After more than five years since last convening, the Sustainable Enterprise Conference is once again gathering together sustainability leaders.
These leaders, who represent the sectors of business, government and nonprofits, are coming to address the challenges of climate change at the local level.
It is personal for me. I first discovered the Sustainable Enterprise Conference when I was entering my last semester of graduate school in the Green MBA, then a part of Dominican University. I was so moved by what I saw that I shifted my culminating student project to a business plan for expanding the conference. It was Oren Wool, CEO and founder of Sustainable North Bay, who sat down with me that day between panels to breathlessly lay out the vision. I went home and that night started work on my capstone, now with the title “Sustainable North Bay.”
“This event is a convening of the people that are already [working on sustainability] in our community,” Wool said to me recently, an echo of that first conversation years ago. “We like to think that our event puts wind in their sails.”
After graduating, I served as Sustainable North Bay’s director of development, producing dozens of events with the team and managing SEC’s keynote stage from 2015 to 2019.
Working to hold the depth, passion, conviction and talent of those who gathered at SEC continues to be a highlight of my career. Now, after a five year break, the Sustainable Enterprise Conference returns, March 27 at SOMO Village in Rohnert Park. Allow me to provide a reintroduction to Sonoma County’s Sustainable Enterprise Conference.
It All Started With Lunch
In 2003, a now almost mythological lunch gathering started at Cafe Wonderful in Santa Rosa, now closed but still having an impact, its famously varied buffet of sushi and spaghetti overflowing as if for the gods of Olympus.
Among those at the regular lunches that year were Geneveve Taylor (who shepherded the SEC into its first iteration), Oren Wool (who has held the event since SEC 2009), John Stayton (co-founder of the Green MBA, the first MBA in the county to focus on sustainable enterprise) and Robert Girling (professor emeritus of the School of Business and Economics at Sonoma State University and author of The Good Company).
“It was Robert Girling who was the seed of all of it,” recalled Taylor, principal facilitator of Ag Innovations, a nonprofit that focuses on food and agricultural systems. “He said, ‘Let’s have lunch. Let’s invite a few people.’”
This was the era of Bush II—the environmental hope of the Gore campaign in the unobtainable past—and climate change activists around the world were inventing new ways to shift the economy toward environmental sustainability. The influence of the lunches on local sustainability initiatives that have arisen since cannot be overstated.
“We realized that if we wanted real change, we needed a platform to bring people together,” recalled Girling. “That lunch wasn’t just a meal; it was the beginning of something transformative.”
That transformation found its home with the Sustainable Enterprise Conference in 2006. I spoke with several of the key players.
“There was this feeling of sustainability as a wave that was building,” said Taylor. “We were already in our various ways…bringing all of the innovation and positivity and solutions-focus into Sonoma County and the North Bay. We were surfing a wave at that point. It was really exciting.”
The conference became a way to shine light on the work being done in a way that moved the needle forward for the region as a whole. New possibilities were presented, discussed, and iterations suggested.
“We offered a big umbrella from all sectors of our region with a common interest in moving our regional economic system in a more environmentally and socially conscious direction,” said KJ Stayton, known at the time as John, who now goes by the pronouns they/them. “Our focus was always on practical, action-oriented speakers, panels and workshops because we wanted to actually create change, not just talk about it.”
Regional Models
Sustainable North Bay was created to expand gatherings in the region, creating a model which other regions could then emulate. The first regions to host their own sustainable enterprise conferences were Marin and Contra Costa counties, under the guidance of Chris Yalonis, founder of VenturePad co-work space in San Rafael, and Mark Westwind, respectively.
Wool’s stated focus has always been to support the endeavors of others. SEC and Sustainable North Bay have been first and foremost communities of action. By convening determined representatives of the policy, business and non-profit sectors around well articulated needs, the community is more equipped to actualize a sustainable region. And he believes one successful region will inspire others.
“The way Oren articulates building community and the meaning of the event continues to be a kick in the pants to think, more—I hate to use the word—but like more metaphysically about the the dynamic, the aura, the vibe that SEC creates,” said Westwind, executive director of the Praxis Group, a non-profit in Contra Costa County.
An important influence on the conference has been One Planet Living, developed by Pooran Desai in the UK. Desai is a past keynote speaker at SEC and a consultant and guide with many local sustainability initiatives, not least of all SOMO Village and its new housing development and walkable community.
The inspiration for the United Nations’ 14 sustainability principles, the 10 One Planet Living principles focus on the need to reduce the consumption of our communities globally to live on only what our planet can actually provide. Get it? One Planet, the only metric that matters.
