Behind the Scenes with Cradle to Cradle Innovation

Join us for a breakfast presentation with Bridgett Luther, founder of Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute, as she shares her radical yet practical vision for transforming business and the health of our environment through sustainable design.

Bridgett has served as president of the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute since its inception and previously served as director of the California Department of Conservation. As president of the Institute, Bridgett leads both the administration of the Cradle to Cradle Certified Products Program and advocacy of its adoption by designers, manufacturers, major brands, and their suppliers worldwide.

Registration & Continental Breakfast at 8:30 a.m. / Presentation at 9:00 a.m.

Sponsored by Taft's Sustainability Group & The Heritage Group

By Invitation Only.

Speaker Biography:

Bridgett Luther has served as president of the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute since its inception, in which she played a major part. In her previous position as director of the California Department of Conservation — appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2005 — Bridgett was keenly aware of the gap between the collection of millions of tons of recycled cans and bottles and their actual reuse. She also gained firsthand knowledge of the colossal expense of monitoring California’s thousands of toxic waste sites. No surprise, then, that she took it upon herself to hand out copies of William McDonough and Michael Braungart's breakthrough book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things to her colleagues throughout state government. “I saw we were chasing problems at the end of the pipe,” she says. “We wouldn’t have these challenges if we designed products properly at the start. As Bill and Michael say, we have an opportunity to move from a strategy of tragedy to an enduring strategy of hope.”

As president of the Institute, Bridgett leads both the administration of the Cradle to Cradle Certified Products Program and advocacy of its adoption by designers, manufacturers, major brands, and their suppliers worldwide. “That’s why we created the Institute, so the Cradle to Cradle guidance system for product quality could scale globally. When Governor Schwarzenegger heard about the idea, he naturally wanted the Institute in California and I am honored to have been chosen to lead it.”

Bridgett is a member of the Institute’s board of directors; she also works with the Institute's Certification Standards Board, and oversees consultant teams and staff, with offices in San Francisco; Chicago; Durham, North Carolina; and Venlo and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In 2011 she was appointed to the National Advisory Committee on Environmental Policy and Technology of the US EPA, as an Advisory Member of Vancouver Zero Waste Council and a founding board member of Syzergy bringing together the best of technology and sustainability.

During her five-year tenure in Governor Schwarzenegger’s administration, Bridgett oversaw a budget of $1.3 billion and 750 employees in 14 offices around California. She was responsible for a wide variety of programs, which included the California beverage container recycling program, the Land Resource Protection program, the California Geological Survey, the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal and the Office of Mine Reclamation.

Bridgett moved to California from Charlotte, North Carolina, where she helped create a recycling education program. She also led a $220 million bond campaign to acquire land to protect the region's water quality, and organized campaigns to create neighborhood parks and ball fields. She helped found the Carolinas office of the Trust for Public Land, one of the nation's largest national land preservation organizations.

She is a graduate of Vanderbilt University with a degree in Business Administration. Bridgett lives in San Francisco with her husband and has two grown children.