Joel Makower
Trellis Group
For more than 30 years, through his writing, speaking and leadership, Joel has helped companies align pressing environmental and social issues with business success.
A former nationally syndicated columnist, Joel is author or co-author of more than a dozen books, including The New Grand Strategy, about a business plan for America, born at the Pentagon, that embeds sustainability as a national strategic imperative. Previous books include Strategies for the Green Economy, Beyond the Bottom Line: Putting Social Responsibility to Work for Your Business and the World, The E-Factor: The Bottom-Line Approach to Environmentally Responsible Business, and The Green Consumer.
In 2012, he was awarded the Hutchens Medal by the American Society for Quality, which cited “his ability to tell compelling stories that both inform and inspire business leaders toward profitable action.” In 2014, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the International Society of Sustainability Professionals.
Joel has spoken at hundreds of events and is a frequent keynote speaker at industry and company events around the world. His audiences and venues vary widely — including senior executives, corporate supply chains, customer groups, trade associations, marketing professionals, award ceremonies, and regional economic development bodies — from small roundtable discussions to large and diverse gatherings.
He is also a skilled moderator, called upon by companies and conferences around the world to conduct on-stage or on-camera one-on-one interviews, or to host lively and intelligent panel discussions with executives and thought leaders, for in-person, video, and online events, and has served as the emcee of dozens of events, including multi-day conferences, harnessing his talents as an engaging host, a nimble thinker, and a quick wit to ensure events rise above “conference as usual.”
The Associated Press has called him “The guru of green business practices.”
More about Joel here.
Sky Vegetables: Taking Green Roofs to New Heights
The vision: green rooftops, not just as gardens, but as urban agriculture hubs for herbs and edible greens, grown in renewable energy-powered greenhouses, allowing city dwellers to grow and sell food locally. Read More
Who's Invested in Newsweek's Least-Green Companies? (Maybe You)
One aspect of Newsweek's just-released rankings of 500 leading companies' environmental policies and performance is to view the list from an investor perspective. Specifically: Who are investors in the worst-ranked companies? Read More
Inside Newsweek's New Green Corporate Rankings
A near-Herculean effort, Newsweek's new list of the greenest companies in the S&P 500 Index may be imperfect -- and are sure to be debated -- but they may also be the best effort to date to assess the mainstream corporate marketplace in the U.S. Read More
Inside Walmart's Sustainability Consortium
The co-directors of Walmart's Sustainability Consortium, one key plank of the company's larger Sustainability Index, explain how the group will work -- and what companies get for the six-figure price of admission. Read More
GreenXchange: Sustainable Innovation Meets the Creative Commons
Although we live in an era in which green innovation reigns, genuine progress remains elusive; but a new group spearheaded by Nike hopes to change that situation. Read More
My search for the Woodstock baby
The Woodstock Music and Art Fair of August 1969 gave birth to lots of things, but no babies. Read More
The Seven Sins of Greenwashing: Is everybody lying?
Is just about everyone out there pulling the green wool over our collective eyes, or has the bar been set unreasonably high? Read More
Calculating the Gross National Trash
How can we aim our economy in the right direction if we don't know where we are? Read More
The State of Green Business 2009: The Green Economy Gains Currency
In the first of a series of excerpts from our just-released State of Green Business 2009 report, Joel Makower and the editors of GreenBiz.com look at how 2008 impacted the growth of the green economy. Read More
Behind IBM's Quest for a 'Smarter Planet'
IBM's recent campaign goes well beyond mere image -- and beyond green -- to envision a "smarter" world in which problems as wide-ranging as health care costs, energy and resource shortages, climate change, and traffic congestion can be addressed by systems thinking, technological innovation, and computing power. Read More