Bill Shireman

President and CEO of the Future 500

Called a "master of environmental entrepreneurism," Mr. Shireman has over 20 years of experience developing and implementing programs that align the interests of major corporations and their stakeholders. Shireman develops profitable business strategies that drive pollution down and profits up. As President and CEO of the Future 500, Shireman helps the world's largest companies and most impassioned activists - from Coca-Cola, General Motors, Nike, Mitsubishi, and Weyerhaeuser, to Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, and the Sierra Club - work together to improve the profits and performance of business.

Advocating technology as a driver of green growth, Shireman has led the development and deployment of these and other tools, at diverse companies in Asia, Europe, and throughout North America. While CEO of the largest state recycling lobby in the U.S., he wrote California's bottle bill recycling law, shown by EPA and academic studies to be the world's most cost-effective. He advocates market-based environmental policies - contending they can be more effective than many command-and-control laws.

Most recently, with former Mitsubishi CEO Tachi Kiuchi, Shireman wrote the popular book, What We Learned In The Rainforest - Business Lessons from Nature, featured in the Harvard Business Review, which declares the business-as-machine era over, and shows how companies can become as innovative as the rainforest, leveraging feedback to grow more profitable and sustainable than ever.

Tachi Kiuchi

Chairman of the International Board

Tachi Kiuchi is one of Japan's most iconoclastic corporate executives. As Chairman and CEO of Mitsubishi Electric America, he built the Mitsubishi Electric brand in the U.S., and managed the company's transition from the old to the new economy. As Managing Director of Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, he broke with Japanese corporate norms to champion a "living systems" approach to business that included rapid adaptation, financial transparency, openness, cultural diversity, executive positions for women, and environmental sustainability. He even forged a bold agreement with Rainforest Action Network (RAN) to promote corporate sustainability.

Today, as Chairman of the Future 500, and CEO of Tokyo-based E-Square, Kiuchi informs and inspires business leaders all over the world, and develops profitable and sustainable business practices at computer, electronics, automobile, and other companies.

Kiuchi is a popular keynote speaker at major global conferences on business, the environment, and Japanese-U.S. relations. In his spare time, Kiuchi skydives, runs marathons, climbs Mount Fuji, rides his bicycle to Future 500 headquarters in downtown Tokyo, and does 2000 push-ups a day.

He is the co-author with Bill Shireman, of the popular book What We Learned In The Rainforest - Business Lessons From Nature, featured in the Harvard Business Review, which declares the business-as-machine era over, and shows how companies can become as innovative as the rainforest, leveraging feedback to grow more profitable and sustainable than ever.

Tachi Quote:  “We must learn to provide affluence without effluence…by consuming less from the environment, not more. We can use less, and have more. Consume less, and be more. The interests of business, and the interests of environment, are not incompatible.”

Zhouying Jin

Executive Director - Future 500 China

Professor Zhouying Jin is a Senior Researcher and Professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Director of the Center for Technology Innovation and Strategy Studies (CTISS) of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She also is president and founder for the Beijing Academy of Soft Technology, and since 2004, President of Future 500 China.

A graduate of the Chinese University of Science and Technology, Dr. Jin has been a researcher at the Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences; Deputy Chief Engineer of Changchun Electric Industrial Administration; and Vice secretary-general of China enterprise Directors (Managers) Association, State Economic Committee of China.

She has been a visiting professor at Case Western Reserve University and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Senior Research Fellow, Institute For The Future; and a Special researcher at the Institute of Science and Technology policy of Japan. Jin is currently a Guest Professor Tsinghua University in Beijing and Hohai University in Nanjing. She also holds the title of Research Fellow at the World Business Academy, is a Planning Committee Member of the Millennium Project and Co-chair of the China node of the United Nations University of Americas council.

She has more than 100 published monographs, theses and research reports to her credit.

Erik Wohlgemuth

VP of Strategic Operations

 

Mr. Wohlgemuth manages Future 500’s daily operations and its stakeholder engagement program, developing and refining tools and processes that progress the organization’s stakeholder engagement methodologies. Some of his responsibilities include management of the organization’s stakeholder mapping & planning (sMAP) process, stakeholder meeting facilitation, and SEED (Sustainable Energy & Environmental Demand) initiative, a multi-stakeholder process leveraging corporate procurement to develop markets for best available sustainable technologies.

