About the Hub - Dec 2014
The Green Resource Hub is a local not-for-profit organization founded in 2006 and located in Ithaca, NY.
Mission: To expand the marketplace for sustainable living in the Finger Lakes region.
Vision: A vibrant and resilient regional economy that serves a healthy, happy, and self-reliant community.
The Hub is led by a small dedicated volunteer board. In our organization and our programming, we are deeply committed to a Triple Bottom Line balance of environmental, social, and economic values. We approach each other with trust and respect, and strive for transparency, diversity, and inclusiveness in our decision-making.
The Hub has been fortunate enough to contract expert talent from our community to take the lead and critical programs and initiatives. Many volunteers (including past board members) have played a crucial role in the fulfillment of the Hub's mission as well. It has been fantastic working with every one of you, and we'd like to extend a big THANK YOU to all of you that have helped out.
Learn more about the current Hub board and staff below.
The Hub Board
President
Maribeth Rubenstein received her BS in Environmental Science from SUNY Oneonta and an MS in Sustainable Development from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Her independent research was focused on renewable energy policy, particularly the impact of coalitions upon New York State’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS). She is currently a change management consultant and is interested in exploring opportunities for increasing sustainability in local food, energy, and economic systems.
Vice President
Peter FitzRandolph Peter J. FitzRandolph has a 25-year career in sales, marketing, and operations management, and recently completed an MBA in Sustainability from Antioch University New England. He is particularly focused on the need to build a true Solidarity Economy based on sustainable values of equality, democracy, justice, diversity, and local control. To this end Peter is interested in finding ways to foster alternative enterprise structures such as worker cooperatives. His capstone project at Antioch University examined the intersection of entrepreneurship and cooperative business organization. Peter is the founder and CEO of Finger Lakes Sustainable Strategies (FLSS), a consulting firm helping small and medium enterprises build Triple Bottom Line values into their core strategic planning, rather than adding sustainability as a "greenwashed" afterthought. Currently FLSS is working with Cornell University's New York State Agricultural Experiment Station to help create a Sustainable Best Practices development program for the Finger Lakes wine industry. Peter also volunteers at Sustainable Tompkins and at Greenstar Cooperative Market.
Secretary
Amanda Postma
Treasurer
Bob Anderson
Gay Nicholson has led Sustainable Tompkins since 2004 in designing and implementing an integrated program to advance the creation of a more sustainable regional community. As Program Coordinator, Gay emphasizes a systems approach to working with partners to build the infrastructure and social capacity for more sustainable ways of living and working. Projects and programs have focused on energy efficiency, green purchasing, sustainable community development, green jobs, sustainable enterprise, greening heath care, and economic/ecological justice. Gay was instrumental in the founding and development of the Green Resource Hub of the Finger Lakes, a subsidiary of Sustainable Tompkins, which focuses on consumer education and business support services in the areas of green building, renewable energy, green purchasing, and energy efficiency. Gay has previously worked in the fields of energy efficiency and renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, global warming, environmental ethics, land use planning, and land conservation. She has been an active volunteer in numerous community and environmental organizations, providing leadership from the local to the national level. Gay's undergraduate degree (with High Distinction) is in Environmental Sciences from the University of Virginia (1979), and her Master's (1982) and Doctorate (1991) are in Crop Physiology and Integrated Pest Management from Cornell University.
Stefan Minott is the founder/CEO of GRTech Solutions, which offers a broad array of green technology services including Renewable Energy Technology, Local and State programs and Energy Efficiency consultancy. He is also a Cornell Ph.D. candidate in Biological & Environmental Engineering. Stefan serves on the 2013 Environment Program Committee for Tompkins County's Cornell Cooperative Extension.
David Gower David provides clean technology strategic consulting via his organization New Clean Earth and is also conducting research on distributed power generation for a NYSERDA funded project. Previously he created the concept and business plan for the Center for Evaluation of Clean Energy Technology (CeCeT) a consortium of academic research institutions and private organizations that leverage the expertise and facilities of all members toward providing commercialization assistance, research, pre-certification testing, evaluation and technical due-diligence services to manufacturers, project developers, government and investors in clean energy technology. He graduated in 1994 with a B.A. from the University of Rochester in Economics and Political Science and completed an International MBA in Italy in 2005. He is currently taking courses at Clarkson University toward a PhD in Environmental Science and Engineering. David excels at recognizing opportunity and thrives on helping promising future clean technologies overcome the many barriers that exist between concept, prototype and actual commercial product.
Ed Swayze
The Hub Staff
Director of Strategic Development
Anna Kelles has focused her career around connections between nutrition, human health, and the health of our environment. Through a dual bachelor in Biology and Environmental Studies at Binghamton University, Anna began exploring the link between human and environmental health. She then applied this education to promote sound nutritional and environmental practices in Ecuador, through work as both a teacher and an ecological guide. In 2008, Anna earned a PhD in Nutritional Epidemiology from The University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. Her research explored the long term impact of globalization on divergent dietary and physical activity patterns between Filipino mothers and children. Anna later became the Director of the School of Applied Clinical Nutrition at New York Chiropractic College. As director, Anna assembled a team of expert faculty to deliver one of the only online graduate programs focused on whole foods therapeutic nutrition. A few of her accomplishments included hiring and training a full faculty team, developing online course structure and material, delivering training in Web 2.0 technologies including the use of social media in higher education, as well as marketing and outreach via multiple publications, interviews, and national conferences. Her dedication to the field of nutrition has lead to extensive involvement in legislative action to protect the rights of nutrition clinicians and maintain a diverse, competitive, and highly qualified nutrition work force.
Director of the SEEN
Bob Rossi is the founder and manager of the CommonSpot, a downtown business incubator that combines conscious coworking with business support services. Bob earned his M.S. in Communication at Cornell; has lectured at Cornell on information systems, communication technologies, and public speaking; and currently teaches Computer Interface Design at Ithaca College. Bob was a founding board member of the Green Resource Hub in 2006, helped start the SEEN in March 2009, and has been serving as the SEEN Director since August 2013.