Biography

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A popular, entertaining speaker, Gary has taken his uplifting message to consumer and business organizations across America as well as worldwide.  His topics range from the organic industry and farming to corporate social responsibility and the environment.

 

Hirshberg has overseen the growth of Stonyfield from its infancy as a seven-cow organic farming school in 1983 to its current $320 million annual sales. Stonyfield has enjoyed a compounded annual growth rate of over 24% for more than 18 years by consistently producing great-tasting products and using innovative marketing techniques that often combine the social, environmental, and financial missions of the company. One of the company's five missions is "to serve as a model that environmentally and socially responsible businesses can also be profitable" and Gary has realized this vision in every aspect of the company. In 2001, Stonyfield Farm entered into a partnership with Groupe Danone, and in 2005, Gary was named managing director of Stonyfield Europe, a joint venture between two firms with brands in Canada, Ireland and France. He continues to be a leading catalyst for sustainability initiatives at Groupe Danone, a $20B multinational enterprise.

 

In the early days of Stonyfield, Gary wore many hats - from yogurt-maker to bookkeeper. He served as director of the Rural Education Center, the small organic farming school from which Stonyfield was spawned. Before that, he was executive director of The New Alchemy Institute, an ecological institute devoted to organic agriculture, aquaculture and renewable energy systems. He was also the Founding President of the Cape Cod Environmental Coalition as well as the Founding Chairman of the Cape and Islands Self-Reliance Corporation. Earlier in his career, he was a water-pumping windmill specialist, an author, an environmental education specialist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and a manager of environmental tours to the People's Republic of China.

 

Gary is a New Hampshire native and was one of the first graduates of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He has received six honorary doctorates and was named a Gordon Grant Fellow from Yale. He serves on several corporate and non-profit boards, including  including Applegate Farms, the Dannon Company, Honest Tea, Peak Organic Brewing Company, The Full Yield, Climate Counts, Express Soccer Club, Stonyfield Europe, Ltd, Glenisk, Ltd and the Danone Communities Fund. He is the chairman and co-founder of O’Naturals, a natural fast food restaurant company.  He served on the advisory panel for Newsweek magazine's Global Environmental Leadership Conference and as an Advisor to Renewal Partners LLC, Solera Capital, the Heinz Center Leadership Summit and the Corporate Ecoforum.

 

Gary has won numerous awards for corporate and environmental leadership including: the 1999 Global Green USA's Green Cross Millennium Award (inspired by Mikhail S. Gorbachev) for Corporate Environmental Leadership. Gary was named "Business Leader of the Year" by Business NH Magazine and "New Hampshire's 1998 Small Business Person of the Year" by the U.S. Small Business Administration.

 

In January 2008, Hyperion Books (NY) published Hirshberg’s Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World, which outlines how consumers and businesses can be forces for positive and tangible change. The book includes case studies of companies that are boosting profits by reducing their environmental impact. Robert Redford’s review: "Gary Hirshberg dared to dream new ways of doing business based on respect for customers, employees, and the earth.  And, it worked.  If you buy or sell anything, or simply want to feel hopeful about the future, this lively and legitimately optimistic book is worth every minute."