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Your search for Environment & Climate Change returned 6 results

Stewart Brand
Author, Futurist, Activist and Visionary

Since he emerged in the counter-culture sixties, Stewart Brand has been a force in the world for giving access to the information needed to make the planet a better place.

He is a co-founder and managing director of Global Business Network, a scenario strategy consulting business and part of the Monitor Group, where he works with leading companies and public institutions on their futures.

Mr. Brand is the president of The Long Now Foundation. Brand is well known for founding, editing and publishing the Whole Earth Catalog (1968-85), which received a National Book Award for the 1972 issue. In 1984, he founded The WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link), a computer teleconference system for the San Francisco Bay Area. It now has 11,000 active users worldwide and is considered a bellwether of the genre.

Brand has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the Santa Fe Institute, an interdisciplinary center studying the sciences of complexity, since 1989. He received the Golden Gadfly Lifetime Achievement Award from the Media Alliance, San Francisco in the same year. He was a founding member of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization which supports civil rights and responsibilities in electronic media, and is an acting advisor to Ecotrust, the Portland-based preservers of temperate rain forests from Alaska to San Francisco.

Recently, he has advocated nuclear power as a responsible strategy to address power demand in the face of the stark reality of global warming. His seminal essay on this topic, entitled Environmental Heresies, appeared in the MIT Technology Review in May 2005.

Brand is the author of many pioneering books including The Clock Of The Long Now in 1999, How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built in 1994, The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT in 1987, and Two Cybernetic Frontiers on Gregory Bateson and cutting-edge computer science in 1974. It had the first use of the term "personal computer" in print and was the first book to report on computer hackers.

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Eamonn Kelly
Futurist, Change Agent, and Strategic Thought Partner

Eamonn is the CEO and president of Global Business Network (GBN), the renowned futures network and scenario strategy consultancy. He has developed insights, tools, and methodologies for mastering uncertainty and has consulted to dozens of the world’s leading corporations in many sectors and global and national public agencies. Prior to joining GBN, Eamonn was head of strategy at Scottish Enterprise, one of the world's most respected development agencies, where he led the creation of effective strategies for economic and social development in a new era. In his recently acclaimed book, Powerful Times: Rising to the Challenge of Our Uncertain World, Eamonn weaves together seven powerful “dynamic tensions” that will fundamentally reshape human life in the coming decades. He offers breakthrough insights into how these tensions will conflict and interact to create huge waves of change beyond anything society has experienced previously.

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Mats Lederhausen
Investor and Advisor to Purpose-Driven Enterprises

After a long career both as a Joint Venture Partner and as a senior executive of McDonald’s Corporation, Mats Lederhausen formed his own company in early 2007. The company focuses on building businesses with a purpose bigger than their product. This focus comes from a strong belief that purpose is paramount in today's marketplace. Companies with stronger conviction can attract energy and loyalty both from consumers and employees. The primary mission of BE-CAUSE is to invest in companies that need to scale an already tested and promising aspiration. Mats will use his experience from building thousands of units in many international markets for several concepts. Mats will also continue to do selective consulting projects for companies in the areas of CSR, Corporate Reputation, Innovation and Strategy. Mats currently serves as a senior advisor to the McDonald’s Management team on both asset management and Brand Trust.

Prior to forming BE-CAUSE, Mats served as Managing Director of McDonald’s Ventures. McDonald’s Ventures managed the investments McDonald’s held in future oriented growth initiatives including Chipotle Mexican Grill, Boston Market, RedBox DVD and Pret A Manger. As a director, Chairman and finally lead director of Chipotle from 2000-2006 Mats helped shape the strategy that ultimately led to one of the most successful restaurant IPOs of all times. Mats continues to serve on the boards of Pret A Manger, RedBox and Donatos Pizzeria.

Mats joined McDonald’s Corporation in 1999 as head of global strategy. During the next 4 years he had the responsibility for global strategy and business development. As President of Business Development Mats later assumed responsibility for worldwide menu, worldwide real estate and restaurant R&D. During these years Mats played a key role in shaping the agenda that later has helped McDonald’s complete one of the most successful corporate turnarounds in recent history.

Born in Stockholm, Sweden, Mats began his career with McDonald's in 1979 as a part time crew member in Sweden. In 1983, he participated in the McDonald's Management Development Program and worked as a store manager from 1984 to 1985. Lederhausen worked for The Boston Consulting Group in London from 1988 to 1990. In 1990, he returned to McDonald's and in 1993 became the Managing Director and Joint Venture Partner for McDonald's Sweden. Under his leadership, the company grew from 40 restaurants to nearly 170 restaurants.

