Birnur K. Aral, PhD | Terrence Collins, PhD | Anne Marie Fine, NMD | Jeff Gearhart | Mark Hyman MD | Ian Illuminato | Dr. Sarah Janssen | Pete Myers, PhD | Deanna Minich, PhD | Michelle Perro, MD | Sharima Rasanayagam, PhD | Lisa Rodenburg, PhD | Maya Shetreat-Klein, MD | Laurel Standley, PhD | Summer Streets, MS | Kevin Strong, MD | Shanna Swan, PhD | Katrina E. Varner | John Warner
Birnur Aral, PhD — Health, Beauty & Environmental Sciences Lab Director, Good Housekeeping Institute
Birnur Aral is a scientist with MEng and PhD degrees in Chemical Engineering. She has held various responsibilities in industries ranging from instrumentation, to personal care, to fragrance, and most recently media. She has published scientific articles in the area of rheological behavior of highly concentrated suspensions and holds several patents in the personal wash area.
In her most recent position as Health, Beauty, and Environmental Sciences Director at the Good Housekeeping Institute, Birnur and her team of scientists evaluate products designed to meet health and beauty needs of consumers. Their product tests and investigations have ranged from anti-aging serums to gel manicures, from hair salon keratin treatments to efficacy of water purifiers in taking out emerging contaminants, and more. Launched in 2010, her group’s testing is behind the success of Good Housekeeping Magazine’s yearly Beauty Awards.
Birnur has worked with Brown & Wilmanns Environmental consulting firm to set the criteria for the Green Good Housekeeping Seal in the beauty product category. To this end, she also collaborated with an external advisory committee composed of industry experts, academia, trade associations, and non-governmental organizations. She is currently a part-time student in the Sustainability Management Program at Columbia University and hopes to make a difference in channeling consumer and industry behavior towards becoming more sustainable. You can follow Birnur as @beautyscience on Instagram and @BAbeautyscience on Twitter.
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Terrence (Terry) J. Collins PhD, Hon FRSNZ
Prof. Collins is a Teresa Heinz Professor of Green Chemistry and the Director of the Institute for Green Science (IGS) at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was born and raised in Auckland, New Zealand, and is a citizen of both New Zealand and the United States.
He holds numerous academic and public awards. He has published over 200 articles and is the lead inventor on many patents. He is the lead developer and inventor of TAML and NewTAML activators, small-molecule, functional replicas of the peroxidase enzymes that mimic and outperform the enzymes to transform the field of bioinspired oxidation catalysis. The Collins iterative design protocol allows health, environmental and fairness performances to participate at design decision-gate stature, while advancing technical and cost performances in pursuit of sustainable chemistry. NewTAMLs enable a broad new field of catalysis science that is mated to water treatment science called, “Sustainable Ultra-dilute Oxidation Catalysis” (SUDOC).
Prof. Collins taught the first course in Green Chemistry and has been developing it iteratively since 1992. He sees three existential threats to humanity coming today from the chemical and allied enterprises: the increasing carbonization of the economy, nuclear mishap or misadventure, and the low dose adverse effects of everyday-everywhere chemicals. The IGS is focused primarily on developing solutions for the last fast-acting threat.
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Anne Marie Fine, NMD
Dr. Anne Marie Fine is a practicing doctor, award-winning researcher, author and highly sought after national and international speaker based in Newport Beach, CA. Her focus is on environmental medicine; she is especially sensitive to the weighty effects of today’s myriad toxicants from personal care products on developing fetuses, babies, children and adults.
She has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed medical journals and speaks nationally and internationally on environmental medicine, epigenetics, toxicants in personal care products and other topics. She currently serves as Director of Education on the board of directors of the Naturopathic Academy of Environmental Medicine (NAEM).
Dr. Fine is also the Founder & C.E.O. of Fine Natural Products, LLC, a company dedicated to formulating non-toxic skin care products and educational information designed to create a healthier world for all.
