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	Paul Hawken founded his first business in 1966—the country’s first natural foods company—and has founded or co-founded several companies and organizations in the years since. See below for information about his current activities with PaxIT and Groxis, as well as some of his past professional experiences.


			The world is completely dependent on information technology to operate and maintain its systems of telecommunications, government, commerce, the military, academia, and global finance. Trillions of data exchanges happen on a daily basis making reliable data storage, retrieval, and manipulation critical to system performance. Data density in terms of transistors per square inch doubles every 18 months and is expected to continue to do so for at least two more decades. Doubling circuit density increases the heat produced by integrated circuits. On average, heat has been increasing 17 percent annually. The more power a microprocessor draws, the hotter it becomes. The higher the temperature, the greater the risk of failure or clocking down. As the microprocessor industry literally heats up, it requires equal emphasis on technologies to cool electronic circuits. Moore’s Law has run into the Heat Wall. This is PaxIT’s business. PaxIT is an engineering and intellectual property licensing company that has been granted exclusive global rights to cooling technologies developed by PAX Scientific, Inc. The company addresses the computer, aerospace, and telecom sectors with patented fan technologies that significantly reduce noise and energy while improving system and component cooling. While improved chassis and chipset cooling is critical to computer and chip manufacturers in order to improve performance and remain competitive, the need for quieter PCs is becoming a product differentiator due to consumer demand and regulation. Voluntary and government mandates in Japan, Germany, and Sweden now require acoustic standards that lower PC noise emissions. While companies are striving to meet these more stringent standards, microprocessors continue to become more powerful, generating more heat. The additional heat fluxes require greater cooling, which can generate more noise. Pax designs provide the information technology sector with patented fan technologies that greatly reduce noise and energy while dramatically improving system and component cooling


			PaxFan is an engineering and intellectual property licensing company that has been granted exclusive global rights to air movement technologies developed by PAX Scientific, Inc., of San Rafael, California. The company addresses the fan and fan-using equipment sectors with patented fan technologies that significantly reduce noise and energy use while improving airflow. Primary challenges facing the air movement industry are efficiency and noise—PaxFan technologies address both while simultaneously reducing manufacturing and operating costs. PaxFan grants manufacturers rights to use Pax geometries and the know-how for developing and manufacturing products, and to display PAX logos on those products. PaxFan also incorporates a sustainable business philosophy, and is motivated by the impact its licensed products will have on reducing energy use, and improving acoustic remediation.


			The Natural Capital Institute is a small research group working with institutions and individuals that wish to better understand principles and practices leading to social justice and environmental restoration. We both instigate and perform research projects on a variety of topics, submit our findings to clients and the public, and make the results available in various media, enabling society to make wiser informed choices for the future. Our mission is to provide the highest quality research in the dynamics between society and the biosphere in order to move humanity to a just and environmentally benign existence. Past research has dealt with environmental funding, water resources, and policy innovation. Current projects include an-depth study of Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) and corporate social responsibility (CSR). The research will describe the current state of SRI and present a counter-set of criteria for determining businesses appropriate for portfolio inclusion. Demand for SRI funds is growing more quickly than for any other type of investment. At present there are approximately 600 mutual funds. With the growth of the industry has come a bewildering set of standards that includes or has included companies such as Enron, WorldCom, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and others with troubled ethical, social and environmental records. The time has come for more definitive standards, one that will conform to people’s hopes and aspirations, but also their desire to allocate their savings and investments in a manner that will promote social and ecological change. We are creating the first database in the world of SRI mutual funds. Additionally, we will develop our own list of companies and will use NCI developed criteria that emphasizes the business model as having the greater weight with respect to SRI screening. Simply stated, it hardly matters how a company operates its business if where it is going is harmful. From these criteria we will develop a detailed and annotated list of the 100 Best Companies in the world. NCI recognizes that great companies are spread throughout the world—they’re geographically and culturally disparate, and often reflect an original business mission to improve social welfare and the environment through innovative products, services, or technologies. Utilizing current research tools in tandem with NCI’s extensive network of leaders in the business, environmental, and social justice fields, we will identify the financially solid companies that are proactively addressing social and ecological issues.


			Groxis creates and licenses software technology and knowledge mapping devices for enterprise software companies, websites, publishers, portals, search engines, and information appliance makers in order to increase the scalability of their applications and improve productivity. Through visual maps that are rich in content, users can perceive and structure the relationships among data sets and subject categories so that data and information is reorganized into knowledge more quickly and accurately. Essentially, Groxis provides users of web searches, enterprise and Internet portals, desktops, mobile, and other functions the ability to quickly navigate, access, and/or identify relevant information including the discovery of unknown or unnoticed relationships. Groxis can rapidly guide the user to landscapes or islands of data that are relevant to their purpose or task, or it can simply retrieve specific information more quickly.


