Principle Organizers: (longer biographies are below)
Randy Hayes, founder of the Rainforest Action Network and consultant at the World Future Council. WFC is based in Hamburg, Germany; the World Future Council is a global forum composed of 50 respected individuals from around the world championing the rights of future generations and working to ensure that humanity acts now for a sustainable future.
Brent Blackwelder, Environmental Organizer & Philosopher. He served as president of Friends of the Earth from 1994 until his retirement in October of 2009. He was the founding chairman of American Rivers in 1973 and worked for 40 years on environmental issues, testifying over 100 times to Congress.
Andrew Kimbrell, Public Interest Attorney, Activist, and Author. He is the founder and Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety with offices in Washington DC, San Francisco, and Portland, OR.
Honor May Eldridge, European Affairs and Strategy Associate. Before joining the team, Honor worked in strategic communications in Washington DC and in her native London.
Initial Key Advisors and Consultants:
- Allison Bozniak, Media Consultant
- Tyrone Cashman, Systems Thinker, Philosopher of Science & Historian
- Peter Koenig, Economist
- Kathleen Orloff, Accounting and Finance
- Dan Imhoff, Senior Agricultural Policy Advisor
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Randy Hayes, founder Rainforest Action Network, works from the U.S. as the USA Director at the World Future Council. Based in Hamburg, Germany, the World Future Council is a global forum composed of 50 respected individuals from around the world championing the rights of future generations and working to ensure that humanity acts now for a sustainable future. Hayes, a filmmaker in the 1980s, is a veteran of many high-visibility corporate accountability campaigns and has advocated for the rights of Indigenous peoples throughout the world. He served for five years as president of the City of San Francisco Commission on the Environment, and for two-and-a-half years as director of sustainability in the office of Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown. He also spent four years working at the International Forum on Globalization, a San Francisco-based think tank tasked with analyzing the cultural, social, political and environmental impacts of economic globalization. Randy sits on eight non-profit Boards of Directors and numerous Boards of Advisors including the Academic Advisory Board of the Presidio School of Management’s green MBA program. Hayes has a Master’s degree in Environmental Planning from San Francisco State University (Inducted in Alumni Hall of Fame scheduled May 2010). His master’s thesis, the award-winning film The Four Corners, won the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences award for “Best Student Documentary” in 1983. He contributed to Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World is Possible, published by San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., in 2004. Not satisfied with short-term thinking, his 500-year plan offers a vision of a sustainable society and how to get there. His corporate campaign activist peers honored Randy Hayes in 2008 with an Individual Achievement Award, given by the Business Ethics Network. Additionally he was one of the original set of inductees in the Environmental Hall of Fame. Randy Hayes has been described in theWall Street Journal as “an environmental pit bull.”
Brent Blackwelder, graduated summa cum laude from Duke University and has a master’s degree in math from Yale and a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Maryland. He teaches part-time at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC. Blackwelder served as president of Friends of the Earth from 1994 until his retirement in October of 2009. He was the founding chairman of American Rivers in 1973 and worked for 40 years on environmental issues, testifying over 100 times to Congress. He led many efforts to protect rivers throughout the United States and the world, helping to halt over 200 dam and diversion projects and to increase the national scenic rivers system from only 8 protected rivers in 1973 to over 250 rivers today. He was listed by Vanity Fair magazine as one of the 22 Best Stewards of the Planet in 2005. Additional awards include: National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship 1964, Woodrow Wilson Foundation Graduate Fellowship 1964, Outstanding Alumnus Award, College of Arts & Humanities, University of Maryland 2001, Washingtonian Magazine, April 2008, featured as one of 30 environmental leaders in the DC metropolitan area, and Marquis Who’s Who in America.
Andrew Kimbrell, is a public interest attorney, activist and author. He is the founder and Executive Director of the International Center for Technology Assessment and the Center for Food Safety with offices in Washington DC and San Francisco. For more than 25 years he has been at the forefront of critical environmental, food and technology issues. Kimbrell organized the first global summit of local leaders on Global Warming in 1989 and initiated the legal action that resulted in the historic Mass v. EPA Supreme Court victory that now has led the EPA to begin the regulation of global warming gases. His other legal and policy work was critical in establishing national organic food standards, fostering regulation of genetically modified foods and successfully challenging numerous patents on life forms. He has written for most major newspapers and magazines and appears regularly on a number of radio and TV news programs. He has testified at dozens of congressional hearings, lectured at major universities and appeared on numerous major news programs. Kimbrell was the general editor of The Green Lifestyle Handbook and the author of 101 Ways to Help Heal the Earth: A Citizen’s Guide. He has also written several books including The Human Body Shop: the Engineering and Marketing of Life; Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture and Your Right to Know: Genetic Engineering and the Secret Changes in Your Food. The Utne reader named Andrew Kimbrell one of the worlds top “100 visionaries” and in 2007 the Guardian named him as ”one of the 50 people most likely to save the earth.”
Honor May Eldridge is Foundation Earth’s European Affairs and Strategy Associate. Before joining the team, Honor worked in strategic communications in Washington DC and in her native London as a campaigner, journalist and staffer. Following her undergraduate years at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, she obtained her post-graduate degrees in Europe. She first attended l’Institut des Etudes Politiques in Paris for her Masters specializing in the future of digital campaigning and then the London School of Economics where she wrote on the image of the Frontier in US Presidential politics.