Dr. Fine graduated with high honors and obtained her doctorate in Naturopathic Medicine from the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine in Tempe, Arizona. Armed with a Bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Notre Dame, she enjoyed a successful career as an executive in corporate finance before making the radical discovery that natural medicine solved her health issues. Feeling this was way more powerful than mere number crunching, she left her job to pursue a higher calling.
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Jeff Gearhart, MS – Research Director, Ecology Center / Healthystuff.org
Jeff has worked for over 20 years on a wide range of environmental issues, including air quality, pollution prevention, life cycle assessment, consumer product testing, and green chemistry. For over 16 years, he has worked with the Ecology Center, and developed the now internationally recognized HealthyStuff.org product chemistry disclosure project and its extensive website of robust advocacy resources and product testing results for more than 100,000 products.
Jeff has spearheaded numerous chemicals policy market campaigns, co-authored multiple peer-reviewed articles on toxics in consumer products, and pioneered citizen science in the use of x-ray fluorescence technology for toxics testing in products. He likes to create and build things, and it is this compulsion that drives him to develop campaigns that gather and present new knowledge so the world will have better products and an improved environment.
Jeff is assisted by numerous student interns to achieve the work of the HealthyStuff.org program, providing critical exposure for young people to cutting edge technology for chemical testing.
Mark Hyman, MD and Bestselling Author
Mark Hyman, MD, believes that we all deserve a life of vitality—and that we have the potential to create it for ourselves. That’s why he is dedicated to tackling the root causes of chronic disease by harnessing the power of Functional Medicine to transform healthcare. Dr. Hyman and his team work every day to empower people, organizations, and communities to heal their bodies and minds, and improve our social and economic resilience.
Dr. Hyman is a practicing family physician, an eight-time #1 New York Times bestselling author, and an internationally recognized leader, speaker, educator, and advocate in his field. He is the Director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine. He is also the founder and medical director of The UltraWellness Center, chairman of the board of the Institute for Functional Medicine, a medical editor of The Huffington Post, and has been a regular medical contributor on many television shows including CBS This Morning, the Today Show, CNN, The View, the Katie Couric show and The Dr. Oz Show.
Dr. Hyman works with individuals and organizations, as well as policy makers and influencers. He has testified before both the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine and the Senate Working Group on Health Care Reform on Functional Medicine. He has consulted with the Surgeon General on diabetes prevention, and participated in the 2009 White House Forum on Prevention and Wellness. Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa nominated Dr. Hyman for the President’s Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health. In addition, Dr. Hyman has worked with President Clinton, presenting at the Clinton Foundation’s Health Matters – Achieving Wellness in Every Generation conference and the Clinton Global Initiative, as well as with the World Economic Forum on global health issues.
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Ian Illuminato – Nano-Specialist, Friends of the Earth
As Health and environment consultant for Friends of the Earth, Ian’s work focuses on protecting people and the environment from threats posed by nanotechnology. He has worked for Greenpeace Italy, Greenpeace International, and the United Nations Environmental Program in Italy and has extensive experience monitoring the impact of technological change on the environment.
At Greenpeace Ian helped lead an international movement against genetically engineered crops in Europe and the Middle East. He persuaded Europe’s largest rice company to stop importing American rice to keep its stock GM-free. He also works closely with the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics to remove toxins from beauty products.
He has authored highly regarded reports on Nanotechnology. His writing has appeared in publications including the Journal of Nanoparticle Research and the European Journal of Oncology. He has also appeared in numerous media outlets including the New York Times, Scientific American, Business Week and Reuters, and served on the Executive Committee of Friends of the Earth International. Ian has a BA degree in Human Ecology from the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine.
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Dr. Sarah Janssen, MPH, PhD
Dr. Janssen currently practices pediatrics in Northern California and has an appointment at UCSF in the Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. She’s a former Senior Scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council. She has a Master’s degree in Public Health and a PhD in reproductive biology with expertise in chemicals that mimic hormones (aka endocrine disruptors.)
