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Information About

Hunter Lovins





BACKGROUND


A lawyer (member of the California Bar), Hunter helped establish, and was for six years Assistant Director of the California Conservation Project (Tree People), an innovative urban forestry and environmental education group. She served as policy advisor for Friends of the Earth under David Bower. Named Henry R. Luce visiting professor at Dartmouth College, Hunter has taught at numerous other universities, and is currently professor of Sustainable Management at Presidio World College, the accredited MBA in sustainable management. In 1982 she founded the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), a 50-person research centre with a $7 million annual budget, half of it earned through programmatic enterprise. Until 2002, when she left to join the Global Academy, she was RMI’s CEO for strategy.

Hunter was one of four people from North America to serve as a delegate to the UN’s prep conference for Europe and North America for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, and lead a delegation to the World Summit. She was a commissioner in the State of the World Forum’s Commission on Globalization, co-chaired by Mikhail Gorbachev, Jane Goodall, George Soros and others. In 2003, she created Natural Capitalism Inc. and the non-profit Natural Capitalism Solutions to implement the ideas of sustainable development on a global scale.

Hunter has served on the boards of one government, several corporations, and many public interest groups. She advises numerous companies and non-profits, including Engineers Without Borders, Portfolio 21, GreenMountain.com and The Natural Edge Project. She was a founding director of RMI’s for-profit spin-off, E SOURCE, until its 1999 sale for $18 million to the Financial Times.

Hunter has presented to an impressive array of audiences around the world, including:

U.S. Congress

World Summit on Sustainable Development

World Economic Forum

Global Economic Forum

Daughters of the American Revolution Continental Congress

World’s Fair Energy Symposia

State of the World Forum

St. John the Divine Cathedral Epiphany Service

Industrial Designers Society’s WorlDesign

United Nations Development Program

Institution of Engineers Australia

United Nations Industrial Development Organizations Annual General Conference

Hundreds of conferences & college symposia

Queensland EPA Sustainable Industries Division

New Zealand Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment

Western Australia Environmental Policy Unit

IPENZ National Convention / Newnham Lecture Australian Conservation Foundation

European Climate Exchange


Television appearances

60 Minutes (USA)

Good Morning America

Bill Moyers’ NOW

Pat Robertson’s “700 Club”

Australian Broadcasting Company

The Merv Griffin Show

Hundreds of TV and radio news programs

Award-winning film “Lovins On the Soft Path”

Chicago Manufacturing Center online training course for the Sustainability Helix


Awards

Hunter shared a 1982 Mitchell Prize for an essay on reallocating utility capital, a 1983 Right Livelihood Award (often called the “alternative Nobel Prize”), a 1993 Nissan Award for an article on Hypercars, the 1999 Lindbergh Award for Environment and Technology, and several honorary doctorates. In 2000 she was named a Hero of the Planet by Time Magazine, and received the Loyola University Award for Outstanding Community Service. In 2001 she received the Leadership in Business Award and shared the Shingo Prize for Manufacturing Research. In 2005 she received the Distinguished Alumni Award of Pitzer College.

Selected Publications

Hunter has co-authored nine books including Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (1999), and the upcoming publication The Natural Advantage of Nations (2006), Green Development (19‘98), Factor 4: Doubling Wealth - Halving Resource Use and Least Cost Energy (1997, together with Ernst Ulrich Von Weizsacker ), and Solving the CO2 Problem (‘1981)

•She has written dozens of professional papers including Harvard Business Review, Foreign Affairs, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Journal of the American Bar Association, Natural Resources Journal and Journal of the U.S. Green Building Council

• Recent articles have appeared in World Link, World Business Academy Review, The Guardian, American Prospect, Los Angeles Times, Yes! Magazine (see photo), and In-Business Magazine

Higher Education

The business education programs developed by Hunter and her colleagues demonstrate how socially and environmentally responsible business decisions benefit performance in corporate, government, and non-profit organizations. Her team draws upon expertise in international business, education, engineering, architecture, law, economics, and natural resources to design custom programs. Universities in Europe, Australia and North America are responding to the challenge of achieving sustainable development. University leaders increasingly acknowledge their responsibility in this arena through networks such as the ‘UNESCO Global Higher Education Sustainability Partnership’. Progress is reflected in the growth of the number of signatories to declarations of sustainability, such as the Talloires Declaration, the development of national and international networks of university staff devoted to improvement in sustainability, such as the ‘University Leaders for a Sustainable Future Network, and the impressive innovation globally in environmentally sustainable design and practice. A shift is occurring in Universities in Japan, New Zealand, Taiwan, China and in most countries of the Asia Pacific. Most encouraging has been the leadership shown by the Japanese Government in proposing and developing the UN Decade of Education in Sustainable Development starting in 2005.

In August 2003, Hunter and her colleague, Walter Link, delivered the first class of the first accredited business school of sustainable management at World College in San Francisco. Unlike traditional MBA programs that may offer an elective in corporate responsibility, Presidio World College weaves sustainability throughout such conventional business topics as economics, accounting, finance and strategy. Hunter has also delivered lectures in courses at leading universities and colleges in the United States and abroad, including:

UC Berkeley, Haas School of Business and Boalt School of Law (CA)

Stanford University (CA)

Williams College (MA)

Dartmouth College

Imperial College (London)

University of Kabul (Afghanistan)

International Finance Corporation Sustainability training (Washington D.C.)

University of Iowa, College of Engineering

Presidio School Of Management (CA)

University of Wyoming

United World College

Victoria Univ. of Wellington (New Zealand)

University of Canberra (Australia)

Griffith University (Australia)

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (Australia)