Agents
Chloe Byruck
Chloe is the Operations Director and Co-Founder of Ecotone Creative, a consulting firm that helps mission-driven organizations strengthen their message, grow their community, and magnify their impact. A natural systems-thinker and collaborator, Chloe helps teams achieve organizational cohesion. Since the founding of Ecotone Creative in 2009, Chloe has contributed her skills to projects as diverse as Lao’s largest tourism development project – The Elephant Festival -to the world’s largest cleantech accelerator – The Cleantech Open. To all of her clients she brings a passion for collaboration and helping people find win-win solutions.
Propelled to improve the world through good design, Chloe’s career began in green building. She achieved her LEED Certification while working at HKIT Architects, a firm that specializes in public buildings. She then became the Marketing Director for West Coast Green, the famous San Francisco conference on green innovation. She was responsible for spearheading dozens of partnerships, designing databases, and managing the entire marketing team that drew thousands of people to the event.
Chloe holds a degree from Washington University in St. Louis in Architecture as well as in Social Design, a major that she designed. She also founded and built the school’s first Co-op.
Celia Canfield
With over 30 years of print and Web publishing experience with some of the leading publishing companies, Celia Canfield is a skilled communications expert. Celia built a successful custom content creation agency as a co-founder of Tendo Communication www.tendocom.com, where she helped some of the largest brands in the world achieve success with customer outreach programs.
As the founder of her own green consultancy firm, EcoVertex, in 2007 Celia has worked with West Coast Green, www.westcoastgreen.com as a business development advisor, and Sustainable Life Media, www.sustainablelifemedia.com. As well, Celia is a board member and founder of Women’s Energy Efficiency Network (WEEnet) and serves as a marketing consultant to Efficiency First (www.efficiencyfirst.org). Celia advises and is on the board of several start-up companies and organizations that are focused on creating a clean energy economy.
Celia’s passion for combining her marketing knowledge with progressive policies and issues has resulted in work with non-profit organizations such Small Business Majority www.smallbusinessmajority.org, where she has been a board member and advisor since its beginning and now serves as the Clean Energy Economy Policy Director. She was a member of Clean Tech for Obama and was appointed to the steering committee member for Al Gore’s 2009 Green Inaugural Ball. In 2010, Celia founded www.greenenergyagents.org with some colleagues as way to help youth groups earn money, save energy and raise awareness by selling home efficiency products in their communities, with a focus on faith communities.
Celia’s has first-hand understanding of implementing green design and utilizing sustainable products and methods from renovating her home to make it LEED-compliant in 2007. She wrote about her green renovation experiences at www.ecovertex.blogspot.com and was featured in the April 22, 2008 issue of USA Today with her green tips for living.
A regular speaker on the subjects of sustainability, green marketing, clean tech entrepreneurship and energy efficiency, Celia has been featured at many conferences and is an adjunct professor at Skyline Community College.
Christi Graham
Christi Graham is one of the most effective visionary leaders to emerge in the green building movement. Recognized nationally as a pioneer in the industry, Christi’s profound impact on the sustainability movement is rooted in her passion for education and the belief that humanity’s capacity for greatness is one of the most valuable and renewable resources in in the world. Her goal to scale the awareness and adoption of brilliant game-changing solutions for green, healthy and thriving global communities has resulted in her being named as one of the Top Change Makers in the United States by the World Affairs Council and has inspired the following achievements:
Founder & CEO, West Coast Green Conference & Exposition — referred to as the “TED” of Green, West Coast Green has been the platform for collective intelligence and innovation around Sustainability, revolutionizing the way we live and work by accelerating the pace at which game-changing environmental solutions move to market.
Co-Founder, The Green Resource Center, Berkeley — one of the first resource centers of its kind in the country, providing tools and resources for sustainable building – currently named Build It Green, a multi-million dollar non-profit entity.
Green Building Advisor, United Nations, World Environment Day
Executive Board Member, American Lung Association
Karen Jackson
Karen’s signature characteristic is her ability to span between big picture thinking and execution; her right and left brain hemispheres seem to be completely fused. Her visionary, adaptive, heart felt communication coupled with logic, speed, and precision make her a natural asset to complex projects.
As a skilled facilitator, a leader, and a masterful organizer she dances her way through complex situations using her education in sustainable development and design from Harvard and Berkeley. Karen approaches every business challenge as an opportunity for elegant solutions.
Karen has strong track record of leading mission-based organizations, programs, and conferences toward success. From marketing, management, sales, and event production to information architecture Karen is known to take things from 30mph to 90mph. Karen’s work has infused life into The UNEP Tunza International Children’s Conference on The Environment, The Foundation for Civic Leadership, The San Francisco Institute of Architecture, The Downtown Berkeley YMCA, West Coast Green, The Patagonian Foundation, ElefantAsia, The Clean Tech Open, and more.
