Meet the Team

FOUNDER/EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Marc Ian Barasch founded the Green World Campaign in 2005 after writing the bestseller The Compassionate Life.An author, magazine editor, TV producer, and media activist, he has created global TV programs for Turner Broadcasting (where his Emmy-nominated Earth Summit special aired to a global audience of a billion people in 160 countries), the Discovery Channel, and others. His award-winning media installation, Text TREE, was exhibited on a dozen Jumbotrons on Earth Day in Times Square.

He incepted and co-produced ReGen18 a pivotal conference that gathered and empowered 500 leaders of the then-nascent regenerative movement. He created the interfaith Green World Charter (presenting it to 10,000 delegates from 80 countries and 50 faith traditions at the Parliament of the World’s Religions). He has been a member of the U.N. Advisory Committee for the Year of Forests and was an advisor on Project Drawdown and other key organizations. (For more, see his entry on Wikipedia.)

Media Director

J.D. Davis is an award-winning TV and print advertising art director. His classic print campaign for Airwalk Footwear was a case study in Malcolm Gladwell's bestseller, The Tipping Point. Davis's recent series of Toyota Prius TV ads, produced for the Saatchi agency, created a record-breaking sales jump. He has worked at Foote Cone Belding, Chiat Day, and Deutsch-L.A., where his accounts included Levi's, Old Navy, MTV, Sega, Kia Motors, Helio cell phones, and Rockport shoes. J.D. has visited over 30 countries, including on a 2003 U.N.-sponsored trip to document UNOPS projects in Afghanistan.

Program DIRECTOR-KENYA

Caroline Dama leads GWC’s flagship operation in coastal Kenya. She has supervised the planting of millions of trees at ninety locations around Kenya, including schools, faith-based organizations and farmers groups. She leads led GWC's partnership with the Red Cross, ensuring that famine-stricken areas are growing food trees and protecting their soil from erosion. In 65 primary schools in Kenya, she has built tree and vegetable nurseries and taught thousands of children the importance of living in harmony with their environment. She has run complementary currency programs, and has introduced hand-presses to produce oil and income from the seeds of moringa oleifera trees planted by rural farmers, combining environmental and economic gains. She is from the minority Kauma tribe.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Jan McAlpine is the former Director of the United Nations Forum on Forests, a body comprising all 192 member nations. In 1989, after 10 years in the nonprofit arena, Jan went to work for the Environmental Protection Agency on international policy issues, including trade and environment. Subsequently, she worked as a senior advisor at the U.S. State Department’s Office of Ecology and Terrestrial Conservation. She was a key player in the development and implementation of the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (2004) and the President’s Initiative Against Illegal Logging (2005).

Alan Menken has composed some of the most beloved songs and musical scores of our time. His credits include the Disney movies “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Aladdin,” “Hunchback of Notre Dame,” “Pocahontas” (which he credits with stimulating his interest in the environment). He is an 8-time Academy Award-winner and 10-time winner of the Grammy. He has donated funds to the charity Flood Sisters Kidney Foundation of America and to the Green World Campaign.

Franc Roddam is a leading London media entrepreneur, filmmaker, and BBC-TV producer. He is the creator of “Master Chef,” which reaches an audience of 1 billion people. He has directed major features for Columbia, Paramount, and 20th Century Fox, including the Who's “Quadrophenia,” one of BAFTA’s top ten British films of all time. He is also the Chairman of Ziji Publishing, and has had a distinguished career in advertising, including some 150 commercials. He has created, written, and directed many award-winning TV series for the BBC.

Doug Solomon is the former Chief Technology Officer at IDEO an international design and innovation firm working with clients to leverage technologies that create both business and social value. With more than 25 years of leadership experience in the IT industry, Doug has a particular interest in and knack for collaborative technologies that enable greater community engagement and participation. Prior to joining IDEO, he was vice president of investments at Omidyar Network, where he helped pioneer a new approach to socially responsible investing. He was also senior vice president of corporate development and chief strategy officer at Apple. Doug began his career by applying marketing and other business concepts to public health programs in Asia, where he learned the importance of cultural awareness and community involvement in achieving meaningful social change.

