Founding Partner & Executive Chairman of Volans, also Co-founder of SustainAbility (1987, where he is a non-executive member of the Board) and of Environmental Data Services (ENDS, 1978).
John Elkington is a world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development. In 2004, BusinessWeek described him as “a dean of the corporate responsibility movement for three decades.” His first involvement in the field: raising money for the newly formed World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 1961, aged 11.
In 2008, The Evening Standard named John among the ‘1000 Most Influential People’ in London, describing him as “a true green business guru,” and as “an evangelist for corporate social and environmental responsibility long before it was fashionable.” In 2009, a CSR International survey of the Top 100 CSR leaders placed John fourth: after Al Gore, Barack Obama and the late Anita Roddick of the Body Shop, and alongside Muhammad Yunus of the Grameen Bank.
Volans, launched in April 2008, aims to find, explore, advise on and build innovative scalable solutions to the great global divides that overshadow the future. His work in this area has been celebrated and supported by awards including the UN Global 500 Roll of Honour, the Fast Company Social Capitalist Award and a 3-year, $1 million Skoll Foundation grant (2007-2009).
In terms of other hats, John is a Visiting Professor at the Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility at the Cranfield School of Management. He chairs The Foundation for Democracy & Sustainable Development (FDSD) and the Aflatoun Impact and Policy Analysis Steering Group, and is an Honorary Fellow of The Hub and of the Institute of Green Professionals. He is also a member of strategic advisory boards for, among others: 2degrees; Bayer MaterialScience; EcoVadis; Gaia Energy; the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI); Greenopolis.com; Instituto Ethos; Nestlé’s Creating Shared Value; Polecat UK and a Cleantech Fund developed by Zouk Ventures. He is also a Senior Advisor to the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, a member of the WWF Council of Ambassadors, a member of the Evian Group Brain Trust and Council of Global Thought Leaders; the Global Leaders Academy; and the Cleantech Group’s Cleantech Innovation Council.
He has written or co-authored 17 books, including 1988’s million-selling Green Consumer Guide (Victor Gollancz; co-authored with SustainAbility co-founder Julia Hailes), 1997’s Cannibals with Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business (Capstone/John Wiley; the book which brought his triple bottom line concept and agenda to a wider audience) and 2008’s The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World, (Harvard Business School Press), co-authored with Volans co-founder Pamela Hartigan.
John is a Fast Company blogger and a columnist for a number of publications, including chinadialogue (China), CSR Wire (USA), Director Magazine (UK), Época Negócios (Brazil), Monday Morning (Denmark) and Nikkei Ecology (Japan) as well as other media. As a public speaker, he has addressed over 500 conferences all over the world. He was a Faculty member of the World Economic Forum from 2002-2008.
His Who’s Who entry lists his recreations as: “playing with ideas, thinking around corners, conversations with unreasonable people, reading an Alpine range of books (history to science fiction) and US business and science magazines, risking life and limb as a London cyclist, catch-it-as-you-can photography, art and design, writing all hours, pre-1944 aircraft, New World wines, 20th century popular music–and Johann Strauss II.”
Personal website: www.johnelkington.com