 

Erik has focused his professional career and academic studies on bridging the gap between the for-profit, non-profit and governmental sectors to advance sustainability – economic, social, and environmental.  He has worked as an environmental activist and lobbyist for non-profits, with corporations on environmental business practices, and even as a whitewater river guide.  He has a MBA from Yale School of Management with a concentration in Competitive Strategies and Master's degree in Environmental Management from Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, with a concentration in Industrial Environmental Management. He also received a B.A. in history from Yale College, focusing on development of the American West.

 

During his free moments, Erik spends time with his wife and daughter, travels, plays squash, cooks, and recreates outside as much as possible.

Mary Ann McDonnell

Development Manager

Mary Ann McDonnell is responsible for Future 500's outreach to various stakeholders, including corporations, NGOs, academics, foundations, and governmental agencies.  She holds a degree in Journalism and Communication from Wayne State University. Her background includes working in Washington, DC as a Consumer Protection Specialist for the Federal Trade Commission. She has 20 years experience in New Business Development with major corporations. She brings her enthusiasm and love of making a difference in the world to her work with Future 500, a spirit she fosters among the Future 500 community.

Eric Stryson

Director of Stakeholder Engagement - China Stakeholder Initiative

Based in Hong Kong and responsible for the China region, Stryson acts as a liaison with human rights, environmental, and community groups, and seeks to identify areas of risk, opportunity and common ground with global companies whose supply chains extend into China.

Stryson works with Future 500 China founding director Dr. Jin Zhouying, based in Beijing, in linking with global companies with significant stakes in China ahead of the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing.

Stryson first joined Future 500 in 1999. He conducted research that helped form the basis of the Global Citizenship 360, Future 500's consolidated CSR performance tool. He organized Industrial Ecology 2000, the Future 500 conference at Haas School of Business. He directed corporate outreach and engagement for the Future 500 China conference in October 2006.

Graduating from Stanford University with a degree in English Literature, Stryson has worked in Sales, Marketing and Business Development in industries such as Fine Art, Custom Publishing and Conference Production.

Stryson has studied and practiced hatha yoga and vipassana meditation for ten years and has a Masters in Buddhist Studies from Hong Kong University. He is keenly interested in the evolving role of Corporate Social Responsibility and the potential for social change based on Enlightened Executive Leadership.

Juliette Terzieff

Director, China Initiative

Juliette Terzieff, who directs the Future 500 China Stakeholder Initiative and contributes to Future 500 projects affecting India and the Middle East, is a journalist with twelve years experience covering complex political, environmental, and rights issues in hot spots and war zones around the world.  As a correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle, CNN, Newsweek and other media, she covered controversies in the Balkan, South Asian, and Middle East regions. She engineered a three-week entry into Kosovo during NATO bombing campaign in 1999 to become one of only eight international journalists operating independently from Serbian supervision inside the Yugoslav province, and contributed to Newsweek’s win of the 1999 American Society of Magazine Editors Award for Reporting. Juliette established and implemented policies in South Asian bureaus of Western media outfits generating more than 300 stories, including 60 front page features and an unparalleled six-part series from Pakistani tribal areas.  In addition to her work with Future 500, she publishes a weekly column for World Politics Review and is a Contributing Editor to SmartBrief's daily UN Newswire covering health, environmental, developmental and human rights issues.

Matt Turner

Director, Global Stakeholder Initiatives

Matt Turner possesses experience in operational and reputational risk, having worked as an intelligence manager for Latin America at International SOS (medical and security assistance company) and as a corporate responsibility consultant for The Coca-Cola Company. For Coke, Turner collaborated with both internal and external stakeholders on social issues and initiatives involving ethical sourcing, union relations, public relations and crisis management. In addition, Turner has extensive project management and outreach experience in the private and non-profit sectors.

Turner earned a MS in International Affairs at the Sam Nunn School at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a BA in Government and International Studies, with a concentration in International Relations, at the University of Notre Dame.

