Speaker
Biographies
Gary
Hirshberg
President and
CEO, Stonyfield Farm
Gary Hirshberg is
husband of Meg Hirshberg, and the father of three little yogurt eaters.
He is President and CE-YO of Stonyfield Farm, the leading manufacturer
of all-natural and organic yogurt in the US. Gary has overseen the company's
growth from infancy to its current $150 million annual sales level with
distribution in all 50 states, often leading with an innovative marketing
edge that combines the social, environmental, and financial missions
of the company.
In the early days
of the company, Gary wore many hats - from yogurt maker to bookkeeper.
He even doubled as Director of the Rural Education Center, the small
organic farming school from which Stonyfield was spawned. Prior to Stonyfield,
Gary served as the Executive Director of The New Alchemy Institute,
an ecological institute devoted to organic agriculture, aquaculture
and renewable energy systems. Among other prior positions, he was a
water pumping windmill specialist and author, a manager of environmental
tours to the Peoples Republic of China and an environmental educator
with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
A New Hampshire
native, Gary was among the first graduates of Hampshire College in Amherst,
MA and he has received three honorary doctorates. He serves on several
corporate and non-profit boards including Honest Tea, and O'Naturals,
a new natural fast foods restaurant of which he is a co-founder and
Chairman. Gary was also Co-Chair from 1993-97 of The Social Venture
Network and is the Founder of the Social Venture Institute, a boot camp
for entrepreneurs.
Gary has won numerous
awards for corporate and environmental leadership such as the 1999 Global
Green USA's Green Cross Millennium Award, inspired by Mikhail S. Gorbachev,
for Corporate Environmental Leadership. Gary was named Business NH
Magazine's "Business Leader of the Year" and the U.S. Small Business
Administration's "NH's 1998 Small Business Person of the Year ".