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Deanna Minich, PhD, FACN, CNS
Dr. Deanna Minich is an internationally-recognized lifestyle medicine and detox expert, creative visionary, and author of five books. She is founder of The Detox Summit™ (http://www.thedetoxsummit.com) and led the 3000-person, online Detox Challenge together with the Institute for Functional Medicine in 2014.
Her twenty years of experience in the nutrition and functional medicine fields led her to develop an integrated, “whole self” approach to nutrition called Food & Spirit, which is the practice of understanding one’s eating and living through seven core symbolic themes. Dr. Minich has had a diverse, well-rounded experience in the field of nutrition including clinical practice, research, product formulation, marketing, writing, and education.
Dr. Minich received her nutrition education during her Doctoral (PhD) study at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands where she researched essential fatty acid absorption and metabolism, and from her Master’s Degree (MS) at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she focused on carotenoids and oxidative stress. She is a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition (FACN), a Certified Nutrition Specialist (CNS), Certified Nutritionist (CN) by the Washington State Department of Health, and a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT). Her passion is teaching a whole-self approach to nourishment and removing toxic barriers to health.
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Pete Myers, PhD
John Peterson “Pete” Myers is founder, CEO and Chief Scientist of Environmental Health Sciences, a not-for-profit organization that promotes public understanding of advances in scientific research on links between the environment and human health (http://www.EnvironmentalHealthNews.org). Dr. Myers holds a doctorate in the biological sciences from the University of California, Berkeley and a BA from Reed College. For a dozen years beginning in 1990, Dr. Myers served as Director of the W. Alton Jones Foundation in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Along with co-authors Dr. Theo Colborn and Dianne Dumanoski, Myers wrote Our Stolen Future, a book (1996) that explores the scientific basis of concern for how contamination threatens fetal development. Dr. Myers is now actively involved in primary research on the impacts of endocrine disruption on human health. He is on the boards of the Science Communication Network and the Jenifer Altman Foundation.
Until its merger with Pew Charitable Trusts in 2007, he served as Board Chair of the National Environmental Trust. He has also served as Board President of the Consultative Group on Biological Diversity, an association of more than 40 foundations supporting work on biodiversity, climate, energy and environmental health and board chair of the H. John Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment. He is an Adjunct Professor of Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Myers lectures around the world, including this TED-style talk in the Abbey Road Studio of London, in June 2016. In 2016 he received a Laureate Award for Outstanding Public Service from The Endocrine Society. In November 2016 he received the first “Champion of Environmental Health Research” award from the National Institutes of Health.
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Michelle Perro, MD, Doctor of Homeopathic Medicine
Michelle Perro, MD, is a veteran pediatrician with nearly four decades of experience in acute and integrative medicine. More than fifteen years ago, Dr. Perro transformed her clinical practice to include pesticide and health advocacy. Dr. Perro has managed her own business, Down to Earth Pediatrics, creating a new field of integrative urgent care medicine.
Dr. Perro is currently lecturing, consulting as well as doing research with Gordon Medical Associates, an integrative health center in Northern California. She has co-authored the highly acclaimed book, What’s Making our Children Sick and is Executive Director of a nonprofit science-based website, GMO Science. She has authored many publications and has a new column with the journal, Townsend Letter.
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Sharima Rasanayagam, PhD
As the director of science for the Breast Cancer Fund, Sharima works to ensure that the organization continues to be a national leader in science-based environmental health advocacy. She oversees the organization’s science-related activities, including monitoring and interpreting emerging scientific research, and developing and managing science-related program and policy initiatives. She also serves on the advisory committee of the California Breast Cancer Research Program, the largest state-funded breast cancer research effort.
Before coming to the Breast Cancer Fund, Sharima was the founding academic coordinator at the U.C. Berkeley Institute for the Environment, where she built the institute from the ground up and fostered university-wide discussions on environmental issues. Previously, she served as consul for science and technology at the U.K. Consulate-General in San Francisco, where she built ties between scientists in the U.K. and California, encouraging collaboration on research and business ventures. Sharima holds a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Kent at Canterbury, U.K.