Interested in nexus of the private, public and non-profit sectors, Turner is working to develop and expand Future 500's Global Stakeholder Initiative, while also assisting to build partnerships between businesses and NGOs on pressing climate issues.

Matt enjoys traveling, running, photography and, on occasion, Notre Dame Fighting Irish football.

Nikole Wilson-Ripsom

Administrator

Nikole Wilson-Ripsom has 20 years of non-profit organizational experience. Ms. Wilson-Ripsom has been instrumental in creating new non-profit organizations (NPOs), as well as in the daily administration, long-term planning, implementation of special marketing projects, and fundraising for a number of Bay Area NPOs. Ms. Wilson-Ripsom has also worked as an editor of children's books, and a finder of on-air talent for a grassroots radio station. She holds a Master's degree in Education from the University of California at Berkeley, where she also obtained her undergraduate degrees in Mass Communications and African American Literature.

Mari Morikawa

Future 500 Associate

Holds a Master's degree in Environmental Management from Yale University, with a concentration in Industrial Environmental Management. Her current work at the Future 500 focuses on the review of environmental and social standards and development of a corporate social responsibility assessment tool. Ms. Morikawa also holds a researcher position at the Pacific Institute with the emphasis on the study of ISO's international standard development in environmental and social issues. Before coming to the Future 500, she worked with the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition on projects relating to the benchmarking corporate environmental reporting, and the comparative evaluation of legislation relating to extended producer responsibility. She received a B.A. in Foreign Studies from Sophia University, Japan.

Lance Funston

Future 500 Associate

Lance Funston is a marketing consultant focusing on corporate communications, and social and environmental marketing. Lance has worked with numerous businesses and non-profit organizations to create strategic communications that advance sustainability including Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo, Harvard Business School, Cooperative Community Energy, and Global Exchange's Global Citizen Center Project. Lance’s topic areas expertise are in clean energy and sustainable mobility. He also holds an MBA in Sustainable Enterprise with the New College of California, Green MBA Program.

Adam Davis

Senior Fellow, Ecosystem Services

Adam Davis is the President of Solano Partners, Inc., a consulting firm focused on environmental investment and the financial value of natural systems. Adam has worked on programs that integrate sustainability principles into business strategy since 1985, solving problems across the full range of environmental issues involving materials, energy, toxics and land. Since 1997 he has been involved in developing market mechanisms and incentives that allow landowners and land managers to benefit from conservation and restoration actions. He is a co-founder and served as Editor-in-Chief of the Ecosystem Marketplace which is a global information service on these market mechanisms and incentives for conservation. He is also a Partner in Ecosystem Investment Partners, a new private capital solution that delivers returns through conservation and restoration actions across a portfolio of real estate holdings.

Current clients include the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Nature Conservancy, and the Parametrix corporation.

Chandran Nair

Senior Fellow

Chandran Nair is the founder of a possible “first”: The Global Institute for Tomorrow, a fledgling think tank based in Asia that is focused on the inter-relation of Asian society and values with those of the rest of the world. Mr. Nair was chairman of ERM in the Asia Pacific until March 2004. During his leadership the business in Asia remained consistently profitable, producing some of the best results within ERM’s international network. He was a member of the management board of the global company.

For more than a decade, Mr. Nair has strongly advocated a more sustainable approach to development in Asia, and has helped the governments of Taiwan and Hong Kong instill these principles into how they make key decisions. He continues to advise the Hong Kong Government, devising a new approach that gives the public a bigger role in key policy making decisions – another first for Asia.

Mr. Nair is a visiting scholar at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology’s School of Business, running a course, “Leading in Asia for the Future”, as part of the Kellogg-HKUST MBA programme. He advises the Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum, the World Wildlife Fund in Asia, and is a director of the Jane Goodall Institute. He is a fellow of the Hong Kong Institute of Directors. A keen sportsman, Mr. Nair managed the Hong Kong hockey team for seven years, taking it to the 2002 Asian Games in South Korea. He plays the saxophone and used to head a band in Africa. He has lived and worked in Asia, Europe and Africa.

