Advisory Board

Spencer B. Beebe

President and Founder, Ecotrust

An Oregon native, Mr. Beebe has a lifetime commitment to wilderness and conservation. He has devoted his professional career to building organizational capacity and exploring new strategies for conservation. He is president and founder of Ecotrust, a Portland-based conservation organization that has joined forces with ShoreBank Corporation, the nation's oldest community development banking institution, to devise a development initiative that would foster conservation-based economic development in the coastal temperate rain forest. With ShoreBank, Beebe created ShoreBank Pacific Corporation, the world's first bioregional bank holding company designed to finance sustainable development. He is the founding chair of Ecotrust Forest Management Inc., which seeks to demonstrate sustainable forest management on a whole-basin scale.

Susan Burns

Managing Director, Global Footprint Network; Principal, Natural Strategies LLC

Ms. Burns is the managing director of the Global Footprint Network, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting sustainability worldwide. She is also the co-founder of the pioneering sustainability consulting firm, Natural Strategies. She has more than 19 years of experience as a consultant, working with over 50 corporations and organizations on sustainability-related issues, including: business strategy, product design, consensus building, management systems, forest policy, and stakeholder communications. She is also expert in the application of The Natural Step framework, having co-authored (with Paul Hawken and Steve Goldfinger) The Natural Step curriculum currently in use in the U.S. Burns was formerly the director of Training Services for ERM-West, an international environmental consulting firm, where she developed training programs for major corporations. She holds a degree in Environmental Engineering.

Magnus Huss

Secretary General, The Natural Step Sweden

Mr. Huss has served as Secretary General of The Natural Step Sweden since 1997. He has been instrumental in developing an international network for the organization. His previous experience spans many aspects of environmental policy, including affiliations with the Swedish Ministry of Finance, Federation of Swedish Farmers, Waste Management Scandinavia, and Rang-Sells Miljokonsult (an environmental consulting firm).

L. Hunter Lovins

President, Natural Capitalism Inc.

Trained as a lawyer, Ms. Lovins co-founded the California Conservation Project (Tree People) and subsequently the Rocky Mountain Institute, at which she served as CEO until 2002. In 2002, Lovins founded Natural Capitalism Inc. She has lectured extensively in over fifteen countries, including at the World Economic Forum at Davos, The International Symposium on Sustainable Development in Shanghai , and the Global Economic Forum in Washington , D.C. Her areas of expertise include sustainable development, energy and resource policy, economic development, climate change, land management, and fire rescue and emergency medicine. She has co-authored nine books and numerous papers, including the 1999 book, Natural Capitalism. Lovins is a professor of sustainable management at Presidio World College , has held visiting chairs at Dartmouth College and the University of Colorado , and received several honorary doctorates. She has consulted for scores of industries and governments worldwide and currently serves as an advisor to the Ministry of Water and Power of Afghanistan. Lovins shared a 1982 Mitchell Prize, a 1983 Right Livelihood Award (often called the "alternative Nobel Prize"), the 1993 Nissan Prize, and the 1999 Lindbergh Award. In 2000 she was named Time Magazine Hero of the Planet. In 2001 she received the Shingo Prize for Manufacturing Research and the Leadership in Business Award. She served as one of four North American delegates to the United Nations Prep Conference for Europe and North America for the Earth Summit Conference.

Ariane van Buren, PH.D.

Senior Manager, Investor Outreach, Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES)

Dr. van Buren is the Senior Project Manager for the Institutional Investor Program of CERES Sustainable Governance Project. There she works with pension funds and endowments to assess their financial exposure to the risks from climate change embedded in their investment portfolios, their fiduciary responsibility and accountability to their constituents. Formerly at the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), she directed shareholder environmental actions and dialogues with 100 corporations annually for 275 Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish institutional investors controlling $150 billion in assets, foundation endowments and other pension funds. She provided leadership on a broad range of environmental topics including Fortune 500 company commitments to public environmental accountability and disclosure according to the CERES Principles, financial exposure of companies and shareholders to new risks created by the likelihood of climate change, and the safety and impact of genetically engineered food. Van Buren holds a double B.A. (Magna cum laude) from Yale University and a doctorate in political economy from the University of Sussex (U.K.).

Mathis Wackernagel

Executive Director, Global Footprint Network

Mr. Wackernagel is the executive director of the Global Footprint Network, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting sustainability worldwide. He is co-creator of the Ecological Footprint and leading international authority on its use. He has worked on sustainability issues for organizations in Europe, Latin America, North America and Australia . Wackernagel has lectured for community groups, government agencies, NGOs and academic audiences at more than 100 universities on five continents. He previously served as the director of the Sustainability Program at Redefining Progress in Oakland , CA . He has authored or contributed to over two dozen academic articles and co-authored various books on sustainability, including Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth and Sharing Nature's Interest. After earning a degree in mechanical engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, he completed his Ph.D. in community and regional planning at The University of British Columbia in Vancouver , Canada . There he developed, under Professor William Rees, the "Ecological Footprint" as his doctoral dissertation.