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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 ".