“When you’re building any sustainable community, it always sits within a bigger ecosystem,” said Desai, founder of oneplanet.com and co-founder of Bioregional, a sustainability consultancy that contributes to major developments like Disneyland’s Center Parcs Villages Nature Paris. “I was always interested in supporting the building of a bigger ecosystem around interconnected sustainable communities wherever I worked on One Planet Living communities around the world.”
Flash Forward to 2025
After growing to several hundred attendees and bouncing back and forth between SOMO Village and Sonoma State University a couple of times, in 2020, shortly after Covid struck, the conference was held online. Then it went dormant. Now the Sustainable Enterprise Conference awakes, with an openness to discovering what is needed by the community today.
“The conference is a day of sharing about what’s happening locally in sustainability, and building enthusiasm for the sustainability and climate plans of our community,” said Wool, CEO of Sustainable North Bay, which produces SEC. “The conference answers the question, ‘What should we do?’ And so, to answer that question before the conference would be premature.”
Reimagining the Future
I wish I could say this was just a feel-good piece about a fun local conference and a chance to get the band back together with some of the most eco-groovy people in the North Bay. But acknowledging the difference in the rate of climate change impacts from when the conference started in 2006, since when I joined in 2015, and the last five years since the conference paused, is striking and downright stressful. I asked the others about it.
“Are you quoting me in this article?” asked Westwind.
Giots: “This is all on the record, yes.”
Westwind: “Right. You know, I’d say, ‘Were f*cked.’ And that’s the summary that I’ve heard from almost everybody I’ve talked to.”
Anyone reading this article likely is concerned about climate change. And just as likely is that they are not living up to the One Planet metric. Why doesn’t it work, even among the most dedicated?
“Because almost no matter how we live, we’re still living on more than one planet,” said Westwind. Imagine how much we eat from other regions and how that gets to our countertops—via diesel trucks and plastic infrastructure. “To be really sustainable, I’d grow it all myself, or grow it within a walking distance.”
I expressed concern for my kid’s future to Desai. He disagreed with my timeline.
“We’re going to take the brunt, ourselves. We’re gonna hit two degrees by 2030. So no, it’s not the next generation,” he said, somehow retaining his trademark buoyant tone of voice. “I know top scientists who are saying, now they think the majority of humanity won’t make it through the next 25 years.”
As these words settled, I remembered a discussion several years ago, pre-Covid, with Desai and a couple other people: Wool; Girling; Brad Baker, principal of Codding Enterprise, which developed and administers SOMO Village; and Jahn Ballard, who helped worked hard to maximize the One Planet adoption in the North Bay.
We sat at a small round table in a garden at SOMO Village, embraced by native plants. Desai was telling us that scientists will not say publicly what they had realized about the climate catastrophe. This is a man who has worked with the UN, the World Wildlife Fund. It’s worse than they feared, and they don’t want to cause a panic, he confided. I do not want to hide this from you, dear reader. Now more than ever is the time to speak truth.
When we worked together, Wool often said, with a twinkling of both doom and hope in his eye, the way Zeus might explain fate to a human, “We’re going to get to sustainability—one way or another.”
The guiding principle of all those who have come to SEC over the years is the possibility of change. So, as hard as it might be to face the challenges that seem to be only intensifying since 2003, it is important to remember that crisis precipitates change. We have a crisis, so change is coming. There is hope in that. The depth of the crisis means that this time is our best chance for shaping a viable future, and there is still plenty of work to be done.
“I honestly think, like you, this is the greatest opportunity we’ve ever had to reimagine what the future will be like,” said Desai. “We have to completely reimagine our relationship with each other and with the rest of the planet. We’ve got two stark, very polar options ahead of us. Let’s take the opportunity to reimagine.”
What SEC excels at is bringing the big ideas down to where the rubber meets the road, to use a soon to be obsolete metaphor. For intentional, designed change to take place, the SEC community works together on practical solutions derived from replicable methodologies.
“On the one hand, [I am] disturbed by some of the [federal] actions that are really disruptive, and on the other hand, I’m listening really hard for the underlying interests that deserve attention and conversation,” said Taylor. “That’s my role as a facilitator, as someone who believes in building bridges, so I’m listening hard right now.”
Wool and the SEC 2025 team are investing all the social capital they have to make the conference a locus for intentional change, a way for the community to design together the best outcome we can manage.
“All I’m doing is saying, ‘Hey, the door is open.’ That’s my part of it. I’m excited to make the space happen,” said Wool. “I’m not sure the community needs me, [but] this is just what I wanted to do. And everybody I talked to was excited to try it again.”
Sustainable Enterprise Conference gathers on Thursday, March 27 from 9am to 3pm at SOMO Village. Tickets range from $35 for students to $135 for late registration. To attend, go to sustainableenterpriseconference.com.
