Richard Eidlin - Founder and President of The Progress Group

For the past twenty-five years, Richard Eidlin has been connecting people and ideas at the intersection of business, politics and sustainability. His hands-on experience as a legislative aide, policy wonk, and political consultant within the private, public and not-for-profit world, provides him with a keen appreciation of how to think about policy and forge effective coalitions.

Richard is the Founder and President of The Progress Group, a consulting firm that provides strategic planning and business development in support of clean energy, social entrepreneurship and sustainability issues.

He focuses much of his work on building markets and promoting policies that increase social justice and enable clean energy technologies, sustainable businesses and green products to gain wider acceptance.

His experience in the renewable energy industry goes back to 1995 and includes working for several leading solar energy system integrators. He has helped lead several successful state efforts to have renewable energy portfolio standards adopted, as well as net metering legislation and ‘solar on school’ programs. His experience in the public sector includes four and a half years with the NYC government as a senior policy analyst.

Richard worked for a political risk-consulting firm and then some years later as a staff member at the UN Environment Programme in the late 1980’s and 1990’s. At UNEP, Richard directed a series of groundbreaking conferences that brought together hundreds of corporations, investors, NGOs, U.N. agencies and national and local governments to develop sustainable development programs. He was involved in establishing the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives and UNEP’s Finance Initiative and attended the 1992 Earth Summit in Brazil.

Richard has been involved in the field of corporate citizenship and social responsibility since the mid-1980’s. Richard was an adjunct faculty member with Boston College’s Center for Corporate Citizenship from 1995-2000 years, teaching courses as well as consulting to Fortune 1000 firms on tri-sector partnerships. He was a Board Member for the New Hampshire Business for Social Responsibility organization and helped found the Community Capital Bank in Brooklyn. Richard is a board member of CORE; Colorado’s leading business sustainability trade association, where he directs the annual Sustainable Opportunities Summit. He also teaches an online graduate environmental policy and management course at the University of Denver’s University College.

Richard earned a Masters in Public Policy from the University of Wisconsin and Bachelors in Government from the University of Maryland.

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