
Management
Jay Coen Gilbert, Bart Houlahan, and Andrew Kassoy (the "Co-Founders") have developed, incubated and funded B Lab to date. They have a shared passion for creating a better world through business and have been friends for over 20 years. Prior to B Lab, Jay and Bart were Co-Founder and President, respectively, of AND 1, a $250 million basketball footwear and apparel business. Andrew has spent his entire career as a private equity investor; most recently as a Partner at MSD Real Estate Capital, a $1 billion real estate fund controlled by MSD Capital, the investment vehicle for the assets of Michael Dell and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation.
Jay Coen Gilbert, co-founder, B Lab
Bart Houlahan, co-founder B Lab
Andrew Kassoy, co-founder B Lab
The Standards Advisory Council
Cathy Clark, Director RISE program Columbia Business School
Debra Dunn, Director, Skoll Foundation, former SVP Corporate Affairs and Global Citizenship Hewlett Packard
Adam Lowry, Co-Founder, Chief Greenskeeper, Method Products
Don Shaffer, President & CEO, RSF Social Finance, Former Exective Director, BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies)
Mal Warwick, Chair, Mal Warwick Associates, former Co-Chair SVN (Social Venture Network)
Holly Coleman, Managing Director, Highwater Research
Wood Turner, Executive Director, Climate Counts
Doug Claffey, Founding Partner & CEO, Workplace Dynamics
Bart Houlahan, co-founder B Lab
Catherine Clark is a leading authority in the field of social entrepreneurship, social investing and social impact assessment and an experienced social investor, consultant and educator. She has performed pioneering research into the field of double bottom line investing and for-profit social enterprise and regularly consults to entrepreneurial organizations, foundations and investment firms that aim to achieve significant impact on deep social problems.
Ms. Clark's primary career focus has been as a professional social investor. She was Founder and Managing Director of the Flatiron Future Fund, a social venture capital fund and Founder and President of the Flatiron Foundation, both incubated by Flatiron Partners, a JP Morgan Partners affiliate. Formerly, she was Vice President at the Markle Foundation, where she helped manage the foundation's portfolio of grants and program-related investments focused on the social benefits of media and communications technologies for over seven years. She worked directly for two Markle Foundation presidents: one was Lloyd Morrisett, co-founder of Sesame Workshop. She has also worked with or consulted to a diverse list of nonprofit and forprofit organizations, foundations and investment groups, including: The Aspen Institute, the Carnegie Corporation, the Rockefeller Foundation, Investors' Circle, Net Impact, Springboard Enterprises, the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, and The US Agency for International Development.
Ms. Clark joined the faculty of Columbia Business School in 2001 to create Columbia's graduate MBA course on social entrepreneurship, and founded and directs Columbia's Research Initiative on Social Entrepreneurship (RISE) (www.riseproject.org). In a short time, RISE has become a leading voice in the study of for-profit social enterprise, and the capital markets that support entrepreneurial solutions to social, developmental and environmental change. Ms. Clark has a particular interest in how for-profit companies measure, communicate and improve their mission-related impact, and consults and writes regularly on this topic. Ms. Clark also serves as Faculty Advisor for the Global Social Venture Competition (www.socialvc.net), the only international MBA business plan competition that teaches entrepreneurs to define their social returns alongside financial returns, and provides mentorship and cash prizes to social ventures across the globe.
Ms. Clark also works closely with others leading the movement to expand and enhance professional "double bottom line" investing. She is currently Acting Co-Chair of Investors' Circle, a national membership organization of angel and institutional social investors, and Advisory Board Chair of Commons Capital, LP, a venture fund investing in health, clean energy, the environment and education. Ms. Clark speaks widely on national platforms about nonprofit and for-profit social entrepreneurship and social investing.
Ms. Clark earned her BA in French and Russian literature from the University of Virginia and her MBA from Columbia Business School. After 13 years in the New York area, she moved in late 2005 to Charlottesville, VA with her husband and son. She currently commutes to New York weekly in the spring term and monthly through the rest of the year.
