About Enviroloution - Who We Are

Who We Are

Envirolution™ is a sustainability leadership, education, and career development organization.

Envirolution™ is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to developing and scaling dynamic K-12 education, job training, leadership academy, and community outreach programs centered around green industries and green energy. We aim to drive the growth of the green economy, thus increasing the number of jobs available in green industries. Our community-based green economy solutions prepare the future and current workforce for green jobs while simultaneously increasing the public demand for green products and services. Our initiatives empower all stakeholders involved to achieve triple bottom-line results that benefit local economies, local populations and local environments.

We endeavor to drive the growth of a true and just green economy by inspiring and empowering the leaders and workers who will lead this charge!

With a focus on service learning, our programs not only provide career development for students, but also enable our participants to give back to their communities. Envirolution™ seeks to promote global change by championing local efforts that empower citizens to do positive, meaningful work and to make a good living while giving back to their own social and environmental communities.

Our Mission

Our Vision

Envirolution’s™ Vision is to:

• Live in a world wherein the economic, social and environmental spheres of our lives are prosperous and in balance.
• Participate in a society where citizens are able to make a living doing work that contributes to a sustainable and healthy community and environment.
• Transition to a truly green and just economy by having every business, job, and building operating and succeeding from a triple bottom line perspective.
• Have individuals, companies, and governments committed to preserving and revitalizing our endangered biosphere
• Thrive in a world where 100% of the energy used is sourced from clean, renewable resources.
• See an educational system that employs a practical, experiential learning based, hands-on approach that prepares our youth for this rapidly developing green economy

We are committed to promoting this vision through our work, our partnerships, and our presence in the communities we serve.

Our Philosophy

Envirolution™ is driven by a dynamic, action-oriented philosophy that we refer to as “Educate. Unite. Take Action.” The Three Spheres—society, environment, and economy—are the core of our philosophy; in everything that we do, we focus on educating communities about the importance and power of the Three Spheres, we unite communities to develop Three Spheres based solutions, and we emphasize taking action to develop workforces and businesses with clear Three Spheres focuses. Envirolution™ is also guided by Core Values that supplement our philosophy and influence how we work.

Educate. Unite. Take Action.

Envirolution’s™ Philosophy—Educate. Unite. Take Action.—makes sense. When you think about it, the first step to addressing any problem or issue is always to be educated about the issue and its possible solutions. We make sure that everything we do has an educational component.
Next, because there is no sense in reinventing the wheel, we assess the resources that are already at work on the issue.

We believe that together we can achieve more,

so we aim to incorporate existing efforts with new sources of creativity, leadership, and help so that we can all work together to produce viable, sustainable solutions to problems. We are proud to facilitate stakeholder engagement of those involved in Envirolution’s™ projects, and always welcome the feedback and ideas of our partners and contributors.

Finally, we must take action. We work to create a game plan to address problems, and then we unite as a team and take action to provide solutions. No matter how great the solutions appear on paper, no problems will be resolved without action! Envirolution is committed to solutions and actions, and not whistle blowing.

The Three Spheres

The “Three Spheres” (economy, society, and environment) represent the foundation of Envirolution’s™ work and guide all of our efforts. Envirolution™ champions the Three Spheres perspective by striving to promote and implement solutions that have positive environmental, economic, and social impacts.

Every action and decision that we make has an impact on all Three Spheres.

Therefore, it is important that we think about our actions through the lenses of all three spheres, and not through only one or two lenses. Thinking solely about one or two, and not all three, lenses has led to many issues in our past and present. For example, businesses that are driven only by economic gains are likely to exploit humans, natural resources, and environments.

Core Values

In addition to our philosophy, which combines the Three Spheres with our Educate. Unite. Take Action model, Envirolution™ believes in and follows a set of Core Values. Our Core Values—sustainability and leadership—are present in everything that we do.

Sustainability

Key to our work is the concept of sustainability. There are scores of different definitions that exist for sustainability. We agree with many of the definitions, however, Envirolution™ believes that the Three Spheres are an excellent tool to help define sustainability and to guide our efforts in this direction. Therefore, Envirolution™ defines sustainability as “the equal balance and prosperity of the Three Spheres of our world: economy, society, and environment.”

Envirolution™ is dedicated to advancing sustainability by ensuring that the Three Spheres are present and in balance. By focusing on Three Spheres based-solutions, Envirolution™ develops and provides programs, projects, and solutions that produce win-win-win situations. We believe that a society that values each sphere equally will find a more unified and healthier quality of life for a greater amount of the population. This is what Envirolution™ is all about. We are committed to promoting this philosophy through our work, our partnerships, and our presence in the communities we serve.