D. Perry Cutshall

Senior Fellow

D. Perry Cutshall, a Future 500 Senior Fellow, assists corporate partners in enhancing their strategic vision, organizational structure and executional performance, particularly in terms of corporate citizenship and social responsibility. President and Founder of Cutch Group, Inc., Mr. Cutshall joined Future 500 as a Senior Fellow in 2007 following a 28-year career with The Coca-Cola Company. During his tenure at Coke, Mr. Cutshall’s responsibilities spanned both domestic and international markets across several disciplines, including Marketing, Operations, Public Affairs and Communications. His most recent Coke experiences focused on the development and implementation of system-wide citizenship/corporate social responsibility initiatives involving both company-owned and bottler-owned operations. He led the company’s Citizenship@Coca-Cola program, which enabled the company and its global network of bottlers and partners to measure and build their commitment to good citizenship. For more than three years, he provided leadership, oversight, and collaborative development and implementation of global citizenship programs as well as other strategic cross-system initiatives.

Prior to that role, he spent four years as Vice-President of The Coca-Cola Company’s Latin America Group. In his capacity as Director of Field Support, he focused on improving the performance of Latin American operations, through his leadership of numerous de-centralized support networks, including Finance, Technical and Legal

From 1979-1998, Mr. Cutshall held numerous positions within The Coca-Cola Company, most notably as Director of Worldwide Sports Marketing in the Corporate Marketing Group, with responsibilities for maximizing the business impacts of global sports properties such as the Olympic Games and World Cup Football. He also led and directed significant organizational, customer service and in-market executional initiatives for the North America business as Director, Field Operations in the North America Group as well as other operations and marketing positions.

Mr. Cutshall received a Master of Business Administration degree with a concentration in Marketing from Georgia State University. He also holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Tennessee.

Dominie Cappadonna, PhD

Senior Fellow

As an Ecopsychologist, concerned with our human nature connection, Dr. Cappadonna examines the effect of global climate change on our individual psyche, our local communities, and multinational groups, and how the earth informs us in the creation of vital and sustainable processes.

Building upon 30 years of post-doctoral work and recent training in Ken Wilber's Integral Sustainability, Joanna Macy's The Work The Reconnects, Angeles Arrien's Collective Wisdom seminar, all associated with furthering "glocal" (global and local vitality) and inner sustainability. These trainings assist Dr. Cappadonna with her commitment to Boulder's Climate Action Plan and Colorado's renewable future, including being on the Advisory Board for the Colorado Climate Change Conference. Internationally, Dr. Cappadonna has guided Social Action Training with Brazilian entrepreneurs who create programs to eliminate poverty in the cities and care of resources in the rainforest. She has also taught year-long women's leadership trainings, seminars and workshops, including introspective work with the World Business Academy. She also has an abiding interest in China's environmental thriving, its challenges and solutions, as well as in Asian cultural ways.

Raman Bhatia

Senior Fellow

 

Raman Bhatia, a senior executive for 32 years in international finance and industrial production, is a long-time advocate of corporate social responsibility in India. Committed to providing relief to the physically challenged, the illiterate and the economically weaker sections of society, he has raised many millions of dollars in corporate and other support for health, education, and development initiatives.

 

Mr. Bhatia is a Member of the India National PolioPlus Committee, was an advisor to the World Health Organization as a Corporate Affairs Specialist, served as a Campaign Associate for Rotary’s Polio Eradication Private Sector Campaign, Trustee of the Institute of Head and Neck Oncology of Indore Cancer Foundation, and Trustee of the Ananth Shishu Palan Trust of India, an orphanage & school at the Sri Ram Ashram, Hardwar. He is a senior functionary of Rotary International, the world’s oldest and perhaps largest service organization, and is deeply involved in Rehabilitation of Polio victims through the Polio Corrective Surgery project for the past 12 years.

Mr. Bhatia is currently Managing Director of an engineering export company. An effective and articulate orator, he talks at various forums on different subjects close to his heart – Leadership, Values, Education and care for the underprivileged.

Bill Valentino

Senior Fellow

Bill is the General Manager of Bayer's Corporate Communications for Greater China. He has been working for Bayer in China since 1987.

