The Abrams Clean Tech Report

 

I said ages ago I wanted to write about RAN…

Sunday, August 14th, 2005

…well, today I finally am.  Have gotten a little busy lately, focused on helping clients with their stuff – thank goodness for clients, of course — without which it’d be a lot harder to do this, naturally. 

Having grown up in beautiful Oregon, watching the lumber trucks roll on by, past our long driveway then, with huge trees – sometimes only one at a time, because the tree was so large in diameter – on their truck beds, I particularly feel the urgency and importance of keeping as much of our country, and the rainforests around the world – as forested as possible.  My parents decided years and years ago to plant over 600 trees on our property then…which I can remember painfully plodding around on, lugging pailfuls of water to each and every little seedling.  Little did I appreciate then what part I played in my parents’ effort to create a more sustainable environment on the hill our house was on.  Today that forest I’m sure is home to numerous bird species, owls, rodents, snakes…you name it.  Happily, I can say I helped give them that home.  And to my parents – my thanks for teaching me such an invaluable lesson so early in life.  Sustain, give back, protect the earth, leave it better than as you found it.  With that in mind, I see really absolutely little to no reason fresh building cannot be done in a sustainable way.  Who has ever seen, for example, homes, or restaurants, or buildings in general, who’ve opted to build AROUND the trees on their property, rather than take them out?

Anyway — I am keen on the idea that those who spend their money on not-for-profits, like RAN, should also really invest of themselves, not just with their pocketbooks.  I was part of the initial group at Northwestern that spearheaded campus-wide recycling…taking papers that sat outside each dorm room gathering dust, and hauling them off in a borrowed friend’s toyota pickup.   I literally had to do something, when I saw so many TREES on the floor, every day.  So – with all this as a backdrop, I thought it’d be educational for everyone if I posted a little note with bios on RAN’s spokespeope…just so you can get to know them all. I took this information, of course, from the Rainforest Action Network website – http://www.ran.org. 

Michael Brune
Executive Director
Previously, Mike served as RAN’s Campaigns Director, directing strategy for campaigns to eliminate the markets for wood products from endangered forest areas and other campaigns to reduce the ecological and social footprint of Citigroup and the rest of the financial service industry. Mike also led RAN’s initiative to push Home Depot to adopt its landmark wood purchasing policy, which has led to a subsequent shift for more than a third of the American wood and paper markets. Before RAN, he worked with the Coastal Rainforest Coalition and Greenpeace, where he ran the San Francisco office for two years. Mike earned dual BS degrees in Economics and Finance from West Chester University.

Randall Hayes
Founder and President
Randy has been described in the Wall Street Journal as "an environmental pit bull." His training ground as an activist was documentary filmmaking. He produced the award-winning film The Four Corners, A National Sacrifice Area? which documents the tragic effects of uranium and coal mining on Hopi and Navajo Indian lands in the American Southwest. Now, as President of Rainforest Action Network, Randy is a leader in the efforts to halt destruction of tropical rainforests and to fight for the rights of indigenous people. He is fighting to confront the over-consumption of wood, calling for a 75% reduction of wood and wood based paper in the US. He works with organizers and regional networks worldwide in building a movement for effective social change. His "500 Year Planning Process" spells out a vision of a sustainable society and how to get there.

Ilyse Hogue
Director of the Global Finance Campaign
The campaign focuses on leading the corporate financial sector out of destructive activities and into environmentally sustainable and equitable, community-based alternatives. Before joining RAN, Ilyse organized community-based groups around clean water demands and environmental racism in Austin, Texas, and more recently worked with Greenpeace USA on the ancient forest campaign. Ilyse was closely involved with organizing around mass mobilizations including those against the WTO in Seattle, the World Bank/IMF in DC, and the Democratic National Convention in LA. Ilyse holds a Master’s of Science in Resource Ecology Management from the University of Michigan where she focused her thesis on forest health management. She has done community-based ecological work in Central America and Australia, as well as in the northern boreal forests of the US and Canada.

Brant Olson
Old Growth Campaign Director
The campaign harnesses the power of people to lead corporate America out of the world’s last remaining old growth and other endangered forests. Before joining RAN, Brant worked to promote clean air with the Public Interest Research Group in Washington, DC. He has also worked with many of the country’s most effective home-grown activist groups like Mobilization for Global Justice, Direct Action to Stop the War and the Mintwood Media Collective. He first worked to organize students for the November 1999 protests at the meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle.

Jennifer Krill
Zero Emissions Campaign Director
Jennifer Krill began volunteering at Rainforest Action Network in 1995 and in 1999 she joined RAN full-time on the Old Growth Forest Campaign. Jennifer’s experience as an organizer and negotiator has helped to drive U.S. market away from old-growth forest products and towards sustainable alternatives. Notable achievements include: organizing a broad coalition targeting Home Depot, resulting in over 600 demonstrations over a 2 year period at Home Depot stores across North America resulting in Home Depot’s 1999 commitment to phase out of old growth forest products; convincing American retailers to lobby the government of British Columbia to protect 3.4 million acres of the Great Bear Rainforest in 2001; directing RAN’s presence in protests against the 1999 World Trade Organization Seattle Ministerial; and convincing dozens of customers to pressure Boise Cascade to drop its opposition to the U.S. Roadless Conservation Policy. Eventually, Jennifer helped persuade Boise Cascade to draft an environmental policy in 2003 that would lead the U.S. forest products industry in environmental commitments. In 2004, Jennifer took over RAN’s new “Zero Emissions Campaign”, targeting Ford Motor Company in coalition with the Jumpstart Ford campaign. Before joining RAN in 1999, Jennifer worked for two years as Outreach Director for Earth Island Institute’s Sea Turtle Restoration Project, and for two years as a canvass manager for Greenpeace. Jennifer received bachelor’s degrees in Landscape Architecture and in History from Ball State University in 1995.  You can contact a spokesperson by phone at 415-398-4404.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

^ back to top

 

Contact Lara Abrams

To contact Lara, please email her at lara@laraabrams.com or call 415 613 1704.

Archives

 

Blogroll

 

Sustainable Green Web Hosting