Debra believes that entrepreneurs can solve even the toughest social problems. That is why she devotes so much time to advocating for and advising social ventures in the United States, Europe, Africa, India and Latin America. Before joining the corporate world, Debra worked in the non-profit sector with food and housing cooperatives and in the Massachusetts state government, running an energy conservation program for low income residents. Debra joined Hewlett Packard in 1983, starting as a manager in the executive development group and ending as a senior executive. The common threads in her broad, 22 year career at HP were driving change, creating new businesses and producing positive social impact concurrently with good business results. She ran Manufacturing, Marketing and Human Resources at the division level before becoming a division General Manager. Then she moved to corporate headquarters and led a wide range of company-wide functions and initiatives. For the last 3 years of her career at HP Debra was Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Global Citizenship. In that role, as a member of HP's Executive Committee she had leadership responsibility for HP's global citizenship efforts including corporate social and environmental responsibility, government and public affairs, corporate philanthropy and HP's e-inclusion initiatives aimed at providing appropriate, technology based services and solutions to emerging markets and underserved populations. Debra was in the middle of many tumultuous changes at HP including the spin-off of the original Test and Measurement business to form a new company called Agilent and the hiring of Carly Fiorina, the first CEO ever brought in from outside the company. She stayed at HP because of her faith in and resonance with the values that Hewlett and Packard had embedded deep into the fabric of the company. In her last role she had the opportunity to champion those values both within HP and in the broader corporate community as the leader responsible for global citizenship during the aftershock of the cascade of corporate scandals at Enron, WorldCom and other big name companies.
Debra left HP in June of 2005 to catch her breath and focus on the challenges of economic development, poverty alleviation, environmental and social sustainability. She now spends much of her time building bridges building between corporations, government, non-profits, and academia, as she believes that these challenges are best tackled by weaving together the skills and influence of these diverse sectors. She is on the boards of the Skoll Foundation and Global Giving and the faculty of Sustainability. She advises a wide range of social ventures.
Debra has played an active role coaching and teaching classes at the Stanford d.school since Spring of 2006.
Dunn holds a bachelor's degree in comparative economics from Brown University and a master's degree in business administration from Harvard.
She gets inspiration and grounding by spending as much time as possible in wild nature and hanging out with her husband, Randy Komisar and their two dogs, Lola and Rufus.
Jed Emerson acts in a number of roles to advance both thinking and practice with regard to how organizations and investors can maximize their value. He is a Senior Fellow with Generation Foundation (of Generation Investment Management, London) and a visiting fellow at Oxford University. He has written extensively on the evolution of social investing and corporate citizenship, as well as social entrepreneurship and sustainability issues. His work may be found at www.blendedvalue.org. Emerson was founding director of both Larkin Street Services (a homeless youth program in San Francisco) and the REDF (a leading venture philanthropy fund based in the Bay Area).
Founder and Chief Greenskeeper of Method Products, Adam Lowry believes that business, as the Earth's largest and most powerful institution, has both the opportunity and the onus to be the greatest agent of positive social and environmental change on the planet. First and foremost an entrepreneur and change agent, Adam has a proven track record of innovation across multiple categories and consumer segments.
Prior to founding Method, Adam worked as a climate scientist for the Carnegie Institution of Washington, in their Department of Global Ecology. At Carnegie Adam developed software products for the study of global climate change. Passionate about the cause but frustrated that he was "preaching to the converted", it was at Carnegie Adam that developed his unique approach to commercial environmentalism that forms the basis of Method's success today. Prior to Carnegie, he began his career in product design, developing recycled and biodegradable plastic products for the automotive industry, where he earned the first of his many patents.
In 2000, Adam and co-founder Eric Ryan started Method Products, Inc., the first premium brand in the home cleaning category. Taking on the giants of the consumer products industry by using design to create relevance in the mass market for environmentally and socially minded products, Method is the 7th fastest growing privately held company in America and has grown to the nation's leading green home care company. True to Adam's philosophy, Method is a carbon neutral business.
As Chief Greenskeeper, Adam has developed an innovative approach to sustainable product design that enables Method to bring to market highly unique and differentiated products in a fraction of the time of its competitors. In addition, he directs the sustainability aspects of product sourcing and production, and provides strategic input for consumer marketing and the press.
Lowry was recently named one of Vanity Fair's Global Citizens for 2007 for method's pioneering work on sustainable business, and was honored as the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' (PETA) Man of the Year for 2006.