Mats was named one of Crain’s Chicago Business’ “40 under 40” to watch in 1999 and the World Economic Forum honored him as a “Global Leader of Tomorrow” in 2000. Mats serves as Chairman of the board for the not-for-profit Business for Social Responsibility and serves on the board of trustees of Ronald McDonald House Charities. Mats received a Master’s degree from Stockholm School of Economics in 1988. Mats lives in Chicago with his wife, Dr. Jessica Lederhausen and their 4 children.

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Chris Luebkeman
Architect, Engineer, Designer of the Built Environment

Chris speaks widely to the issues of sustainability and thoughtful design. He applies the lessons learned in the design of the built environment to businesses of all kinds. His keynotes, workshops, and strategy sessions are created for executives seeking better design sensibility for their products, services, and processes. Through his unique user-centric methods, Chris helps clients better understand the needs and desires of consumers, customers, and citizens.

Chris runs the global Foresight and Innovation initiative at Arup, a global design and engineering firm and a leading creative force behind many of the world's most innovative projects and structures. In his role, he conceives new ways of building—recyclable buildings, reusable offices, and furniture that can decompose—and works with some of the world’s largest companies to develop what he calls ‘plausible futures’ to better understand the opportunities that change is creating for them in the built environment.

In his book, Drivers of Change 2006, Chris and the Foresight team at Arup look at 50 important factors that will affect our world, arranged in a framework known as STEEP (social, technological, economic, environmental and political). Designed as a collection of notecards, the book provides a tool for discussion groups, as personal prompts for workshop events, or as “thoughts of the week.” The cards are designed to encourage deeper consideration of the forces driving global change and the role that individuals can play in creating a more sustainable future.

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Eric Roston
Science Journalist and Climate Change Expert

Eric Roston is a science journalist in Washington, DC, and author of THE CARBON AGE: How Life's Core Element Has Become Civilization's Greatest Threat. He is also Senior Associate in the Washington, DC, office of The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, of Duke University. He joined the Institute after a year-long term as a Visiting Scholar at the Washington energy and economics think tank, Resources for the Future.

Previously, Roston wrote for TIME, where he covered economics, politics and technology. He joined the magazine in 2000 as a business reporter in the New York bureau, covering stories such as the collapse of Enron, China's emergence as a force in global trade, and how advanced computing technologies are reshaping the economy. An eyewitness to the collapse of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, Roston was a part of the reporting team that won a National Magazine Award for best single-issue coverage.

In September 2002, Roston became a part of TIME's Washington bureau. He traveled with President George W. Bush and Senators John Kerry and John Edwards during the 2004 election campaign, providing reporting to the magazine's political team. He was also a frequent contributor to the magazine's work on energy, technology environment, and health. In the spring of 2004, he became Time.com's first blogger, writing a daily commentary on "the technology that will carry us through tomorrow – and the stuff that keeps us stuck in yesterday."

Roston has been a guest on Comedy Central's “The Colbert Report,” CleanSkies.tv, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBC, National Public Radio and many radio stations. Prior to TIME, he wrote for LIFE magazine and contributed to Slate.com, where he wrote the "Today's Papers" column. Roston, who is fluent in Russian, holds an M.A. in Russian literature and linguistics, and a B.A. in modern European history, both from Columbia University.

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Peter Schwartz
World-Renowned Futurist and Strategist

Peter Schwartz is co-founder and current chairman of the Global Business Network (GBN), the world’s preeminent member organization focused on scenario thinking and planning, where he leads programs for corporations, governments, and non-profit institutions. His current research and scenario work encompasses energy resources and the environment, technology, life sciences, telecommunications, media and entertainment, aerospace, and national security. A prolific author, Peter’s most recent book, Inevitable Surprises, offers a provocative look at the complex forces at play in the world today and their implications for business and society. His first book, The Art of the Long View, is considered a seminal publication on scenario planning and has been translated into multiple languages. Peter addresses many different audiences in corporate board rooms, at conferences on issues such as global warming and human life extension, and at the World Economic Forum. He led the scenario team at Royal Dutch/Shell in the 1980s, where many of the scenario tools were pioneered. He has even lent his futurist skills to Hollywood as a script consultant on such films as The Minority Report, Deep Impact, Sneakers, and War Games.

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