Leadership

Leadership is not a skill or right that is intended or granted exclusively to a particular group or class. Envirolution™ recognizes the need to empower everyone to take charge of their lives, jobs, industries, and communities. Acknowledging that every person—and not exclusively the upper echelons of society—can be a leader, Envirolution™ works hard to make leadership skills accessible for all.

Envirolution™ strives to help people from all social strata and backgrounds to develop their leadership skills because we believe that everyone can be a leader in his or her own right. In our view, a leader is any person or organization that makes positive contributions and provides direction to an area. Whether you are a student or youth leader, a business or organization leader, the leader of a group or collective, the leader of a family, or an individual leading yourself toward a sustainable future, we have programs and curricula to help you develop your skills.

Envirolution™ Believes:

• Everyone has skills, talents, and interests they can contribute to developing the green economy
• Everyone can incorporate sustainability into their personal and professional lives
• Everyone—individuals, businesses, and governments—can and should be leaders of environmental and social responsibility
• Individuals are collectively capable of changing the world
• A successful global, green economy will consist of networks of locally based, independent economies
• Solutions to creating a more sustainable world exist; we just need to commit our
  money, energy, and creativity to supporting solutions that are focused, sustainable, and action oriented
• We are ready to dramatically improve the world, and you can help

Our Roots and Background

Envirolution™ is the creation of four Yale University classmates—Christian Dietrich, Antuan Cannon, Timothy Polmateer, and Alex Gamboa—who decided in 2005 that they wanted to do something positive for the world. Each of Envirolution’s™ four co-founders felt blessed by the opportunities in their lives, and they wanted to dedicate their energy, skills, and education to a humanitarian effort. Their idea was to leverage the influence, power, and financial success of the real estate business world to provide the financial security to support a philanthropic, mission-based organization that could be financially sustainable and beneficial to society.

In early 2006, they attempted to start a real estate company called Enchanted Homes whose mission was to build schools in Latin American countries. However, their plan coincided with the peak of the real estate industry, so they paused to reconsider their plan. The co-founders’ interests in real estate, combined with Dietrich’s passion for the environment, led them to the world of green building. Excited to learn about this growing industry, Cannon, Gamboa, and Polmateer read books and articles about the environmental movement, attended conferences, networked with professionals and scholars, and they learned all that they could to make environmental consciousness a larger part of their lives.

In the summer of that year, Cannon, Gamboa, and Polmateer conceived the idea of an organization that would act as a central hub for the many environmental organizations they noticed that existed but struggled to affect change and efficiently collaborate. All four of the founders wanted to engage youth because they firmly believed that the transition to a just and green society would not succeed without empowering youths to be the leaders of this change.

The name Envirolution™, which had previously been suggested for the real estate company, became the obvious choice of a name for the new organization. The name Envirolution™ is a portmanteau word consisting of environment, solution, evolution, and revolution, which are all important concepts to the organization and its participants.

During the organization’s early years, the co-founders adapted the perspective of the triple bottom line (society, economy, environment) into the Three Spheres framework, which advocates building in an environmentally responsible manner, tying in a social non-profit arm, and making the company financially successful. This concept would eventually guide them through the rest of their efforts. As a result of their shared focus on youth engagement and general education, Envirolution’s™ co-founders hosted community events in Reno and the East Village neighborhood in New York in 2007, and organized environmental clubs at Yale and Pratt in Brooklyn. While operating from New York, the organization’s presence in Reno was maintained by a core of dedicated volunteers. Over time, the co-founders saw the need to open a central office in Reno.

While Envirolution™ did not become the “hub” organization that the co-founders originally envisioned, the core of the organization’s charter evolved to create mission-based green jobs that could be financially sustainable and successful, which directly related to the nexus of the three spheres. When asked by a colleague what the organization’s mission was, the co-founders responded, “We all want to help people get green jobs and to grow green businesses.”

In 2008 in New York City, Antuan Cannon was running a small business energy audit program through an engineering firm for which he worked. Cannon saw different holes in the market, specifically for small businesses, and created a program that he thought would grow the market and would serve as a training opportunity. Cannon’s “Win-Win” project became Envirolution’s™ flagship program, and continues to enjoy great success today.

Envirolution™ also determined that high school clubs lacked substantial direction, and that students needed a specific focus to help start their sustainability learning process. Energy efficiency was a logical start because of its accessibility and quick return on investment. As a result of these perceived problems, Envirolution™ developed the Project ReCharge™ program to address these needs.

Education, youth leadership, green jobs and job training, career development, and the service learning model have always been at the heart of Envirolution’s™ mission. Today, Envirolution™ still maintains offices in New York City and Reno, Nevada, and offers distinct programs that prepare participants to become leaders of a truly just and green economy and society.

To learn more about Envirolution’s™ success, please visit our Press and Testimonials sections.