Biography
Amy Larkin, an award-winning entrepreneur, activist and producer, has been at the forefront of the environmental movement for decades. Her 2013 book Environmental Debt: The Hidden Costs of A Changing Global Economy revealed the links between our environmental and financial crises – both causes and solutions – and predicted the astronomical costs of climate chaos. From 2014-2016, she served as Vice Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Climate Change.
Through her consulting firm Nature Means Business, Amy currently works on systemic solutions to dramatically reduce plastic production and consumption, and to ensure a sustainable food supply that supports biodiversity and withstands extreme weather. As Greenpeace Solutions Director, Amy led a radical collaboration with the Consumer Goods Forum (400 of the world’s largest brands and retailers) to remove HFCs from refrigeration systems across the sector. This led to the inclusion of HFCs in the Montreal Protocol, will eliminate over 1% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, and received the Roy Award from Harvard.
Prior to her work as an environmentalist, Amy spent 15 years as an arts producer in NYC, Seattle and Europe, including two years as Executive Producer at Fabrica, Benetton’s Institute of Arts and Communications. Amy has been a guest speaker on corporate, government and cultural platforms around the world including Google, the World Bank, SXSW, Facebook, the Kellogg Innovation Network, the National Diet of Japan, and the Bergen International Festival. She has also lectured at dozens of universities around the world including Columbia, University of Copenhagen, University of Costa Rica, and been a guest on media from NPR, Bloomberg to CNBC, with regular columns for The Guardian and Huffington Post. She has served as Chair of both BiomimicryNYC and the ARChive of Contemporary Music.