Beth Gelfand is Co-Owner and Producer of the Buddy Club Children's Shows, which currently entertains over 30,000 families, dazzling audiences with live shows from October through April in three Bay Area locations: Berkeley, San Rafael and San Francisco. The shows are targeted for children ages two through twelve, and they feature the best children's entertainers from around the country: magicians, jugglers, singers, ventriloquists, acrobats, clowns, puppeteers and more. The Buddy Club also provides performers for corporate picnics, birthday and holiday parties, school fund raisers, events at shopping malls, fairs and festivals. Until recently Beth served as a program officer at the Center for Citizen Initiatives (CCI), working for over ten years in the field of citizen diplomacy and economic development for Russia through the Productivity Enhancement Program.

Beth has also worked as a political speechwriter and legislative aide, and as a publicist, event organizer, writer and editor for variety of non-profit organizations tackling societal and environmental issues. She attended Williams College in Massachusetts and graduated from UC Berkeley in Peace and Conflict Studies, with an emphasis on media and social change. Originally from Manhattan, Beth currently lives in the Richmond hills with her husband Scott and their daughters, Rose and Talia. Her hobbies include river rafting, hiking, bicycling, and flying through the air on trapezes.

Gil Friend is President and Chief Executive Officer of Natural Logic, Inc., a strategy and systems development company that helps companies and communities prosper by embedding the laws of nature at the heart of enterprise. Tomorrow Magazine called him "one of the country's leading environmental management consultants -- a real expert who combines theoretical sophistication with hands-on, in-the-trenches know-how." He was a founding board member of internet pioneer Institute for Global Communications, and played key or founding roles in such seminal environmental enterprises as EcoNet, GreenLine, the California Office of Appropriate Technology, Turner Broadcasting's Planet Live, University of California's AgroEcology Program, and Buckminster Fuller's "World Game." He was co-founder and Co-Director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, one of the nation's leading urban ecology and economic development "think-and-do tanks," pioneering the "green roof" trend 30 years ago.

Friend writes The New Bottom Line, a monthly column on business strategy, the Ask the Experts column at GreenBiz.com, a Sustainability Sundays column for WorldChanging.com, and a weblog on strategic sustainability and other matters of interest. He holds an MS in Systems Ecology from Antioch University, a black belt in Aikido, and is a seasoned practitioner of "The Natural Step" environmental management system.

JB has been using computers since the Apple IIe. At that time she worked in an artificial intelligence (AI) lab in London (England) and which had one of the first Apple Lisas sold in that country. It was fascinating. One could actually draw something without writing a program! Later, when the first Macintosh arrived, JB was disappointed by its lack of a hard drive, etc., but still excitedly waited for better to come. JB co-created and taught the first commercial multi-platform desktop publishing in London. At that time we were using Aldus PageMaker (1.0!), MacDraw, Ventura Publisher, Microsoft Word, (1.0) Microsoft Write, and Microsoft Paint. Programs like FileMaker, PhotoShop and DreamWeaver weren’t even a gleam in anyone’s eye. JB got involved with the Internet in the 1970’s when it was called DarpaNet, among other things.

JB returned to the United States, from London, in 1990, worked with non profits and created web sites and databases with FileMaker, creating database-to-web applications. Recently, JB loves telling folks about the 4Rs: recycling, reuse, reduction and rot: lessening our environmental footprint and having fun while doing it. She's a perpetual student: personal development (reading, exercise, thinking), non-violent communication, writing, bike riding, hiking, gardening, cats (JB lives with three of them) and other animals, environmental and social justice issues. JB's current, green certified, businesses include Pre-Paid Legal Services, Inc. (PPLSI)

Leila Khatapoush is a sustainability consultant and professional organizer who has made the East Bay her home for the last 12 years. She graduated from Mills College with a degree in Environmental Studies and is passionate about growing a sustainable small business community. Toward that end, she currently works with the City of Berkeley as a commercial recycling and food waste specialist, assisting business with resource conservation, improving land fill diversion rates, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. She also works with the Bay Area Green Business Certification Program in Alameda county, facilitating businesses' greening efforts and verifying their practices for certification.

As an organizer, Leila has helped residential and small business customers increase their productivity and optimize their physical environments. Leila was responsible for the highly successful Green Restaurant Initiative conducted by Sustainable Berkeley: she worked with over 150 Berkeley restaurants to improve their environmental performance, and over 50 are now eligible for certification through the Bay Area Green Business Program.

Leila enjoys spending time outdoors, partaking of our regions' abundant beauty and bio-diversity, in addition to cooking, swimming, and indulging her passion for all things musical

Marissa LaMagna worked as a sound editor for commercial and independent film in San Francisco and then went on to be associate producer for Jim Metzner’s Sounds of Science in New York. She studied with Leo Lee and Michael Johnson at Western Public Radio and produced sound for Saturday Night Special, a theater piece about guns in America that was performed in New York and Boston. Her video Danger Zone toured the world with New Video Music USA and was shown at the Musee d'Arte Moderne, Paris. She was a founding member of the Nuclear Beauty Parlor, a women’s anti-nuclear street theater group that produced a record, a radio piece, workshops and numerous media events.

During the nineties LaMagna raised a family, taught natural foods cooking and started a teen center where she did fundraising, marketing and community outreach. She coordinated the volunteer program for a New York congressional race and raised funds for an environmental group. She has recently resumed work as an independent radio producer and contributor to internationally distributed Pulse of the Planet and Voices of Innovation, and opened Studio Rasa, in Berkeley. Her work has been heard on NPR's Weekend Edition, Hot Soup on KQED in San Francisco and on 51%, a weekly half-hour program focusing on issues of particular concern to women, distributed internationally by WAMC.

Pamela Evans has worked in toxics regulation since 1980 and in pollution prevention and community toxics programs since 1990. Since 1997, she has coordinated Alameda County’s Green Business certification program, a pilot effort that has led the way for eight other locally run Bay Area Green Business Programs. Green Business certification integrates environmental regulatory compliance with resource conservation and pollution prevention.

Over 35 government agencies, utilities and business service organizations are partners in Alameda County’s effort, which has certified over 300 businesses, utilities, nonprofits and government operations. Forming partnerships with industry, government, special district and utility stakeholders, the Green Business Program has identified major industry-specific benchmarks for environmentally responsible practices. The GBP also works with partners and the business community to resolve regulatory and other barriers to Program implementation.