Teens Turning Green

(In alphabetical order)

As Principal and Creative Director, Jennifer brings to Axion over 20 years of her business acumen, enthusiastic integrity, and insistence on delivering the finest creative product possible.  Her responsibilities include key account management and overall management of daily operations, personnel, financial and strategic business planning at Axion.

Prior to taking over the reins at Axion, Jennifer held management positions at Levi Strauss & Co.  She was a tangible driver of the Dockers brand, its design, merchandising and international production efficiency.  Her role on production and management task forces at Levi served to hone Jennifer’s skills in teamwork dynamics earning her aprestigious management award.

Jennifer holds an MBA from the University of San Francisco and a BA in Economics from the University of California, San Diego.  She lives in Marin County with her husband, Rob Jigarjian and son, Misha.

Zem Joaquin, Green Design and Strategy Consultant, is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of ecofabulous.com, a website that dedicated to finding the best of the best when it comes to sustainable, sexy, stuff. Zem also applied her eco-chic talents to Condé Nast’s House &Garden magazine as the former Eco Editor and currently to Domino Magazine as Contributing Eco-Editor. She also hosts a segment on apopular morning radio show and co-hosts episodes on national television programs such as Kimmora Lee Simmons “Life in Fab Lane,” and the upcoming Adrian Granier “Alter Eco” program. Zem regularly featured in various print, online and television channels, and she is frequently introduced and quoted as an industry thought leader and green design authority. A certified green building professional, protogé of William McDonough and long-time fashionista, Zem consults on eco-design projects for individuals and corporations. Her approach, mission andvision are inspirational and captivating as she is frequently engagedby leading corporations such as PG&E, Williams Sonoma Home, PotteryBarn, Visa and Whole Foods to lead mid level & senior management teams through tailored green strategy presentations and educational seminars. She is also co-founder of the Cradle to Cradle 2009 conference. When Zem is not writing for her website, preparing her next monthly contribution to a media channel, or helping a company “go green,” she is committed to her positions on the Board of Directors Global Green USA, Healthy Child, Healthy World, and Teens for Safe Cosmetics. She has lived and worked in Milan, Paris and London and finally settled down in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two young children.

Michelle Klahr, Senior Associate Consultant, Bain & Company

James Schurz, Attorney, Morrison and Foerster
Mr. Schurz’s practice encompasses all manner of commercial transactions and intellectual property matters, including actions for breach of contract and business torts, including unfaircompetition, fraud, trade libel, products liability, and jointventure/distributor termination.  Mr.Schurz has broad experience representing energy companies, resource companies, electronics manufacturers, and pharmaceutical companies.  He has appeared extensively in courts throughout Northern California, and, in particular, San Francisco Superior Court, the United States District Courts for the Northern and Eastern Districts of California, and the California Courts of Appeal.

He is an adjunct professor of law at theUniversity of California, San Francisco, Hastings College of the Law (1998 topresent)  is the co-author of “How to Choose a Forum that is Right forYou” (International Commercial Litigation 2002) and “Dispute Avoidance and Resolution Mechanisms in International Environmental Conventions and Multilateral Trade Agreements,” (United Nations Environmental Programme 1995) and a series of articles for California Law Business, California Real Property Journal, and International Commercial Litigation. 

Judi Shils,  Executive Director, Teens Turning Green

Judi Shils has spent the last 10 years of her life spearheading grassroots community projects. While attending a Marin County Supervisors meeting in 2002, she listened to concerned citizens pose questions about the high cancer rates in their neighborhoods and express thoughts as to possible causes. The dearth of answers led Shils to form the Marin Cancer Project: Search for the Cause, and now the teen-driven force for sustainable change, the non-profit, Teens Turning Green (teensturninggreen.org). As well, Shils worked with campaign members and green businesses to create the first line of eco body products for teens launched nationally with Whole Foods Market in 2008.  

After attending Temple University and American University, she started her Emmy Award-winning career with ABC Sports in New York and remained in television for 25 years. in 1988, Shils moved to Los Angeles, where she produced the first critically acclaimed reality television special "3,000 miles, 21 days, 10 cents" for Fox Television.
Moving to the Bay Area and becoming a mother to daughter Erin, changed the course of her life. In 1995, Shils created the successful Diary Project (diaryproject.com), one of the very first on-line forums for teenagers to discuss their lives, as well as an accompanying newspaper component and Emmy Award-winning television series called "Life in Progress" on Oxygen TV series. As well she produced a stage version of the DP, the script was created with entries from the website. She founded and ran the annual student art show "Celebrate Arts" for 10 years.  
Shils' environmental work began at the California Coastal Commission, where she has been a consultant since 1996, focusing on public education programs and the annual California Coastal Cleanup Day.  

Heidi Locke Simon, Partner, Bain & Company (Board Chair)

Heidi Locke Simon is a Partner of Bain & Company, a globalstrategy consulting firm.  She is a leader of the firm’s performance improvement capability area and manages Bain’s marketing and client development efforts on the West Coast.

Prior to joining Bain in 1993, Heidi worked in investment banking for Goldman, Sachs & Company and spent time in brand management with Colgate-Palmolive Company.

Heidi earned an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Politics and Economics with highest honors from Middlebury College, including course work at the University of Paris.

Janet MacGillivray Wallace graduated from Columbia University and New York University with a Masters in environmental law. She has more than a decade of public interest and social change activism fighting environmental injustices and a track record of successful campaigns.  

Currently she is Director of Strategic Campaigns at the IMatter Project where she is leading youth advocacy and mobilization on climate change, (title being determined) Women’s Earth Alliance focusing on the impacts of geoextraction and false climate solutions’ impact to indigenous communities, and an active blogger on global environmental, human rights, and indigenous issues.

Her work for nonprofits spans a range of environmental issues. At the Natural Resources Defense Council she focused on water, and as Senior Attorney for Riverkeeper, the N.Y.-based environmental litigation group, she worked for the cleanup of the PCB-contaminated Hudson River and fought corporations including GE and Monsanto. At Environmental Defense Fund she fought deregulation of genetically modified foods in the Biotechnology Program and helped bring a constitutional case on right-to-know and protective thresholds for commercial labeling. To better understand the human health impacts on vulnerable populations, she served as Policy Director of the Center for Children’s Health and the Environment and as Executive Director of Blacksmith Institute she traveled internationally to clean up polluted communities whose health was impacted. She next worked as a researcher and writer for Robert F Kennedy, Jr. on the book “Crimes Against Nature” and went on to found and serve as executive director for two nonprofits, Urbangreen, that addressed urban environmental issues, and Make A Ripple, a youth based nonprofit.

Prior to that, her work in government includes the United States Department of Justice where she helped prosecute the first case under the international ocean dumping statute and supported litigation against Exxon regarding the Exxon Valdez spill.  As a Superfund Attorney in Region II of USEPA she worked to enforce cleanups of contaminated communities, with emphasis on stricter standards most protective of human health.

Her passions include corporate accountability and subsidized raiding of indigenous people’s global natural resources, youth catalyzing, and cross-fertilizing issue areas to tap synergies that build and diversify constituencies.  Janet is currently a board member of the Wallace Global Fund, the newest elected board member of the Green Products Innovation Institute, and is working on two books, one for children, and one about extractive metals mining, that she anticipates completing in 2011.

Janet is the proud mother of fourteen year old Madeleine and has newly relocated from New York City to San Francisco where she lives with her husband Randall Wallace, film composer, activist and grandson of Henry A. Wallace, the thirty-third Vice President of the United States, his two children Allaire and Hank and the family dog Daisy.