Affiliates

Andrew Winston

Andrew Winston is a globally recognized expert on how businesses can profit from environmental thinking. He has advised some of the world’s leading companies, including Bank of America, Bayer, Boeing, HP, Kimberly-Clark, and Pepsi. Andrew is the author of two best sellers on environmental strategy, Green to Gold (2006, co-author) and Green Recovery (2009). Andrew is a highly respected and dynamic speaker, exploring the business benefits of sustainability with audiences around the world. His earlier career included corporate strategy at Boston Consulting Group and management positions in marketing and business development at Time Warner and MTV. Andrew received his BA in Economics from Princeton, an MBA from Columbia, and a Masters of Environmental Management from Yale.

Andy Savitz

Andy is a creative business leader, advisor, author and speaker with over 25 years of hands-on experience assisting corporations to become leaders in sustainability, environmental performance, measurement and reporting. An internationally known expert on corporate social responsibility and sustainability, Andy is the author of The Triple Bottom Line: How the Best Run Companies are Achieving Economic, Social and Environmental Success - and How You Can Too (Jossey-Bass, September, 2006). For the past five years, Andy has been a principal at Sustainable Business Strategies, working with large and diverse corporations on the development of environmental, social and economic metrics for both internal performance and external reporting purposes. Past clients include PepsiCo, American Electric Power, Ball Corporation, Piper Jaffray, UnitedHealth Group, Amtrak, 3M, and Northeast Utilities. Andy's second book, about the role of human resources in advancing sustainability, is due to be published by Wiley in spring, 2012.

Buzz Thompson, Jr.

Buzz Thompson is the Perry L. McCarty Director of the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University and the Robert E. Paradise Professor of Natural Resources Law at Stanford Law School. His research focuses on natural capital, the sustainable use of water and other natural resources, and the effective design of environmental institutions. The author of several books on water, the environment, and property, Buzz has published articles on such diverse topics as water markets, fisheries management, ecosystem services, land conservation, the use of economics and market tools in environmental regulation, and cognitive barriers to resource management. Buzz holds an A.B. in economics from Stanford University, an MBA from Stanford Business School, and a law degree from Stanford Law School. He serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and was a law clerk to the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

Chris Varrone

Chris Varrone is a Cambridge-trained economist and former McKinsey consultant who specializes in wind energy technology. His firm, Riverview Consulting, Inc., advises technology companies, investors and corporate energy buyers on product/market strategy, renewable energy procurement, cost-of-energy modeling and financing. As Chief Strategist, Technology R&D at Vestas Wind Systems, the world’s leading manufacturer of wind turbines, Mr. Varrone was responsible for global product/market strategy and represented the firm in the Roadmap 2050 project. Chris has spoken at some of the most important energy conferences, and has published articles on wind energy in International Sustainable Energy Review, Renewable Energy Focus, and The Atlantic Online.
A Fulbright Scholar in Norway, he graduated summa cum laude from Williams College, and holds the M.A. in Economics from Cambridge University, where his dissertation on “Metapreferences” was awarded the Gladstone Prize.

Ian Midgley

Ian Midgley served as Chief Supply Chain Officer at Unilever from 2005 to 2008. In recent years, he has led major supply chain restructuring, has substantially improved operating performance in manufacturing and purchasing through building new global capabilities and has strengthened Unilever's supply chain sustainability program. With thirty years of experience leading transformational supply chain change at Unilever, Ian previously served as SVP Supply Chain Home & Personal Care, and SVP Supply Chain Latin America, among other roles. Ian is a founding member of Supply Chain 50, a group of leading supply chain executives, and a member of the Industrial Advisory Board to the Cambridge Institute for Manufacturing. He holds a degree in chemistry from Oxford University.

Jeff Gowdy

Jeff Gowdy is the founder and president of J. Gowdy Consulting - Profitable Sustainability Solutions, a boutique consulting firm based in Nashville, TN. Jeff teaches sustainability-centric courses at Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management and serves on the advisory board of two green business ventures and one environmental NGO. Jeff has worked on sustainability initiatives dating back to 2002 with a focus on the transportation, energy, supply chain, and green building sectors. He graduated with distinction from the University of Virginia's School of Engineering and Applied Science with a BS in Systems Engineering. He graduated with honors from Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management with a concentration in Strategy and Environmental Management.

John Haffner

Based in Beijing, John Haffner is engaged in a number of green projects in Asia. He is co-authoring a book profiling 30 clean energy leaders in China, working with a Canadian biomass technology company on its market launch in Asia, and co-leader of a Yale University project examining renewable energy innovation in the aftermath of the financial crisis, including case studies in China, India and the Philippines. John has served as a management and environmental policy consultant to several organisations in the energy sector, and as an environmental advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister of Canada. He has also worked for McKinsey & Company in Japan. Prior to becoming a 2008 World Fellow at Yale University, John was project manager of Ontario Power Generation’s role in the Province of Ontario’s $60 billion, 20-year energy plan.

Julie Beth Zimmerman

Dr. Julie Beth Zimmerman is an Assistant Professor jointly appointed to the Department of Chemical Engineering, Environmental Engineering Program and the School of Forestry and Environment at Yale. She is also a Visiting Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Virginia. Her research interests include green engineering, environmentally benign design and manufacturing, and the fate and impacts of anthropogenic compounds in the environment as well as appropriate water treatment technologies for the developing world. Dr. Zimmerman previously served as an Engineer and Program Coordinator in the Office of Research and Development at the United States Environmental Protection Agency where she managed grants to academia and small businesses in the areas of pollution prevention and sustainability. She holds a joint PhD from the University of Michigan in Environmental Engineering and Natural Resource Policy.

Karl Ulrich

Karl Ulrich is the CIBC Professor and Chair of the Operations and Information Management Department at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He also holds a secondary appointment as Professor of Mechanical Engineering. Karl's research activities focus on innovation, design, and product development. His past and present research partners include Hewlett-Packard, Merck, and Dell. He is a co-author of Product Design and Development (McGraw-Hill, 4th Edition, 2008), the leading graduate textbook on product design, and Innovation Tournaments, which was by Harvard Business School Press in 2009. Karl has been a member of development teams for over 40 new products or processes, including medical devices, tools, computer peripherals, food products, and sporting goods. From 1999-2002, while on leave from Wharton, Karl founded and managed Nova Cruz Products (now Xootr LLC). He is also a founder of Terrapass, which the New York Times featured as one of the most noteworthy ideas of 2005. Karl holds bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Vicki Flannery

Vicki Flannery is a public affairs professional with over 25 years experience in public policy and sustainability strategy. She specializes in public policy, strategic stakeholder engagement and issues management to enhance corporate sustainability and shareholder value. She has developed strategies for publicly listed companies, industry associations and environmental regulators in Australia, the US, Canada and the UK, spanning environment regulation, water, resources and petroleum, packaging, entertainment, gaming and public health.

Prior to establishing her consulting business she was Government Affairs Manager at Esso Australia and Assistant Director at the Business Council of Australia. She was inaugural CEO of both the Australian Gaming Council and Drinkwise Australia. She has a Bachelor of Economics and a Graduate Diploma in Accounting from Monash University, Melbourne.