He is also currently at Tsinghua University, as the co-director of the Tsinghua-Bayer Public Health and HIV/AIDS Media Studies Program and also a Research Fellow and Senior Guest Lecturer at the School of Journalism and Center for International Communications.

He holds an MBA from Thunderbird, the Garvin School of International Management in Arizona and a Masters degree in Instructional Technology and Media from Columbia University, New York.

Bill chairs the European Chamber's CSR Working Group in Beijing and is also a longstanding member of the Amcham CSR Committee. In 2006 he was selected to be a member of the National Committee on United States-China relations and in 2007, he joined the International Advisory Board of the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship, at the Boston College Carroll School of Management.

John Perry Barlow

Senior Fellow

John Perry Barlow is a former Wyoming rancher and Grateful Dead lyricist. He graduated in 1969 with High Honors in comparative religion from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. More recently, he co-founded and still co-chairs the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He was the first to apply the term Cyberspace to the "place" it presently describes.

He has written for a diversity of publications, including Communications of the ACM, Mondo 2000, The New York Times, and Time. He has been on the masthead of Wired Magazine since it was founded. His piece on the future of copyright, "The Economy of Ideas" is taught in many law schools and his "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" is posted on thousands of web sites.

In 1997, he was a Fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics and has been, since 1998, as a Berkman Fellow at the Harvard Law School.

He lives in Wyoming, New York, San Francisco, On the Road, and in Cyberspace. He has three teenaged daughters and aspires to be a good ancestor.

Lawrence Bloom

Senior Fellow

Lawrence Bloom is a Fellow and Prizeman of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. He has a significant reputation in London as a commercial property developer having developed the head offices of the National Bank of Kuwait and the Beyerische Landesbank. He was also instrumental in the James Stirling development at One Poultry opposite the Bank of England.

For a number of years Lawrence sat on the Executive Committee of the Intercontinental Hotel Group and managed their billion international property portfolio. Whilst at Intercontinental he also co-created an environmental manual with the CEO John van Praag, which was sponsored by Prince Charles and adopted by all the other five star hotel groups. It currently is operating in just under four million hotel rooms worldwide.

Lawrence co-founded the environmental initiative Global Action Plan with David Gershon which is currently operating in seventeen countries. He sits as an advisor to the Foundation for Conscious Evolution, a Rockefeller funded US thinktank. He lives in London and Cambridge with his partner Pippa and has three children Rebecca, David and Jo.

Janet McElligott

Senior Fellow

 

Janet McElligott, President of McElligott Associates, is an international business and political strategist, with a successful record in engaging stakeholders and negotiating agreements in zones of conflict in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.  She has been involved with almost since its founding, with projects in Asia, North America, and South America.

 

McElligott was the spokesperson of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) for the Sudan Peace talks, and served on the task force that freed the ICRC aid workers from rebel territory in 1996. She serves as an unofficial liaison between the Catholic Church of Sudan and the Sudanese Government and was instrumental in helping to commute 27 death sentences as well as the chief negotiator to solve many of the complex refugee issues in the outlaying capitol region. From 1997 through 2001, McElligott was the liaison between the Sudanese intelligence service and the US FBI, focusing on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, some of which is chronicled in the book Losing bin Laden by Richard Miniter (2003), as well as Vanity Fair’s ‘The Secret bin Laden Files’ by David Rose (2002).

 

In the Middle East, Ms. McElligott was instrumental in assisting the first environmental symposium of the Arab Organization of Agricultural Development in Damascus, Syria.  In the United States, McElligott served under President George Bush on his personal staff in the White House in 1990, and prior to this served on the staffs of three U.S. senators.  McElligott speaks conversational German and Chinese, functional French, and limited Arabic and Russian.

 

Ravi Chaudhry

Senior Fellow; Founding Convener Future 500 India

 

Dr. Ravi Chaudhry is a strategic management consultant with a specialty in business strategies, global competitiveness, and corporate governance. He has over 35 years’ experience in international strategic alliances and joint ventures, including 10 years as CEO of five Tata Group Companies and is the founding Chairman of the Cemex Consulting Group.