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Lisa Rodenburg, PhD
Dr. Rodenburg has studied the fate and transport of organic chemicals for 20 years. She is particularly interested in the inadvertent generation of toxic chemicals during the manufacture of industrial chemicals such as pigments. She holds a PhD in environmental engineering from the Johns Hopkins University and a BA in chemistry from Wittenberg University. She is currently an associate professor at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.
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Maya Shetreat-Klein, MD – Pediatric Neurologist
Dr. Shetreat-Klein is a pediatric neurologist, herbalist, urban farmer, naturalist and author of The Dirt Cure: Growing Healthy Kids with Food Straight from Soil (Simon and Schuster, 2016), which has been translated into ten languages. She offers an integrative approach to neurological, behavioral and cognitive problems as well as chronic pediatric issues.
Dr. Maya’s philosophy is that the health of our inner terrain—our bodies– is a reflection of the health of our outer terrain, the natural world around us. Gut, immune and nervous system—and the many microbes therein—are a direct reflection of the food we eat and where that food comes from, from the soil it’s grown in to the water it swims in to the synthetic chemicals that it’s bathed in. Fresh food, microbes (that’s right, germs) and elements of nature—soil, sunshine, water, and fresh air—make children resilient and prevent or reverse their illness.
Board certified in adult and child neurology as well as pediatrics, Dr. Maya has a medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She completed the University of Arizona’s Fellowship in Integrative Medicine, and now serves on their faculty. She lectures on children’s health, education and the importance of time in nature, botanical medicine, biodiversity, and the relationship between health and the natural world. Dr. Maya has testified on topics including fracking, safe products for children, and the impact of chemical exposures on children’s health. She also founded the Terrain Institute, where she teaches and mentors parents, educators, healers and health care providers about Terrain Medicine™. Dr. Shetreat-Klein practices, teaches and lives with her family in New York City, where she grows organic fruit and vegetables and keeps 8 chickens on her urban farm.
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Laurel Standley, PhD – Environmental Chemist, Author and Wellness Instructor
Dr. Laurel Standley is an environmental chemist and author of a self-help book on reducing exposure to toxic chemicals. In addition to her writing, Laurel now teaches wellness classes on reducing toxic exposures.
Laurel conducted research at the Stroud Water Research Center (Avondale, PA) and the Silent Spring Institute (Newton, MA). Over the course of her research career, she studied the fate of natural and human-made chemicals in aquatic ecosystems and the potential for human exposure to toxic chemicals in drinking water and household products.
After serving on numerous environmental boards and advisory committees, Laurel decided to leave research and earned a policy degree to facilitate her work on solutions to the problems she’d previously studied. Her work in this area includes development of a strategy for a large nonprofit to engage companies in conservation efforts and a customized water conservation and management plan for a government agency in the United Arab Emirates.
Laurel received her B.S. in Chemistry from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (1979), her Ph.D. in Chemical Oceanography from Oregon State University (1987), and her M.A. in Urban Affairs and Public Policy from the University of Delaware (2003).
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Summer Streets, MS – Environmental Chemist
Summer has worked as an environmental chemist at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) since 2007. She has authored and co-authored several MPCA and legislative publications on topics such as endocrine disruption, perfluorochemicals in Minnesota’s ambient environment, and pharmaceuticals and personal care products in Minnesota’s rivers.
Summer’s work has been focused on understanding the occurrence and effects of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) in Minnesota’s ambient environment. Recently, she led a team in the development of new method to derive aquatic life screening values for CECs. These screening values will be used to understand the risk to aquatic life exposed to low concentrations of CECs in Minnesota.
Summer earned her MS degree in Water Resources Science from the University of Minnesota, where she studied bioaccumulation of persistent organic pollutants in the Great Lakes’ microbial food web. She earned her BS degree in Environmental Science and Biology from the University of Wisconsin – River Falls.
