Jan. 21, 2013


Local green guru Anna Clark founded a communications and consulting firm called Earth People back in 2005, the same year she had her first child.

“From a business perspective, I started EarthPeople partly in response to an article I read in 2005 about multinational companies such as Walmart and Home Depot working to make their supply chains more sustainable.”

Clark says that she saw a need since, while larger companies have more than 100,000 suppliers and are hiring Corporate Sustainability Officers, small suppliers and most mid-sized companies or privately-held large companies do not have dedicated in-house sustainability staff.  Because of that fact, Clark says EarthPeople is priced and scaled to work with Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and non-profit organizations that do not fit the profile of large consultancies with EarthPeople helping these smaller companies profit from branding, corporate social responsibility, sustainability and public relations strategies.

“One of the primary reasons why companies are willing to invest in sustainable practices is the public relations and branding benefits it brings them,” she explains.  “By helping companies tell their story and earn recognition for their good deeds, EarthPeople is fulfilling a critical role in corporate sustainability.”

However, she also says that in order to ensure that what her company does is not merely “green window-dressing,” EarthPeople has built-in mechanisms to ensure credibility and integrity on all client engagements. In that regard, although some clients come to EarthPeople for marketing support and strategy, all clients get a roadmap for how to implement common-sense sustainability across their people, facilities, operations, products and brand. To further the education process, in December 2012 EarthPeople announced an affiliation with Transitioning to Green to offer Leadership Development 3.0,

The challenges are plenty in the world of sustainability too. Clark says one of her biggest challenges is staying positive when she sees how much more needs to be changed and how little will there is to do this “for moral reasons,” she says.  

“I spent years as a cubicle activist signing online petitions and volunteering on projects before I found a way to channel my enthusiasm for green advocacy into paying work as a consultant,” she explains. “Consequently, I approach my work with a sort of missionary zeal that isn’t often matched by my corporate clients.  It’s not that they don’t want to cooperate on a successful project with a sustainable outcome – it’s that they often are busy, underfunded, and unsupported by various levels of their organization. As a result, the changes are more incremental than transformational.”

Clark says that some of her company’s biggest wins have included getting her first Walmart supplier, six years after reading the article that gave her the idea, a big win to her in the sense that it fulfilled one of her first goals. She has also developed herself as a speaker and journalist for sustainability and she is the author of Green, American Style.

“You might call me a realistic idealist,” Clark concludes. “I am continuously reminded that my role is to be a catalyst for positive change, but I don’t have to force it before a client is ready.   

"Due to budget constraints of working with SMEs, we sometimes get only three months to work with a client. To expect sustainable transformation to occur in that amount of time would be absurd.  However, I’m gratified that I have seen changes sometimes unfold years later, long after I’ve left a project.”

Anna Clark has been published in the Huffington Post and other national outlets. She is an occasional contributor to Green Source DFW. 

For more information about Anna Clark, visit EarthPeople or AnnaMClark.com.


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