Green Guru Network

From Greenpeace volunteer in 1978, to Sustainability Coordinator for the County of Westchester, and to her current position as Managing Director of Green Guru Network Lea has been an avid proponent of sustainable issues for over 30 years. She pioneered green local social media, developed municipal and state climate action and sustainability  plans, spearheaded large scale municipal biofuel and environmentally preferred procurement programs, consults for large scale recycling and waste reduction projects, energy efficiency policy and local agriculture systems and sustanable tourisim for governments, non-profits and private entities. She was recently honored by 914Inc magazine as one of Westchester County's Most Influential Women. 

Jack was born and raised in southern Rhode Island on a family farm. Since attending the University of Rhode Island’s College of Plant Science, Jack has worked as a greenhouse manager for a family-owned florist, greenhouse and nursery, a private gardener, a park ranger for the Costa Rican National Parks Service, and a sharecropper for an organic vegetable market in California.

Most recently, Jack developed an organic program at White Gate Farm, which produces food for 60 member families and various retail natural food stores and has become a center for the community.

As the Farm Manager for Stone Barns Center located in Sleepy Hollow, NY, Jack maintains the half-acre in-soil greenhouse and four acres of garden. His goal is to produce optimal amounts of superior-quality produce for the restaurant, market, education center and community using efficient and naturally sustainable practices.

Lynda founded Green Babies, the world's oldest organic cotton baby clothing company, out of her New York City apartment 15 years ago after the birth of her first daughter. Green Babies can be found in hundreds of better specialty stores and is a featured staple in Whole Foods Markets and Wegmans Markets. Hundreds of thousands of babies have been clothed in Green Babies, including many celebrity children. Green Babies has recently opened their first free standing store Green Babies, An Environmental Store in historic Nyack, NY. The store is a showcase of natural and safe choices for babies and families. Green Babies has been featured in numerous publications including People Magazine, US Magazine, American Baby, BabyTalk, Child, WWD, Body & Soul and many more.

Lynda is on an eco-mission to make green choices easy and fun for today's busy families. In addition to her work with Green Babies, Lynda has authored two books on her philosophy the "natural is better": Green Babies, Sage Moms and Green Kids, Sage Families, both from NAL Penguin. She is a frequent blogger for sites including Beliefnet, Scholastic, Grist, Nick Parents Connect, Treehugger and Planet Green, where she is also the baby and family expert. Lynda often appears in major print media including People Magazine, Gannet News Service, The New York Times, Parents, Parenting, E Magazine and many more. She has appeared on the Today Show, Access Hollywood, Planet Green, Fox News Happy Hour, CBS Sunday Morning, ABC Newsand more. Lynda frequently lectures on safe, easy and fun choices for parenting groups including Whole Foods Markets and Holistic Moms Network. She is the non-food expert for the Organic Trade Association.She lives in Westchester County NY with her husband and three daughters.

Nina Orville provides sustainability consulting services to non-profits, businesses and local governments. Previously, as Vice President of the New York Community Investment Company, a $40 million community development venture capital firm owned by major banks in New York, she helped finance and provide consulting services to growing businesses in the metro region.

Prior to joining NYCIC, she was a senior manager with an enterprise that supported sustainable development through the sale of sustainably harvested forest products to companies such as Ben & Jerry's and The Body Shop. She serves as Chair of the Mayor's Task Force on Energy and the Environment in Dobbs Ferry and is a member of the Advisory Council of Groundwork Hudson Valley. She holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Rick Gaudette is VP of Channels and Sales Programs for RecycleBank. Formerly of BigBelly Solar where he helped grow the company’s revenue three fold. He has extensive experience promoting new products and services from both Sales and Marketing roles.  He operated as a consultant who focused on revitalizing technology companies through repositioning, re-branding and re-targeting their sales efforts into new segments. 

Rick has held numerous leadership positions and grown businesses through both direct sales and channel development. Rick has the ability to blend his sales and marketing experience into cohesive programs that delivers results. 

Rick is also known for building high performance teams.  He ran a training group and trained sales teams and managers in over 20 countries. He sees selling as both an art and science and has implemented solutions selling, CRM  and channel programs in several companies. Rick has a strong personal commitment into applying marketing principles to environmental issues.  He was on the Board of the BMA (Business Marketing Association) and promotes local education on renewable energy.

John Cusak is President of Gifford Park Associates (GPA), a management consulting firm specializing in helping investors, major companies and academic institutions understand the relationships between organizational sustainability performance and the bottom line financial performance & shareholder/stakeholder value of organizations, and profiting from those relationships.

Clients have included multinational companies, utilities, institutional investors, government agencies, academic institutions, venture capital firms, and a number of companies operating in the areas of carbon finance, clean technology and climate risk management. His most well-known GPA assignment was serving as the start-up CEO of Innovest, the corporate sustainability performance rating agency and investment research house, from 1998 to 2001.

Prior to starting GPA in 1993, he was a senior executive at Asea Brown Boveri (ABB), where he was head of several subsidiaries in the US and Europe, held technology marketing and R&D staff positions, and worked extensively with venture capital firms managing ABB's energy & environmental technologies venture fund. He has a MBA from NYU Stern School, and an MCE in Environmental Engineering & Science and a BCE in Civil Engineering from Manhattan College. His largest client role presently is serving as part-time Executive Director of the New Jersey Higher Education Partnership for Sustainability (NJHEPS), a consortium of 45+ colleges and universities working to integrate sustainability into their campus operations, curricula, research and communities. In addition, he is an adjunct finance professor at the Iona College Hagan School of Business in New Rochelle NY, teaching a course in Sustainable Finance for the past four years.