Van Jones

Van Jones is president and co-founder of Rebuild the Dream, a platform for bottom-up, people-powered innovations to help fix the U.S. economy. A Yale-educated attorney, Van has written two New York Times Best Sellers: The Green Collar Economy, the definitive book on green jobs, and Rebuild the Dream, a roadmap for progressives in 2012 and beyond. In 2009, Van worked as the green jobs advisor to the Obama White House. There, he helped run the inter-agency process that oversaw $80 billion in green energy recovery spending. He’s currently the Visiting Fellow in Collaborative Economics at Presidio Graduate School, and serves on the boards of Natural Resources Defense Council and Demos. While best known as a pioneer in the environmental movement, Van has been hard at work in social justice for nearly two decades, fashioning solutions to some of urban America’s toughest problems. Van has co-founded three other successful, thriving non-profits: Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Color of Change, and Green for All.