An avid sailor, Adam represented the US in the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, as an alternate and coach. Lowry earned his B.S., Chemical Engineering, from Stanford University, and resides in San Francisco.
Don Shaffer serves as Executive Director of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) - a 501c3 non-profit organization based in San Francisco. BALLE is a fast-growing international alliance of over 50 local business networks and more than15,000 entrepreneurs who are committed to triple-bottom-line practices. Don graduated from Cornell University in 1991 with a degree in American History. Since then, he has taught Native American high school students in northern New Mexico; helped build a for-profit education company; and helped start, manage, and sell a multimedia software company.
In addition to his duties as BALLE Executive Director, Don is co-owner of Comet Skateboards - a designer and manufacturer of sustainable skateboarding products. He also serves as interim Executive Director of Investors Circle.
Don holds a black belt in persistence. Passions include telemark skiing, daily study of Wendell Berry's essays, and spending unstructured time with his wife, Jennifer. Home is Berkeley, California.
Vishal is currently an advisor to Revolution Living, an investment firm started by Steve Case (AOL) with a charter to invest in consumer facing businesses in the health and wellness/clean-tech space. Most recently, Vishal was Vice President- Strategy for Revolution Living. In this role, he evaluated new investments and helped with post-investment management of the portfolio companies, which include: Flexcar (alternative transportation), Miraval (real estate/spa resort), Lime (digital media) and Gaiam (a public company). Vishal has also led the senior management team of Flexcar for an interim basis.
Prior to this, Vishal was chief strategy officer for Patagonia, Inc., assisting the CEO in developing the company's strategic direction, restructuring and overseeing operations. He also directed their Capilene P&L, increasing division sales by $15 million, and helped launch a number of successful product brands generating in excess of $40 million and receiving numerous awards and recognition for the company. In his time at Patagonia, sales doubled while consistently being ranked as one of the best places to work in the U.S. Vishal has worked as a consultant for Investor's Circle-an angel investor forum targeted towards the health and wellness/clean-tech space. He has developed a business plan to promote organic food in India for the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, a non-profit based in Uttar Pradesh. He serves on the board of directors for Coalition of Clean Air and is a Henry Crown fellow at the Aspen Institute.
Vishal earned a B. Tech degree in India, a Master's degree in Sciences from North Carolina State University and an MBA from UCLA's Anderson School of Management. He and his family make their home in Ventura, CA.
Mal Warwick has distinguished himself through his contributions to the nonprofit sector as one of the world's leading authors, consultants, and public speakers on fundraising and as an advocate for socially and environmentally responsible policies and practices in the private sector.
Mal is the co-author of Values-Driven Business: How to Change the World, Make Money, and Have Fun (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2006) with Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry's.A serial entrepreneur, Mal has been active in promoting social and environmental responsibility in the business community nationwide for more than 15 years. Along with Cohen and others, he was a co-founder of Business for Social Responsibility and served on its board during its inaugural year. In 2001, after more than a decade as an active member of Social Venture Network, he was elected to its board and served as Chair (2002-2006). He also was a member of the Founding Advisory Board of the Center for Responsible Business at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2002-3.
Mal is the founder and chairman of Mal Warwick Associates (Berkeley, Calif., and Washington, D.C.), a fundraising agency specializing in direct marketing. The company has served nonprofit organizations since 1979. Mal also founded its sister company, Response Management Technologies, Inc., a data processing firm for nonprofit organizations, and was a co-founder of the telephone fundraising firm, Share Group, Inc. (Somerville, Mass.). In 1999, he co-founded Donordigital (San Francisco, Calif.), which assists nonprofit organizations with online fundraising, marketing, and advocacy.
Mal has written or edited seventeen previous books, including the standard fundraising texts, Revolution in the Mailbox and How to Write Successful Fundraising Letters, both of which are now in second editions. His two books on fundraising strategy-The Five Strategies for Fundraising Success and (with Steve Hitchcock) Ten Steps to Fundraising Success-are in use throughout the world as strategic planning guides for nongovernmental organizations.