Prior to completing her BS, Summer worked as a licensed esthetician for six years, where she performed facials and make-up application in a spa setting. Summer continues to be passionate about wellness and personal care. As an avid consumer of beauty products – and the mother of a three year-old girl – she is constantly searching for products that are non-toxic, yet elegant and effective.
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Kevin Strong, MD – Pediatrician, Founder of Dunk the Junk
Kevin is a pediatrician with an expertise in infant and child nutrition. He’s also the Founder of DunktheJunk.org, a National Program to get kids to forgo candy and soda for healthy options. Dr. Strong grew tired of seeing America’s obesity epidemic play out in his pediatric practice in Maine. He decided to take his message directly to kids through his Dunk The Junk campaign using art, sports and music to creatively combat junk food.
“Most kids only get a single point of view on the food and beverages they consume. That point of view comes exclusively from the marketers with the most dollars,” says Strong. But he is committed to changing that.
Dunk The Junk’s spirited campaign is making its way across the country and into schools and communities along the way. Dr. Strong holds an undergraduate degree from Duke University and a Medical Degree from the University of Connecticut. He is a dedicated husband and father of three children. He enjoys graffiti, hiphop, and hoops. In his free time he can be found surfing Maine’s tortuous coast.
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Shanna Swan, PhD – Professor of Environmental Medicine and Public Health, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Dr. Shanna Swan is an Environmental and Reproductive Epidemiologist working as Professor of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York.
Since 1998, Dr. Swan’s research team has been conducting multi-center pregnancy cohort studies (the Study for Future Families (SFF) and The Infant Development and the Environment Study (TIDES) to better understand how prenatal and early childhood exposure to stressors, including chemicals commonly found in the environment such as phthalates and bisphenol-A, impact the reproductive health and development of children. Most recently Dr. Swan and colleagues have been studying the ability of pharmaceuticals, such as analgesics, to act as classical endocrine disruptors and impact reproductive tract development and neurodevelopment, potentially interacting with more classical endocrine disruptors. Dr. Swan’s book (with Stacey Colino) Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Health, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race will be published by Scribner & Sons in 2021.
Katrina E. Varner – Environmental Research Scientist, U.S. EPA
Katrina is a Nanomaterial specialist at the Characterizing and Monitoring Branch of the Environmental Sciences Division, National Exposure Research Laboratory for the United States Environmental Protection Agency. At the EPA, her primary research focuses around method development and evaluation of monitoring parameters of contaminants and hazardous waste.
Method and monitoring development involve the detection, speciation, and identification of organometallics in various media. This includes the development of screening techniques for groundwater and soil. Research is carried out with the development of methods via liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS), capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry (CE-MS) and ion trap mass spectrometry hyphenated technologies (electrospray-quadrupole-ion trap). Varner is advancing LC/MS techniques for the characterization and remediation of nanomaterials as they apply to various media including water, soil, and tissue (environmental) in daily exposure and effect on animals and humans.
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John Warner – President, Chief Technology Officer, Board of Directors, Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry
John is the recipient of the 2014 Perkin Medal, widely acknowledged as the highest honor in American Industrial Chemistry. He received his BS in Chemistry from UMASS Boston, and his PhD in Chemistry from Princeton University. After working at the Polaroid Corporation for nearly a decade, he then served as tenured full professor at UMASS Boston and Lowell (Chemistry and Plastics Engineering).
In 2007 he founded the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry, LLC (a research organization developing green chemistry technologies) where he serves as President and Chief Technology Officer, and Beyond Benign (a non-profit dedicated to sustainability and green chemistry education). He is one of the founders of the field of Green Chemistry, co-authoring the defining text Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice with Paul Anastas. He has published over 200 patents, papers and books. His recent work in the fields of semiconductor design, biodegradable plastics, personal care products, solar energy and polymeric photoresists are examples of how green chemistry principles can be immediately incorporated into commercially relevant applications. Warner received The 2004 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science Mentoring, the American Institute of Chemistry’s Northeast Division’s Distinguished Chemist of the Year for 2002 and the Council of Science Society President’s 2008 Leadership award. Warner was named by ICIS as one of the most influential people impacting the global chemical industries. In 2011 he was elected a Fellow of the American Chemical Society and named one of “25 Visionaries Changing the World” by Utne Reader.
