Paul Hawken

Paul Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, author, and activist who has dedicated his life to environmental sustainability and changing the relationship between business and the environment.

He is one of the environmental movement’s leading voices and a trailblazing architect of corporate reform with respect to ecological practices. His work includes founding successful, ecologically conscious businesses, writing about the impacts of commerce on living systems, and consulting with heads of state and CEOs on economic development, industrial ecology, and environmental policy. 

He is the founder of Project Drawdown, a nonprofit organization dedicated to researching when and how global warming can be reversed. In 2017, Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan to Reverse Global Warming, became a New York Times best seller. The book maps and models the 100 most substantive technological, social, and ecological solutions to global warming. 

Hawken has written seven books on the environmental movement and the impacts of commerce on living systems, including four national bestsellers: The Next Economy, Growing a Business, The Ecology of Commerce,and Blessed Unrest. He has founded successful, ecologically conscious businesses, and consulted with heads of state and business leaders on economic development, industrial ecology, and environmental policy. Hawken is also one of the leading proponents of corporate reform with respect to ecological practices, a theme on which he often focuses in his writing.

Paul Hawken has appeared in numerous media, including The Today Show, Larry King Live, Talk of the Nation, Charlie Rose, and has been profiled or featured in hundreds of articles in the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Washington Post, Business Week, Esquire, and US News and World Report. His writings have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, Resurgence, New Statesman, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Mother Jones, Utne Reader, Orion, and many other publications.

His books have been published in more than 50 countries in 28 languages. Growing a Business became the basis of a 17-part PBS series, which he hosted and produced. The program, which explored the challenges and pitfalls of starting and operating socially responsive companies, was shown on television in 115 countries and reached more than 100 million people.

What People are Saying about Paul Hawken

“Avoiding stormy rhetoric, Hawken thoughtfully reviews ecological theories and disasters and insists that ‘ecology offers a way to examine all present economic and resource activities from a biological rather than a monetary point of view.’ Calling for a restorative economy, he proposes rational, achievable goals…”
—Publishers Weekly