Why GreenBiz is now Trellis

Everything evolves. Including us.

GreenBiz Group, the media and events company I co-founded 18 years ago, has been renamed Trellis Group. It’s the latest evolution in a company that has strived to keep up with — and slightly ahead of — a rapidly changing field.

“Trellis” offers a wealth of connotations and metaphors beyond the obvious arboreal one: an open network of interwoven and interconnected pieces; a platform or framework on which to build something of value; a support system that provides stability and signals a direction in which to move.

All these resonate with us as we confront an era in which social, political and economic issues are inextricably linked with environmental ones, a complex web of climate, plastics, biodiversity, water, social equity and other crises that requires more nuanced approaches and innovative thinking — from sustainability leaders, as well as from us.

A brief history

GreenBiz.com actually goes back more than 25 years to 1997, when I created a presence on the burgeoning World Wide Web for my then-six-year-old monthly print publication, “The Green Business Letter.” In 1999, seeking to create a home for the growing lode of online resources on the topic of business and the environment — from associations, nonprofit groups, academics, consultancies, public agencies and companies themselves — GreenBiz.com morphed into a nonprofit knowledge hub: “The resource center on business, the environment and the bottom line,” read its tagline.

In 2006, veteran B2B publishing exec Pete May and I purchased GreenBiz.com and its assets from the nonprofit to create a new company to commercialize the website. We added digital media, events, a professional network, research reports and more.

The journey forward

The web address GreenBiz.com has now given way to Trellis.net. Our five event brands — GreenBiz, Circularity, GreenFin, VERGE and Bloom — won’t change, but our slate of weekly newsletters has been combined into a single offering, “Trellis Briefing,” coming to your inbox every Monday through Thursday morning. In February, at GreenBiz 24, we rebranded our membership-based GreenBiz Executive Network as Trellis Network.

And the name of our nonprofit 501(c)3 cousin, GreenBiz.org, whose mission is to cultivate and advance a new generation of sustainability professionals of color, will remain for now.

All this positions us for a new era of innovation and growth as we support a profession that in recent years has moved from the margins to the mainstream, with ever-growing and increasingly complex remits.

Our overall mission remains unbowed: to help professional communities confront the climate crisis while building a regenerative, prosperous and just economy that supports life in all its richness, diversity and beauty.