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Business Advisors
Rachel Paletsky Ash | Kelly Burton | Melissa Hall | Karin Johnson | Paige Padgett | Rachael Pontillo | Anne Robertson | Susan Rockefeller | Mike Schade | Leah Segedie | Heather K. Terry | Elizabeth Wasserman
Rachel Paletsky Ash – Advocate for Environmental Health and Integrative Healing
Rachel Paletsky Ash has hosted radio shows and podcasts for iHeartMedia, WOR 710 AM Radio and WABC related to environmental health and integrative healing issues.
Rachel is also an executive board member of Epidemic Answers, an organization dedicated to reversing chronic illness in children; a founding board member of MamaGlow, a holistic maternal lifestyle brand, and sits on the board of the Juhi Ash Center in New York City, a wellness practice offering a healing-oriented approach to integrative medicine. Rachel lives in NYC and is currently helping grow her family agritourism business, South Farms, in Litchfield County, Connecticut.
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Kelly Burton – CSO at Material Exchange and Adjunct Instructor at Harvard University
Kelly’s 10+ years of experience in sustainable fashion and clean beauty has been focused on how to increase social responsibility and how brands can increase value, mitigate risk and engage consumers and employees around purpose – subjects she teaches at the Fashion Institute of Technology and Harvard University.
In 2013 Kelly launched EcoSessions®, a global event platform connecting industry, designers and citizens to discuss change. Since its launch, EcoSessions have been held in Berlin, Boston, New York, Singapore, London, Montreal, Los Angeles and Toronto on topics ranging from: Innovations in Textiles, Fashion and Sustainability, Nontoxic Beauty, Ethical Retailing and Fashion in Africa. Her book Magnifeco: Your Head-to-Toe Guide to Ethical Fashion and Non-Toxic Beauty was published by New Society in 2015 and led to Kelly producing and hosting the podcast: Magnifeco Radio.
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Melissa Hall – Brand Strategist, Speaker and Educator
Melissa Hall is on a mission to help people in business and in health. As the founder of Melissa Hall Consulting and The Emerging Designer, a network for designers and creative professionals, she works with fashion, lifestyle, and wellness companies.
Melissa has taught at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) for the past decade helping fashion design entrepreneurs grow their businesses. Her latest venture, the Wellness + Work Project, aims to help others balance their health and professional goals.
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Karin Johnson – Lawyer, Mom and Passionate Environmental Health Advocate
Growing up in Colorado made Karin a natural environmentalist. While pregnant with her first child in 2012, she began researching non-toxic personal care and beauty products and was astonished by the lack of information and options available at the time. She has been a strident supporter of the environmental health movement ever since.
Karin initially began supporting MADE SAFE on a pro bono basis while in private legal practice. She currently works in the ethics and compliance field and continues to support MADE SAFE’s mission as a business advisor.
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Paige Padgett – Makeup Artist, Beauty Product Developer & Authority on Green Beauty
Considered a leading authority on green beauty, Paige is often sought out by the press and has been featured in Shape, Elle, GenLux, Beautyblitz.com, Tresdope.com, The Los Angeles Times, Vegetarian Times, Natural Health and Whole Life Times Magazine. She has served as spokesperson and ambassador for numerous eco-friendly brands and marketing campaigns, and founded Paigepadgett.com, a green beauty website.
Paige blended her experience as an artist, blogger and speaker along with a certification in Esthetics and a Bachelor of Arts degree from UCLA in World Arts and Cultures (with a focus in women’s studies), to culminate in a philosophy that is uniquely her own.