Andy Mannle
Andy Mannle is a speaker, writer and strategic consultant specializing in helping people understand the changing landscape of sustainable business, green design, clean energy finance, and environmental policy. He has written for a variety of sites on energy and the environment, and been published in the Huffington Post, and the UN’s World Energy Monitor. Andy has helped numerous organizations craft and communicate their sustainability strategies and initiatives, and worked with clients including Intel, IBM, Urban Land Institute, West Coast Green, the Home Depot Foundation,Governing.com and others. Andy speaks on a wide range of sustainability topics including financing clean energy, sustainable infrastructure, building a green economy, and strategic communications for sustainability. Here’s a brief video of Andy speaking about creating smarter communities. Andy currently serves as Communications Director for Adam Capital Clean Energy Asset Finance, and VP of Strategic Development for Promise Energy. For a complete list of Andy’s Columns see www.AndyMannle.com, or follow @AndyMannle on Twitter.
Connect with Andy Mannle
Beth Whiteley
Beth Whiteley spent over 18 years at Sunset Magazine, the premier guide for living well in the West. With a personal passion for helping people live happier, healthier lives, Beth continued on that path when she joined West Coast Green in January, 2010. She led the sales team and orchestrated media partnerships and sponsorships, which resulted in new marquee sponsors — IBM, Intel and Fast Company.
Vice President, Marketing, Sunset Magazine — as the steward for this century plus brand, Beth led the team in creating programs and events that brought the magazine to life for a community of 1.5 million subscribers. In this role, Beth was responsible for assuring that all programs and events were consistent with the core values of the Sunset brand.
Creator, Celebration Weekend — Sunset’s signature lifestyle event, originally designed as a Centennial celebration is now in its 15th year and lauded by the publishing industry as the largest (20,000+ attendees) and most authentic branded event of its kind.
Supervising Director, Idea House Program — collaborated with editorial and builders to create homes filled with beautiful and innovative ideas that inspired millions.
Program Director, Heart Healthy editorial section — initiated a partnership between Sunset and the American Heart Association.
Advisors
Panama Bartholomy
Deputy Director, Efficiency and Renewable Energy, California Energy Commission
Panama is the Deputy Director for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the California Energy Commission. He serves on the City of Sacramento’s Planning Commission and the County of Sacramento’s Environmental Commission. He is a board member on and President of the Northern California Chapter of the United States Green Building Council. He previously worked for the California Conservation Corps on vocational environmental education and in the Division of the State Architect where he ran the Sustainable Schools program. He is a graduate of Humboldt State University with a Bachelors of Science degree in Restorative Development and a Masters of Science in Community Development from UC Davis.
Eric Corey Freed
Eric Corey Freed, LEED AP, Hon. FIGP, is Principal of organicARCHITECT, an architecture and consulting firm in California, with 20 years of experience in green building.
Eric co-developed the Sustainable Design programs at the Academy of Art University and University of California Berkeley Extension. He is on the boards of USGBC Inland Empire, Architects, Designers & Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR), and West Coast Green, as well as the advisory boards of a dozen other organizations.
He was the founding Chair of Architecture for The San Francisco Design Museum and one of the founders of ecoTECTURE: The Online Journal of Ecological Design. He is a regular contributor for Sustainable Industries Journal, Luxe, Natural Home, Metropolitan Home and dozens of other publications. Eric lectures around the country at 40+ conferences a year, and his work has been featured in Dwell, Metropolis, Town & Country, Natural Home and Newsweek. He has been seen on television on Fox News, HGTV, The Sundance Channel and PBS.
When Eric was just 25 years old, noted architect and critic Philip Johnson described him as “one of the real brains of his generation”. Today, Eric continues the tradition of “Organic Architecture”, first developed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
He is a founding board member and current Chair of the Coachella Valley branch of the US Green Building Council, and sits on the Sustainability Commission for the City of Palm Desert. He has received awards from several Mayors, and worked with dozens of municipalities around the country to help implement sustainable policies.
Eric is the author of four books, including “Green Building & Remodeling for Dummies”, a bestseller with over 200,000 copies in print, and “Sustainable School Architecture.” His latest, “Green$ense for your Home” won the 2011 Outstanding Book Award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors.
Eric is considered a leader in the field; named by San Francisco Magazine “Best Green Architect” in 2005; “Best Visionary” in 2007; and “Green Visionary” by 7×7 Magazine in 2008. In 2012, he was named one of the 25 “Best Green Architecture Firms” in the US, and one of the “Top 10 Most Influential Green Architects.”
Mark Palmer
Green Building Coordinator, City and County of San Francisco
Mark Palmer’s passion for the environment manifests in his work as Green Building Coordinator for the city and county of San Francisco. But in addition to reducing the industry’s affect on the environment, his aim is to reduce the cost of doing business by designing buildings that use less energy, save more water, and use materials more wisely than conventional structures. To do this he draws on a background rich in the study of alternative energy and marked by 30 years devoted to enhancing sustainability in the construction industry.