Jeffrey Hollender
Jeffrey Hollender is co-founder and former CEO of Seventh Generation, which he built into a leading natural product brand of household and personal care products from 1988 to 2010. Seventh Generation’s line of over 100 products is distributed in most leading retailers including: Target, Whole Foods, Kroger, Safeway and Amazon. The company was sold to Unilever in October 2016 for over $600 million and Hollender will rejoin the Board of Seventh Generation in 2017.Hollender is currently the founder and CEO of Hollender Sustainable Brands, a consumer products company that develops and markets Sustain reproductive healthcare products. He is also Adjunct Professor of sustainability and social entrepreneurship at New York University and serves on the Kimberly-Clark and the Morgan Stanley Sustainability Advisory Boards.
As an author, speaker and consultant Hollender is a leading authority on corporate responsibility, sustainability, social equity, global health care, and population issues. Hollender is the author of seven books focused on corporate responsibility and sustainability including, “The Responsibility Revolution: How the Next Generation of Businesses Will Win” (Jossey-Bass, 2010). His most recent book, “Planet Home: Conscious Choices for Cleaning & Greening the World You Care About Most” (Clarkson Potter, 2010) guides consumers through the dizzying array of environmental decisions they make each day, helping them understand which choices matter most.
Hollender’s first business ventures were in the field of education and publishing: the Skills Exchange in Toronto and Network for Learning in New York City. In 1985, after selling Network for Learning to Warner Publishing, a division of Warner Communications (now Time Warner), he was appointed president of the renamed firm, Warner Audio Publishing. In 1988, he acquired Renew America, a mail order catalog of green products, which eventually became Seventh Generation.
Hollender is the co-founder and co-chair of the American Sustainable Business Council, a coalition of 200,000 business leaders committed to corporate responsibility. He also serves on the board of Greenpeace US and Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility. He divides his time between Charlotte, VT, and New York City.
Additional Board Experience:
- Co-founder and former Director of Community Capital Bank, a New York financial institution that invests in affordable housing and community development.
- Board of Directors, Alloy Inc., a publicly traded company between 2006 and 2010 when the company was sold.