 

A Mechanical Engineer with a Doctoral Award in Business Strategy, Chaudhry has advised scores of multinational corporations, sovereign states, and NGOs in Europe, Asia, Latin America and North America. He is the accredited consultant to the Government of Brazil, and “India Representative” and “Consultant, New Global Markets” for Western Switzerland, comprising Cantons of Vaud, Valais, Jura and Neuchatel, with the mandate to assist global corporations to set-up a pan-European operations base in their Region.

 

Chaudhry has also been a consultant to Governments of Norway, Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Canada and Uganda. His other clients include UNIDO, World Bank and international NGOs. He has served on the Boards of several companies as Director and Chairman.

 

Cate Gable

Senior Fellow

Manages a number of Future 500 efforts, including conference planning for our 2004 Fall conference in Seattle, stakeholder engagement training, the Coca-Cola North America stakeholder engagement project, and the Western Electronics Product Stewardship Initiative (WEPSI). For WEPSI, Ms. Gable served as a lead facilitator exploring policy options for e-waste and electronics recycling in the eight western states, as well as a participant in the national organization (NEPSI) where she authored an EPA white paper on this subject. She is an experienced strategic planner and corporate trainer, with 20 years of wide-ranging experience administering programs, developing curricula, and delivering trainings at Citibank, the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, the University of California, Berkeley, and a variety of other business, governmental, and not-for-profit institutions. She has authored a book on strategic planning and many articles in journals of corporate environmental management and social responsibility. She teaches a planning and sustainable business course at France's prestigious Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC).

Aileen Ichikawa

Board Director

Ms. Ichikawa directs the development of the Global Citizenship 360 and sMAP process and software to simplify stakeholder performance measurement and reporting. She has twenty years of experience in the technology sector, at IBM, Motorola, and Rolm, in the Asia Pacific region. Ichikawa is responsible for software development, strategic alliances, and major initiative program development. Ichikawa has worked on the majority of Future500 Asia partnerships, is the lead liasion with the Future 500 China organization and is responsible for developing future relationships and networks in the region. She is the major account lead on key partner relationships and is an advisor and facilitator to companies regarding the Global Citizenship 360 and sMap process.

Greg Voelm

Chairman of Global Futures

Greg Voelm is Chairman of Global Futures/Business For The Environment.  Mr. Voelm's experience goes back to the beginning of modern recycling - he was the director of the first source separation recycling project in the early 1970s.  He owns Personal Health Organization, L.L.C., which provides health care testing for thousands of Americans through major retail and pharmaceutical corporations.  He provides consultation support to national and western health care organizations besides his own.  He continues to serves on the Boards of environmental organizations.

Robert Greeley

Board Director

Robert Greeley is the President of Greeley Linsey Associates, with financial clients through the western US business and banking community. Mr. Greeley serves as court appointed administrator for corporations and partnerships in reorganization and with several non-profit agencies.

P. K. Agarwal

Board Director

PK Agarwal has more than 20 years of experience as a chief information officer in both the public and private sectors. Prior to his current position as director of the Department of Technology Services, he was vice president of ACS, Inc. for three years, where he worked with state and local governments to help transform information technology. Previously, he served as executive vice president and chief information officer for NIC, Inc. from 2000 to 2003. From 1996 to 2000, Agarwal was chief information officer for the Franchise Tax Board and from 1984 to 1996 he was chief of the Office of Information Services within the Department of General Services. His state government experience also includes three years as manager of the Database Development Bureau for the Department of Social Services and one year as a technical project manager for the Department of Health Services. Agarwal began his career as a management consultant and customer manager for EDS Corporation from 1975 to 1978.

Mark Serlin

Board Director

Mark Serlin is Managing Partner at Serlin & Whiteford, a commercial litigation firm with an emphasis on commercial collections, receivership, business litigation and business counseling. Their clients range from individuals to Fortune 500 companies. Serlin attended the University of California at Berkeley, obtained his law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco and a Masters of Economic Philosophy from Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. Serlin is married and the father of one child and in his free time enjoys fishing, fly fishing, tennis and wines & spirits.