Board of Advisors

Professor Mary Abukutsa-Onyango of Jomo Kenyatta University's Agriculture & Technology Department in Nairobi is a leading agronomic expert specializing in uses of traditional African vegetables for food security and nutrition.Her research has demonstrated that Western-style mono-cropping of non-native foods which require extensive irrigation, pesticides and chemical fertilizer, is unsustainable. Although Western-style, resource-intensive methods may produce revenues in the form of exportable food, they create a tragic paradox: the World Food Program notes that in 2010 Kenya spent $300 million/year to pay for food aid, exporting $3 billion in food products while millions of Kenyans remain food-insecure. Mary has isolated a handful of the most important African indigenous vegetables (whose genomes also make them climate-change resilient), tirelessly promoting their cultivation among the farmers of Kenya, the majority of whom are women. She has trained grassroots networks of farmers in all technical and practical aspects of seed production, seed utilization, seed processing, sustainable indigenous crop production and organic farming methods.

Peter K. Buckley cofounded the Center for Ecoliteracy in 1995, after a career as CEO. of Esprit-Europe and Esprit-International, and an earlier career as an attorney in San Francisco. He is cofounder (with his wife Mimi) and chair of Greenwood School, a K-8 school with an environmental emphasis, in Mill Valley, California. THe serves as president of the David Brower Center, a project to create a 'home for the 21st-century environmental movement' in Berkeley, CA. They are the proud proprietors of Front Porch Farm in Healdsburg, CA.

Paul Hawken is the author of the influential international bestsellers Drawdown, Natural Capitalism, and The Ecology of Commerce. He has has a founding role in Metacode, a management software company; Groxis, a graphic information delivery provider; Smith & Hawken, the garden and catalog retailer; and several of the first natural food companies in the U.S relying solely on sustainable agricultural methods. Paul heads the Natural Capital Institute(link is external), which focuses on socially responsible investing (SRI), global civil society, environmental funding, and water issues.

Peter Crosby is a global social entrepreneur with executive leadership experience in nonprofit and profit environments. He has served as Chief Operating Officer of Rockefeller Family's TechRocks.org, Chief Technology Officer at the International Rescue Committee (I.R.C.), and Managing Director/Africa of the Anglican Malaria Project. In 2004, he chaired Social Enterprise Alliance's 5th International Gathering. Peter is managing partner of AllTogetherNow.com.

Gil Friend  is president and CEO of Natural Logic, Inc., a sustainability consulting firm helping clients build economic advantage through exceptional environmental performance. A systems ecologist and business strategist with 35 years experience in business, communications and environmental innovation, Gil Friend combines broad business experience with unique content experience spanning strategy, systems ecology, economic development, management cybernetics, and public policy. A founding board member of the Sustainable Business Alliance,  he  was recently named to the Sustainability Hall of Fame(link is external) (along with Ray Anderson, Amory Lovins,et. al.)  Tomorrow Magazine called him "One of the country's leading environmental management consultants -- a real expert who combines theoretical sophistication with hands-on, in-the-trenches know-how."

Steve Troy is the founder or co-founder of 20 sustainability oriented businesses, including the Jade Mountain and Real Goods catalogues. Countries of current operation include Colombia, Nigeria, Nepal, Indonesia, Kenya, and Tibet. The Sustainable Village provides access to nearly 10,000 products. The company subscribes to the code of E.F. Shumacher ("small is beautiful") for problem solving: "small, simple, inexpensive, and nonviolent." Steve has partnered with Paul Polak, founder of I.D.E. and designer of an award-winning human powered pump.

Sean Montague is a geographer with a passion for the web. Integrating his abilities with his exceptional curiosity and determination, he has built himself a career as the Drupal Webmaster for the Smithsonian Institution's Ocean Portal and Human Origins web sites. Sean's concern for social and environmental issues drove him to become a social entrepreneur, along with his wife, importing indigenous coffee from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia, in an effort to aid the Arhuaco community reclaim and reforest ancestral lands that were occupied by settlers and rebels.

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Bernice Chao is a fully integrated creative in the world of advertising. She has worked on everything from Super Bowl commercials, 3D google cardboard, experiential videos, digital experiences, social media, print, banners and created an app. Her work has been featured on the Today Show, Good Morning America, Nightline, Rolling Stones, Vogue, NBC, and more. Outside of her day job at David & Goliath she continuously works on several non-profit efforts. She is the lead organizer for a local non-profit TEDxCulverCity, teaches, guest speaks, makes websites for non-profit companies, and launched a meditation app called Evenflow.