Radical Industrialists

3 myths about product life cycle assessments
By Mikhail Davis, May 17, 2013
These three persistent myths about LCA each have a grain of truth, but also a fundamental misunderstanding.

How hard can it be to spend 30 minutes of your workday outdoors?
By Nadine Gudz, April 19, 2013
The 30x30 Nature Challenge is deceptively easy with big payoffs: Encourage your employees to spend 30 minutes a day outside for 30 days.
How community service helps build a great company
By Melissa Vernon, March 15, 2013
Interface's employees — from the CEO down — gain an emotional connection...
Elephants and North Stars: 4 steps to meet sustainability goals
By Mikhail Davis, February 15, 2013
Setting ambitious public goals around sustainability is a bold move — but only if you take on what really matters.
Biophilia and innovation: Can changing your view change your worldview?
By Lindsay James, November 30, 2012
Improving the design of our built environment can actually work for us at a deeply biological level.
Rage against the machines? Revolutionizing industrial design
By Mikhail Davis, October 19, 2012
How do you create a "next industrial revolution" with the last revolution's machines? With tinkering, tenacity and TLC.
Plastic icebergs: Navigating the PVC conundrum
By Mikhail Davis, September 14, 2012
What happens when a leadership company loses its bearings.
Why transparency needs an intervention
By Nadine Gudz, August 17, 2012
What the systems thinker Donella Meadows brings to CSR reports and Environmental Product Declarations.
What's in your product? Learning to love transparency
By Lindsay James, July 09, 2012
Changing the rules to make transparency the norm is easier said than done, but it is potentially transformative.
Is a 'womanly' business a more sustainable one?
By Mikhail Davis, June 07, 2012
Could cultivating "womanly" virtues -- such as collaboration, empathy, and creativity -- in our male leaders, while creating space for more female leadership, make businesses more...
Biomimicry and teaching business the 'secrets of life'
By Lindsay James, April 24, 2012
Janine Benyus has shown time and again in her work on biomimicry that life creates conditions conducive to life. Here's how the business world could do that.
What to do when you've picked all the low-hanging fruit
By Nadine Gudz, March 23, 2012
With just eight years remaining for Interface to reach its target of zero environmental footprint by 2020, it's clear that there's no more low-hanging fruit. How does a company adapt to a...
Mind the Void: Interface After Ray
By Lindsay James, January 23, 2012
The first in a new series of articles from Interface's sustainability leaders looks at how to overcome the loss of a "leader as real-world superhero," as Ray Anderson was.

Radical Industrialists

In this blog, the sustainability leaders at Interface, Inc. -- arguably the company that has done the most to embrace sustainability as a business driver -- share their insights and expertise from their climb up Mt. Sustainability.

Radical Industrialists Contributors

Lindsay James is Director of Strategic Sustainability for InterfaceFLOR in Chicago, Ill.

Lindsay and her team are responsible for strategically leveraging and expanding Interface's thought leadership in sustainability. She is passionate about the potential to harness our economic system to improve our natural systems and has become one of Interface's internal experts on biomimicry through her participation in the Biomimicry Professional Certificate Program. She aspires to integrate the deep principles of biomimicry and resilience into Interface's organizational design -- and ultimately demonstrate how biomimicry can allow business to become sustainable and regenerative.

Lindsay earned an MBA in Sustainable Enterprise from the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina, where she first met Ray Anderson. Lindsay's previous professional experience includes economic consulting, commercial real estate acquisitions, and environmental economics research with RTI International.

Mikhail Davis is Manager of Strategic Sustainability for InterfaceFLOR in San Francisco, Calif. InterfaceFLOR is the world's largest manufacturer of modular carpet, and has promised to eliminate its negative impact on the environment by 2020.

Mikhail is responsible for strategically leveraging and expanding InterfaceFLOR's thought leadership in sustainability with a focus on the US Pacific and Southwest Regions. He has over 14 years of experience as a strategic advisor, analyst, designer, and manager for sustainability programs in the non-profit and for-profit sectors. His favorite sustainability challenges to tackle include: unlikely stakeholder alliances, greener chemicals and materials, and closed loop systems.

His previous work includes three years as personal manager to environmental icon David Brower (an original member of Interface's "Eco Dream Team" in the late 90s) and five years with Blu Skye Sustainability Consulting building sustainable business strategies for Fortune 500 companies including Walmart, Waste Management, Bunge and Staples. He holds a B.S. in Earth Systems from Stanford University.

Nadine Gudz is the Director of Sustainability Strategy at InterfaceFLOR Canada.

Nadine is responsible for leveraging and expanding InterfaceFLOR’s sustainability leadership through education and community engagement. She also leads Interface’s global organizational learning team.

Before joining InterfaceFLOR, Nadine was teaching in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University and served as a research fellow with IRIS, the Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability.

Melissa Vernon is the Director of Sustainable Strategy for InterfaceFLOR, the world's largest manufacturer of modular carpet, which has promised to eliminate its negative impact on the environment by 2020.

Melissa has a passion for learning, teaching, and developing talent in others. She is a skilled researcher, speaker, and trainer with deep expertise in environmental education and corporate sustainability. Currently, Melissa is working with internal and external experts to build a robust Organizational Learning culture within Interface. Melissa joined Interface Research Corporation in 2002 and has helped guide the evolution of the "Extreme Green Team" of sustainability experts at Interface since then. Her previous work was in environmental education with AmeriCorps as part of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and the Shedd Aquarium.

Melissa is a graduate of the University of Michigan's Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise, with an MBA from the Business School and a Master's in Science from the School of Natural Resources & Environment.

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