Chief Sustainability Officer, City of Palo Alto, CA.

Founder and Chairman, Natural Logic Inc. Author, The Truth About Green Business.
Inaugural member, Sustainability Hall of Fame. Lifelong social entrepreneur and sustainability geek.

Gil is widely considered one of the founders of the sustainable business movement, and was named an inaugural member of the Sustainability Hall of Fame (with Ray Anderson, Amory Lovins, Karl-Henrik Robert and Bob Willard), and "one of the 10 most influential sustainability voices in America" by The Guardian.

For 25 years, Gil has helped companies and communities design, implement and measure profitable sustainability strategies. He's now leading Palo Alto;s "climate moonshot."

Clients have included Arizona Public Service, Coca Cola, Dean Foods, eBay, General Mills, Gilead Sciences, Granite Construction, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Hewlett Packard, Levi Strauss, Nike, Odwalla, Pacific Gas & Electric, Rhodia, Raytheon, Steelcase, Sun Microsystems, SunPower, the US General Services Administration and many others.

Friend served in the California Governor's Office, developing early sustainability policies and programs. He was a founding board member of Internet pioneer Institute for Global Communications, founder and Executive Director of Foundation for the Arts of Peace, and cofounder and codirector of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a leading urban ecology and economic development "think-and-do tank," where he pioneered the current "green roof" trend 40 years ago.