Adam Werbach
| Adam Werbach | |
|---|---|
Werbach in 1999.
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| Born | 1973 Tarzana, California, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Environmental activist |
| Spouse(s) | Lyn Werbach |
Adam Werbach, is an environmental activist, author, and entrepreneur. In 1996, Werbach became the youngest person ever elected as national president of the Sierra Club, at the age of 23. He is the author of the books Act Now, Apologize Later (Harper Perennial, 1997) and Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto (Harvard Business Press, 2010) Werbach is a frequent contributor to The Atlantic, serving as the magazine's online "sustainability expert."
A lifelong Californian, Werbach began donating to Greenpeace at age 13. He spent four months at The Mountain School, a semester school for high school juniors in Vermont. In 1990, as a high school student, he created "Big Green," an unsuccessful California voter initiative to promote fuel economy and open space. He also founded the Sierra Student Coalition, which has 30,000 members.
In 1994, while a student at Brown University, Werbach galvanized students nationwide to pass the California Desert Protection Act, which created Death Valley National Park and Joshua Tree National Park. Werbach graduated from Brown in 1995 with a double major in Political Science and Modern Culture and Media.
Werbach was a protégé of noted 20th-century environmentalist and Sierra Club Director David Brower, who hand-picked Werbach to run for the club's presidency. Upon his election, Rolling Stone labeled him "a fixture on lists of the most influential Americans under 30."
As president of the Sierra Club, Werbach helped negotiate a behind-the-scenes agreement with the Clinton Administration to create the 1,900,000-acre (7,700 km2) Grand Staircase of the Escalante National Monument. During his first year in office, he toured the country giving more than 200 speeches. By the end of his second term, the average age of a Sierra Club member had dropped from 47 to 37. His first book, Act Now, Apologize Later, a series of essays and autobiographical anecdotes recounting the many average citizens he'd met while touring the country: "From rural priests to animal trackers, from a 12-year-old girl in California to three elderly women in Georgia, from senators to surfers and from Woody Harrelson to llama riders, an incredible array of people give us a thousand reasons to be hopeful."
After leaving The Sierra Club, Werbach formed Act Now Productions to consult to nonprofits and corporations that wished to green their enterprise, including Autodesk, Procter & Gamble, Cisco Systems, Columbia Records, Frito Lay, General Mills, Sierra Club, and World Wildlife Fund. He also co-founded the Apollo Alliance to jump-start an alternative-energy economy. In January 2008, Act Now Productions joined the global advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi to become Saatchi & Saatchi S, which consults with large corporations to "create sustainable visions." Today, Saatchi & Saatchi S is now the world’s largest sustainability agency, with nearly $1 trillion in combined annual sales in 80 countries.
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