About the Contributors

Carol Berry is the cofounder and former president/CEO of Putney Pasta, an all-natural gourmet pasta company. She started her business in 1983 with her then-husband, Jonathan Altman, in a renovated horse barn on their property in Putney, Vermont. Carol was responsible for the development of their innovative and unique line of upscale, vegetarian-filled pastas at a time when the market sold only meat-and-cheese-filled ravioli and tortellini. Their fillings and their quality separated their product from all other filled pastas in the marketplace. While raising a two-year-old child and running a business, Carol also served on the boards of the Vermont Manufacturing Extension Center, Connecticut River Valley Revolving Loan, Town of Chester Economic Development, and, for the last fifteen years, the Putney Food Coop, where she continues to serve. Carol sold her company in 2006 but has remained with the new group as the COO.

Gary Hirshberg, the husband of Meg Hirshberg and the father of three teenage yogurt eaters, is chairman, president, and CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farm, the world’s leading organic yogurt producer, based in Londonderry, New Hampshire. Gary joined Stonyfield Farm a few months after its start in 1983. Initially he also directed the Rural Education Center, the small organic farming school from which Stonyfield was spawned. Previously, in addition to serving as a trustee of the farming school Gary had served as executive director of the New Alchemy Institute—a research and education center dedicated to organic farming, aquaculture, and renewable energy. A New Hampshire native, Gary was one of the first graduates of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, has received eight honorary doctorates, and has won numerous awards for corporate and environmental leadership. He serves on several corporate and nonprofit boards including Honest Tea, Applegate Farms, the Full Yield, Peak Organic Brewing Company, Stony field Europe, Dannon Company, Danone Communities Fund, and Climate Counts. He is also chairman and cofounder of O’Naturals, a chain of natural fast-food restaurants. In his spare time, he also serves as president of the Express Soccer Club and coaches a girls’ under-seventeen premier travel soccer team, which keeps him humble and certain that he still has much to learn. For the past twenty-six years, Gary has overseen Stonyfield Farm’s phenomenal growth, from its infancy as a seven-cow organic farming school to its current $240 million in annual sales. Stonyfield has enjoyed a compounded annual growth rate of 26.1 percent for more than eighteen years by consistently producing a great-tasting product and using innovative marketing techniques that blend the company’s social, environmental, and financial missions. In 2001, Stonyfield Farm entered into a partnership with Groupe Danone, and in 2005, Gary was named managing director of Stonyfield Europe, a joint venture between the two firms with brands in Ireland and France and more in development.

Joe O’Connell is the founding owner of Creative Machines, a nine-person company that makes interactive museum exhibits, public art, and simple machines to help the neediest people around the world. Although (over) educated in the liberal arts, Joe is basically a maker at heart—someone who compulsively has to put things together and gradually expands the materials and processes he works with. He grew up in New Jersey, making all sorts of gadgets in his parents’ basement. When he and his sisters were young, their parents built them each a workbench, gave them tools and piles of materials, and encouraged them to make things. Joe began Creative Machines in 1997 to make museum exhibits. A few years later he began using the resources of his company to make public art in order to explore new ideas and reach more diverse audiences. Joe’s artwork often involves technology and is beautiful at first glance but yields deeper rewards with sustained engagement. Many of his sculptures (and indeed his entire business) are powered by photovoltaic arrays. In a step partly triggered by recent travels, Joe has turned toward making machines and art for the world’s most needy. He is moving toward new forms of art and machines that can emerge only in places out of the mainstream.

Tom Raffio is president and CEO of Northeast Delta Dental, a provider of dental benefits to individuals and organizations in New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine. The forty-eight-year-old, 180-person firm, which has offices in all three of the states in which it provides dental insurance coverage, has many measures in place to help its employees do just that. His company continues to have a 60 percent market share in New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont, a market of over three million people. When Tom took over, the company had only a 15 percent market share. In this highly competitive business, providers get contracts for just one year. Nine months later they need to resell the organizations on why they should continue to use Northeast Delta Dental instead of Blue Cross or any of the other large competitors. The industry average for renewals is 80 percent; Northeast Delta Dental’s rate is 97 percent. Tom feels most firms treat the customer like a commodity and when this happens, customers focus only on price. Tom uses customer service as a long-term strategy that continues to work.

Marie C. Wilson is founder and president of the White House Project, cocreator of Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day, and author of Closing the Leadership Gap: Add Women, Change Everything (Penguin, 2008). She left the Ms. Foundation in 2004 after two decades to devote her full energy to the White House Project. Over the past ten years, under Marie’s direction, the White House Project has led groundbreaking research and program initiatives that work to fill the leadership pipeline with women. In 2004, the organization launched the Vote, Run, Lead training program, which engages women in the political process as voters, as activists, and as candidates for political office. Marie has also led the organization’s efforts to expand women’s leadership outside the political arena. In 2005, the White House Project launched SheSource.org, an online database that connects high-level female experts to top news media outlets. It also founded the Corporate Council, a group of senior executive women who are active agents of change within their corporations. To bring women’s leadership and perspectives into the debate around national security, Marie spearheaded the organization’s Real Security Initiative, which was a driving force behind the International Women Leaders Global Security Summit. To honor the culture changers who have brought positive images of women’s leadership to the American public through film, television, theater, sports, and advertising, the White House Project hosts its annual EPIC (Enhancing Perceptions in Culture) Awards each spring in New York City. A leading advocate and voice on women’s issues, Marie is the recipient of numerous awards and honors. She is a board member of the Women Donors Network and also a member of the Women’s Leadership Board at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She is a regularly featured blogger on the Huffington Post and appears frequently as an expert commentator and guest on programs and networks including Good Morning America, Today, National Public Radio, BBC, MSNBC, Lifetime, CNN, Fox, and ABC. Born and raised in Georgia, Marie served on the Des Moines city council. She has five children and four grandchildren and resides in New York City.