In case you were wondering, green is still in. It seems that every business is marketing and promoting some initiative to spark renewed interest in their products and services, despite whether they are truly green or not. However, many companies really are betting on green creativity as a way to position themselves for a consumer base more concerned about the sustainability of products and the corporate responsibility of companies than ever.
A piece in the June issue of Fast Company magazine featured the 100 Most Creative People in Business. Not surprisingly, several people making the list work in some sector of green business -- 10 percent according to my count. We've parsed those green business leaders into a listing of the 10 Most Creative Green People in Business. The numbers in parentheses represent the individual's ranking on Fast Company's list of 100, but the commentary is our own.
92. Annie Leonard - Environmental Activist, The story of Stuff Project
Annie Leonard's Story of Stuff very quickly became one of the most popular viral videos of the modern environmental movement. After the success of The Story of Stuff, Ms. Leonard, et al. took on the narrower but equally tricky issue of climate policy with follow-up, The Story of Cap and Trade.
59. Majora Carter - Founder, Majora Carter Group
Named by our sister-site, Ecopolitology, as one of the 10 Women Who Changed the Environmental Movement Forever, Majora Carter is a passionate advocate for urban gardens, green jobs and sustainable economic development. After leaving Sustainable South Bronx, Carter launched the Majora Carter Group, a consulting and communications firm focusing on economic revitalization strategies.
50. Natalia Allen - Surfer, Designer
Natalia Allen is a surfer, triathlete and linguist, and--oh, by the way--runs a fast growing design firm in her spare time. The recipient of the highly coveted Parsons “Designer of the Year Award,” Ms. Allen recently founded Design Futurist, which partners with big international firms to develop "innovative and sustainable fashion, accessories and textiles."
49. Mark Pinto - CTO, Applied Materials
Chief Technology Officer for Applied Materials, Mark Pinto recently became the first chief technologist of a major American tech firm to move to China, where he is heading-up Applied Materials' research center in Xi’an.
42. Cynthia Warner - President, Sapphire Energy
After 27 years as one of the most powerful women in the oil and gas industry, Cynthia "CJ" Warner made a particularly timely decision to leave her employer for greener pastures in 2009. Warner left her post at BP, where she was head of global refining, to join Sapphire Energy. Sapphire is one of several companies angling to be the first to commercialize a transportation fuel made from algae, sunlight, and carbon dioxide -- a product they are calling "Green Crude."
39. Byron Washom - Director of Strategic Energy Initiatives, Univ. of California San Diego
We always hear that renewables are unreliable because the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. But Byron Washom and his team at UCSD are working on a way of getting around that--at least for solar--by predicting the availability of solar resource. A solar entrepreneur and long-time holder of the solar energy conversion record, Washom says: "We are developing the ability to predict one hour in advance the amount of sunlight that will be falling on every solar panel in 25 square miles." Obtaining this information on a large scale could become a critical component of building out an electric grid that will most efficiently make use of solar power.
20. KR Sridhar - CEO, Bloom Energy
In 2010, Sridhar's Bloom Energy unveiled its fuel cell known as the Bloom Box, a device capable of powering 100 homes while producing nearly zero greenhouse gas emissions. Sridhar, a long-time professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering, as well as an accomplished member of NASA Mars Program, Sridhar was recognized by Fortune Magazine, as "one of the top five futurists inventing tomorrow, today."
8. Hannah Jones - VP of Sustainable Business and Innovation, Nike
Joining Nike in 2004, Hannah Jones leads a global team of over 100 employees at Nike whose role is to fuel sustainable innovation and embed sustainability into the core practices of the business. To facilitate this, Nike developed its Considered Design initiative to use less toxic and fewer materials overall in the manufacturing of its products. One example, the Air Jordan XX3 shoe, utilizes a water-based bonding process to attach a carbon fiber plate, rather than using a solvent-based cement. Another shoe, the Nike Pegasus 25 running shoe uses 1.4 ounces less material than previous iterations.
7. Chris Anderson - Curator, TED Conferences
The former journalist, publisher and media entrepreneur, Chris Anderson founded the Sapling Foundation in 1996, with the goal of finding "new ways of tackling tough global issues by leveraging media, technology, entrepreneurship, and most of all, ideas." In 2001, Sapling acquired the TED Conference, where Anderson now focuses his professional efforts. And if you've even had a glimpse into the TED phenomenon, you know he's doing something right.
4. Shiro Nakamura - Chief Creative Officer, Nissan
With the launch of the zero-emission The Nissan LEAF approaching later this year, Nissan's design guru, , Shiro Nakamura, has been tasked with designing an electric vehicle (EV) for the masses -- a job that he has taken on with care and deliberateness. Said Nakamura of the LEAF design: "We did not want to make something very strange for just the niche buyer."
Know someone who should be added to this list? Let us know in the comments. You can also read about the 90 other most creative people in business at Fast Company.







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