221;\u201cA lot of environmentalists struggle with optimism. Chris just keeps working.\u201d -@LeilaniMunter&#8221; hashtag=&#8221;Grist50&#8243; image=&#8221;363924&#8243; cite=&#8221;Leilani M\u00fcnter, race car driver and environmental activist&#8221;]\u201cA lot of environmentalists struggle with optimism. Chris just keeps doing the work.\u201d [\/pullquote]<\/p>\n<p>One IDEAS success story is Fleet Farming, a hyper-local urban farming initiative in Orlando and Oakland that turns homeowners\u2019 lawns into miniature farms. How hyper-local? Everything grown in the \u201cfarmlettes\u201d is sold within a five-mile radius.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This sustainability director drives change in Orlando.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57007830,"featured_media":490284,"menu_order":43,"template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"coauthors":[10],"class_list":["post-363595","grist-50-profiles","type-grist-50-profiles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","grist-50-cities","grist-50-food","grist-50-13","grist-50-justice","grist-50-nominated"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.2 (Yoast SEO v27.2) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Big ideas are hard to pull off. 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