Mal is editor of the free monthly electronic newsletter, Mal Warwick's Newsletter: Successful Direct Mail, Telephone & Online Fundraising™, which has 6,500 subscribers in 67 countries. He is widely in demand as speaker and workshop leader throughout the world. Mal has taught fundraising on six continents to nonprofit executives from more than 100 countries. He speaks annually at the International Fundraising Congress (The Netherlands), the International Workshop on Resource Mobilisation (Thailand and India), the Hemispheric Congress on Fundraising (Mexico), and the Association of Fundraising Professionals' International Conference on Fundraising (U.S.).
Among the hundreds of nonprofits Mal and his colleagues have served over the years are many of the nation's largest and most distinguished charities as well as six Democratic Presidential candidates and scores of small, local, and regional organizations. Collectively, Mal and his associates are responsible for raising at least half a billion dollars-largely in the form of small gifts from individuals.
Mal is Chair-Elect of the international Resource Alliance (London, UK), organizers of the annual International Fundraising Congress in The Netherlands and a leading force globally in developing the fundraising capacity of nongovernmental organizations to build civil society. He is also an active member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (Alexandria, Va.) and served for ten years on the board of the Association of Direct Response Fundraising Counsel (Washington, D.C.), two of those years as President. In 2004, he received the Hank Rosso Award as Outstanding Fundraising Executive from the Association of Fundraising Professionals Golden Gate Chapter and Northern California Grantmakers.
Mal also serves on the board of the Institute for the Renewal of the California Dream and SpeakOut California (Sacramento, Calif.); on the board of One Voice: United, a Political Action Committee led by Congresswoman Barbara Lee (Oakland, Calif.); on the advisory board of A New America Foundation; and on the advisory boards of several companies, including GetActive Software (Berkeley, Calif.), Important Gifts LLC (New York, NY), and Mission Research (Lancaster, Penn.).
Mal was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ecuador for more than three years. Since 1969 he has lived in Berkeley, California, where he is deeply involved in local community affairs. Early in the 1990s, he co-founded the Community Bank of the Bay, the nation's fifth community development bank, and the Berkeley Community Fund, where he served on the board (with one year as its president) until 2006. He also served for 11 years as Vice-President of the Board of the Berkeley Symphony (1991-2002).
In November 2006, Mal was awarded the Benajmin Ide Wheeler Medal by the Berkeley Community Fund as "Berkeley's most useful citizen" in recognition of his lifetime contributions to the community.
He is the grandfather of Dayna, Iain, Matthew, Gwen, Andrew, Kaleb, and Benjamin, who live on college campuses or with their various parents throughout the United States.
Legal Team
Todd Johnson, Partner, Jones Day
Sabrena Silver, Partner, Linklaters
Jon Gray, Partner, Linklaters
The Board of Directors
B Lab is governed by a dynamic process of broad, transparent multi-stakeholder engagement. The Board of Directors will establish several Advisory Councils to ensure continuous incorporation of best thinking and practices into B Lab's mission and activities. The Board will have ultimate decision-making authority on recommendations coming from the Advisory Councils.
Members of the Board of Directors will:
• Oversee strategy, budget and operations of B Lab, including oversight of management, compensation, and development
• Play a leadership role in forming the Advisory Councils, provide oversight of their activities, and amend/approve their recommendations
• Assist in identifying and cultivating potential philanthropic donors/investors to ensure funding of B Lab's operations prior to sustainability via licensing income
Current Members:
Mark A. Finser, President and CEO of RSF Social Finance
Debra Dunn, Director, Skoll Foundation, former SVP Corporate Affairs and Global Citizenship Hewlett Packard
Bart Houlahan, co-founder B Lab, Former CFO, COO and President of AND 1
Tom Bird, Chairman, Global Giving, Founder & President, Farm Capital Services
Other Advisors
Jed Emerson, Senior Fellow Generation Foundation, Visiting Fellow, Skoll Center on Social Entrepreneurship
Vishal Vasisth, Strategic Advisor to Revolution, former Chief Strategy Officer, Patagonia
Sabrena Silver is a Partner at Linklaters LLP in the New York banking group. Linklaters is a law firm specializing in advising the world's leading companies, financial institutions and governments on their most challenging transactions and assignments. She has worked in London and in New York and has substantial experience in a variety of complex financing transactions, both United States domestic and cross-border, representing financial institutions, equity sponsors, and capital users in leveraged buyout and other corporate financing transactions. Sabrena earned her BA from Simon's Rock of Bard College and her JD from Fordham University School of Law.
