ABOUT
Mosses are simple plants, with no flowers, seeds or roots, that play a highly valuable role in making the earth a nice place to live. They filter and retain rainwater, control erosion, clean up hazardous chemicals, and store carbon. Moss covers 3% of the land mass and stores perhaps more carbon than any other plant on land. Moss also makes an excellent alternative ground covering to grass, enabling reduced use of fertilizers, pesticides, and mowing equipment.
Mollusks, and in particular bivalves, are a source of nutritious food that have beneficial impacts on their environment. For example, oysters form reefs that provide protection from storm surges and waves, increase habitat complexity, providing a safe place for other marine life, and they filter excess nutrients from the water they grow in, reducing the risk of eutrophication or 'dead zones.' Some species are able to filter as much as 55 gallons of seawater in a day.
Together, mosses and mollusks represent the earth ecosystems' ability to heal our land, air and water and provide both literal and figurative hope for a cool, clean, and prosperous future.
Ellie Moss
Founder and Principal
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Ellie has extensive experience developing environmental and social impact strategies for corporations, investors and nonprofit organizations, with particular expertise in plastic waste solutions and food and agricultural systems. Ellie began her work as a strategy consultant with The Boston Consulting Group in 2005 and spent six years with Blu Skye Sustainability Consulting working with companies such as Walmart, Nestle Purina, Energizer, and Microsoft. Ellie has a dual degree in Economics and Public Policy from Brown University and an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Collaborators
Kristina Gerken
Kristina is passionate about the circular economy and building a more sustainable future. Her research has focused on reducing our dependence on single-use plastics and she co-founded the company Plastic Dinosaur, whose mission is to reduce plastic waste in the backcountry. She has worked with The Incubation Network at SecondMuse, the Swedish fashion brand Filippa K, and the Brookings Institution. She received her MBA in sustainability and entrepreneurship from Colorado State University where she received the 2019 Leadership Excellence and Academic Distinction award. She is a graduate of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s From Linear to Circular USA program and holds an BA in Communications with a concentration in Public Relations from the University of Maryland. Kristina is a certified yoga instructor and a Wilderness First Responder.
Rebecca Harris
Rebecca is an experienced consultant with deep expertise in stakeholder engagement, strategy development, media strategy, and Appreciative Inquiry Summit design and implementation, especially in areas of food and agriculture, renewable energy, retail, and plastics in the circular economy. Rebecca has worked with Walmart, the US Dairy Industry, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Consumers International, US Farmers and Ranchers in Action, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Renewable Energy Buyer's Alliance. Rebecca studied Environmental Science at Humboldt State University where she graduated magna cum laude.
Dr. Jenna Jambeck
Jenna Jambeck is the Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor in Environmental Engineering at the University of Georgia and a National Geographic Fellow. Jenna has been conducting research on solid waste issues for over 20 years with related projects on marine debris since 2001. Her work often interweaves social context and sciences with technical aspects. She has conducted numerous research projects including a landmarks studies estimating the amount of plastic entering the ocean every year (2015), the production, use and fate of all plastics ever made (2017), and the U.S. contribution of plastic to land and ocean (2020). She is co-developer of the mobile app Marine Debris Tracker, a tool that facilitates a growing global citizen science initiative, with over 1 million litter and marine debris items documented and removed from our environment throughout the world.
Julie Menter
Julie is an accomplished sustainability and impact investment professional. Throughout her career, Julie has searched for opportunities to make a positive impact on the world around her. As a strategy consultant, first with the Boston Consulting Group and then with Blu Skye Sustainability Consulting, she has worked with large companies and non-profit organizations to redefine what good business means. This has included pioneering novel sustainability strategies, including target-setting, with large companies individually as well as working with coalitions of companies to determine how to better measure and manage environmental and social impacts. Most recently, as Chief Investment Officer with New Media Ventures, an impact investment organization, Julie continued to address the question of meaningful metrics and pathways to impact. Julie is also a co-founder of the GreenerMind Summit: a 3-day retreat for change makers in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is originally from France where she received her MBA.
Autumn Buford
Autumn is an emerging sustainability leader focused on fostering relationships with companies and organizations and connecting them with solutions to help achieve their sustainability goals. She is particularly interested in the intersection of social justice, human behavior, and sustainability to enact equitable and lasting change. Autumn earned her MA in Global Sustainability with a concentration in Sustainable Business from the University of South Florida’s Patel College of Global Sustainability. During her studies, she also worked with the U.S. Green Chamber of Commerce as the Global Solutions Project Manager. Prior to beginning her graduate studies she served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines. She holds a BS in Marine Biology and a BA in International Studies from the University of North Carolina Wilmington.