			Metacode was a content management and knowledge synthesis company in the business of creating information productivity software. Metacode’s unique MetaData Modeling Language (MDML) linked databases to a proprietary resource integration systems model giving users the ability to create real-time models of any natural or human system. Data ubiquity is the most salient—and the most troubling—feature of the information age. People are suffering from "information anxiety" as they try to cope with the onslaught of data. This has resulted in information overload, greater data perishability, and limited productivity. In order to effectively plan and develop, institutions must have access to as much relevant data as possible, as quickly as possible. A number of software tools exist today that assist users in collecting and processing data and information, but there is as yet no standard or method for the organization of information into meaningful patterns generating insights into phenomena and behavior outside the boundaries of familiar contexts. Metacode’s language and associated products, including 3D Navigators, Filters, Circuit Viewers and Infoware, filled this gap. Metacode had 40 employees, with offices in San Francisco. In November 2000, Metacode was sold to Interwoven (IWOV).


			Mr. Hawken was hired by Interface as part of a twelve-member group of outside consultants responsible to help make Interface the world’s leading company in industrial ecology within the next ten years. Team members include Amory Lovins (Rocky Mountain Institute), Janine Benyus (author of Biomimicry), Bill Browning (Rocky Mountain Institute), Daniel Quinn (author of Ishmael), Jonathon Porritt (Forum for the Future—UK), John Picard (E2 Consulting), and Walter Stahel (Product Life Institute—Geneva). The team as a whole is trying to help move the company to completely closed-loop manufacturing processes so that all product and waste is returned and remanufactured into new product. Mr. Hawken serves as a member of Interface’s internal Quest team incorporating zero-based waste concepts for industrial emissions. He wrote and co-designed the Interface Sustainability Report, which has won numerous awards and praise throughout the world. Interface’s CEO, Ray Anderson, cites The Ecology of Commerce as the reason for his decision to make Interface the world’s leader in industrial ecology.


			The Global Business Network is a private consulting network of professionals linking corporations and governments with thinkers in order to understand major changes in the business environment, a consulting company addressing real world business problems, and a communication company using the full potential of the new information technology to integrate and distribute global business intelligence. Among the 100 network members are Lynn Margulis, Mary Catherine Bateson, Brian Eno, Daniel Yergin, Peter Gabriel, Esther Dyson, Joel Garreau, Peter Calthorpe, Peter Coyote, Laurie Anderson, Michael Maccoby, James Hillman, Kevin Kelly, William Calvin, and Amory Lovins. Mr. Hawken’s work within GBN is focused on sustainability.


			Mr. Hawken created Smith & Hawken, a $75 million catalog and retail company, specializing in garden and horticultural products. It began as a non-profit offshoot of Ecology Action, specializing in hand tools used specifically in French-intensive/biodynamic gardening, and later branched off into several other horticultural areas. It is credited with changing the "landscape" of gardening in America by introducing European tools, techniques, varieties, and literature. After twelve years, there were four retail stores, a 100,000 ft. shipping facility, 600,000 yearly catalog customers, armfuls of awards for graphic design, and five distinct catalogs: furniture, tools, bulbs, work clothing, and general merchandise. Mr. Hawken designed many of the tools and products sold including the "Monet" bench, the most popular outdoor bench in America. Smith & Hawken was cited as one of the most environmentally innovative companies in the US, and was the first company to participate in a debt-for-nature swap in partnership with Conservation International. It won numerous awards for its environmental work including the Council on Economic Priority’s Environmental Excellence award in 1990, the first time a small company had been so honored.


			Mr. Hawken created the United States’ first natural foods company in Boston, Massachusetts. Prior to Erewhon, "health food" stores offered limited food options alongside some vitamins and personal care products. Erewhon focused exclusively on organically produced fruits, vegetables, dairy, beans, eggs, juices, and condiments. It was also the first US company to produce organically grown rice, grains, and seeds for oils, pasta, nut butters, cereals, and dozens of other products. By 1973, Erewhon had two mills, two rail cars, warehouses on both coasts, and contracts with farmers in 37 states on 56,000 acres to supply its four stores and more than 3,000 wholesale accounts.


			Mr. Hawken worked in New Orleans as a staff photographer focusing on campaigns in Bogalusa, Louisiana, the Florida panhandle, and Meridien, Mississippi after the three civil rights workers were tortured and killed. His photographs were published throughout the world.

			Mr. Hawken worked as Press Coordinator with Martin Luther King’s staff in Selma, Alabama prior to the historic march on the capitol of Alabama. He registered press, issued credentials, gave updates and interviews on national radio, and acted as marshal for the final march. Along with security, he was responsible for several entertainers on the eve of the march including Leonard Bernstein, Joan Baez, Sammy Davis Jr., and Ella Fitzgerald.