Environmental entrepreneurs specialize in identifying conservation opportunities, mobilizing resources, and building a constituency for conservation. They are leading this change by developing an experimental and non-doctrinaire field, conservation based development (CBD).

Successful environmental entrepreneurs understand they must become part of local communities. They don’t make the elitist conclusion that people merely want the wrong things. They don’t insist that people exchange their old values.

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About Dan Barber:
Dan Barber is the chef and co-owner of Blue Hill restaurant in New York City, a 2001 James Beard Award nominee for best new restaurant and a noted neighborhood eatery that continues to celebrate the farms of the Hudson Valley with its menus. In the summer of 2002, Food & Wine Magazine featured Dan as one of the country’s “Best New Chefs.” He has since been featured in The New Yorker and Gourmet Magazine, and included in “The Next Generation” of great chefs in Bon Appétit’s 10th annual restaurant issue.

About Marianne Cusato:
Born and raised in Anchorage, Ala., Cusato is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and the founder of Cusato Cottages, LLC. Ranked the No. 4 most influential person in the home building industry in Builder Magazine’s annual “Power on 50” list, Cusato and her design principles are changing the landscape of the housing industry. In 2006, the Smithsonian Institute’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum honored Cusato with the first annual “People’s Design Award”. In June 2006, Congress appropriated $400 million for an alternative emergency housing program, based on the idea of the Katrina Cottage

About Adam Lowry:
Founder and Chief Greenskeeper of Method Products, Adam Lowry believes that business, as the Earth’s largest and most powerful institution, has both the opportunity and the obligation to be the greatest agent of positive social and environmental change on the planet. First and foremost an entrepreneur and change agent, Adam has a proven track record of innovation across multiple categories and consumer segments.

Method is the 7th fastest growing company in America and grown to the nation’s leading green home care company, in a very mature industry: household cleaning products. The company was founded in 2000 with the belief that they could revitalize the drudgery of cleaning with soaps and sprays designed to be easy on the eyes, nose, and the environment. Sure enough, it has taken off. Revenues are in the tens of millions of dollars and their products are on the shelves of Target, Safeway, and many other stores.