Speaking engagements, podcast interviews, active blogging and collaboration with leadership organizations like The Environmental Working Group and Environmental Media Association has helped Paige establish a strong foundation and expand and add momentum to her vision. With the release of The Green Beauty Rules: The Essential Guide to Toxic-free Beauty, Green Glamour and Glowing Skin, Paige will extend the reach of her message to a wider audience.
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Rachael Pontillo – Holistic Skincare Innovator
Rachael Pontillo is a holistic skincare innovator, author, and educator. She is the bestselling author of the book Love Your Skin, Love Yourself, and co-author of The Sauce Code. She’s a functional nutrition practitioner, AADP and IAHC Board Certified International Health Coach, licensed aesthetician; and natural skincare formulator and educator.
Rachael is also the president and co-founder of the Nutritional Aesthetics™ Alliance, the creator of the popular skincare and healthy lifestyle blog, Holistically Haute™, as well as the much-loved online course, Create Your Skincare. She’s an avid herbalist, skincare ingredient aficionado, and lifelong learner.
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Anne Robertson – Environmental Philanthropist / Entrepreneur
Over the past 25 years, Anne Robertson has developed proposals and increasingly effective strategies to obtain revenue for several large non-profits, and socially responsible businesses. Among other duties, she has also chaired major fundraising events for many influential entities, and when combined, has raised well over one million dollars to help their critical efforts.
One of the areas Anne has concentrated her energies, are toxic chemicals and human health, especially the health of our children. Chronic illness and emotional distress among our nation’s youth has increased at an alarming rate during the past 20 years for exposures. In that time, illnesses such as autism, asthma, cancers, learning disabilities, diabetes, depression and obesity have skyrocketed, with no end in sight. Having lost several family members to cancer-related illnesses, and witnessing the toll that it takes, Anne clearly understands that if this trend continues, our children face a future that could be seriously compromised. It is this concern that has lead Anne on a journey of discovery and why she has committed her time, resources and talents to unite a coalition of concerned individuals, organizations, businesses and communities to come together for the sake of our children’s future.
During this time, Anne has become a dedicated advocate of environmentally conscious organizations and serves on the board of several national environmental health organizations, including Healthy Child Healthy World and Mt. Sinai’s Children’s Environmental Health Center. She has also served or serves on the board or advisory board of several other non-profits including Texas Campaign for the Environment, Clean Production Action, the Sustainable Food Center, HealthCode and the Arkansas Fashion Council.
Anne is the great-granddaughter of Richard S. Reynolds, the founder of The Reynolds Metals Corporation and the great, great-grand niece of RJ Reynolds Tobacco. This upbringing has provided a very unique perspective on the power big business can yield in the marketplace. While there are many fantastic examples of corporations being good stewards, she has discovered there is a dark side to companies that operate with impunity toward the health and well-being of the planet. Anne is dedicated to finding a new, better way for business to operate, building innovative collaborations and her other ventures today, and into the future.
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Susan Rockefeller – CEO & Founder of Protect What Is Precious, Entrepreneur, Conservationist, and Filmmaker
Susan Rockefeller is an entrepreneur, conservationist, and filmmaker. She’s the CEO and Founder of Protect What Is Precious, a niche consulting company that advises businesses on how to improve their products and processes in a way that contributes to a better future for the planet, while enhancing the value of their brands.
Susan’s films have explored a range of contemporary issues such as ocean acidification and the future of ocean health, PTSD and the use of music to heal, the confluence of race, poverty and illness; and global food sustainability. Her films have aired on HBO, PBS, and the Discovery Channel. Susan sits on the boards of Oceana, Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, We Are Family Foundation, and is a member of the Natural Resources Defense Council Global Leadership Council.
She received her undergraduate degree from Hampshire College, a certificate in ecological horticulture from University of California Santa Cruz and her master’s degree from NYU. Susan lives in New York City with her husband and children.
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Mike Schade – Mind the Store Campaign Director for Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families
Mike Schade is the Mind the Store Campaign Director for Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families where he coordinates a national U.S. campaign challenging the nation’s leading retailers to transform the marketplace away from hazardous chemicals and towards safer alternatives. For the previous nine years, Mike was the Markets Campaign Coordinator with the Center for Health, Environment & Justice (CHEJ), a national environmental health organization where he led national campaigns to phase out PVC plastic, phthalates, bisphenol A (BPA) and dioxin in consumer products and packaging.
Prior to CHEJ, he was the Director of the Buffalo office of Citizens’ Environmental Coalition (CEC), a NY statewide grassroots environmental health organization. Mike lives in Brooklyn, NY where he serves on the Newtown Creek Superfund Community Advisory Group (CAG), the Board of Directors of Neighbors Allied for Good Growth (NAG), and the Community Advisory Panel of the Greenpoint Community Environmental Fund.
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Leah Segedie – Founder Mamavation Community, Shiftcon Social Media Conference, Activist and Consultant
Leah teaches “digital moms” healthy living practices to combat disease in their home through the Mamavation community. Leah is also a very passionate food activist and organizes trending twitter parties monthly to educate the public about the food supply and other issues impacting public health. She also organizes blogging efforts through her network and hosts the ShiftCon Social Media Conference where green and wellness bloggers gather annually. Brands love to work with Leah because she has over 10,000 bloggers in the Bookieboo Network eager to work on wellness-related campaigns.
Leah has been recognized for several feats in her professional and personal life such as being named “Mom of the Year” by Shape Magazine, being named the 4th most Influential Mom Blogger by Cision Media, Top 10 Woman Changing School Nutrition, compared to Lady Gaga for her unique social media tactics in The Huffington Post, and “Favorite Weight Loss Blog” by Fitness Magazine. Her story, communities and work have also been featured on CNN, ABC, NBC, The O’Reilly Factor and in the following publications: Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, The Talk, Yahoo, Ladies Home Journal, Fitness Magazine, Shape Magazine, The Huffington Post, Women’s Day, Fitness RX, International Business Times, Babble, etc. She is also the author of Green Enough: Eat Better, Live Cleaner, Be Happier (All Without Driving Your Family Crazy!) (Rodale Books, 2018).
Leah has a Masters in Communication Management from the University of Southern California. She lives in Simi Valley with her husband and three young children.
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Heather K. Terry – Partner | Chief Strategy Officer at BeyondBrands & CEO of GoodSam
Heather K. Terry is a CPG mentor and angel investor, the author of From Broadway to Wall Street, a Partner and the Chief Strategy Officer of BeyondBrands (a top tier CPG consulting agency focused on natural products in NYC), and the host of the Scaling with Soul and Build a Brand podcasts.
For over a decade, she’s been immersed in the complexities and nuances of the consumer-packaged goods vertical. First as the co-founder of NibMor. Next, as the mastermind behind the expansion of popular clean beauty and wellness brands including S.W. Basics, True Moringa, Kips Granola Bark, GoodSam, Paper Greats and more. And now as the highly-sought-after advisor to many up-and-coming wellness products on a mission to land coveted spots on the shelves of national retailers like Whole Foods and Target. Her expertise has been featured at WELL Insiders, WELL Summit, ALT Summit, The Wild Rose Collective, the Rising Women Conference and Good Housekeeping’s Raise the Green Bar Summit.
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Elizabeth Wasserman, LCSW – Founder & CEO, True Goods, and Wellness Consultant
A health and wellness expert with degrees in human psychology (UCLA) and clinical social work (NYU), and graduate studies in business and organizational psychology, Liz believes we all have the right to know what’s in the products we bring into our homes. She was the founder & CEO of TrueGoods.com, an online retailer of truly toxin-free products that have been rigorously investigated and held to unparalleled safety standards. Fueled by a passion for preventive health, a commitment to clean living, and a strong belief in informed wellness care, Liz works with customers and private clients to harness their power to create healthier lives and a more sustainable environment.
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