Stanford Environmental Portal

Sam Goldman

Graduate School of Business
Second year

"Whether we as individuals or a society are addressing energy, waste, sewage, air pollution, education, or health care, I think we can find profitable solutions to assure better jobs, healthier citizens, and more productive ecosystems throughout the world."

While serving in the Peace Corps, Sam Goldman struggled to fund a non-governmental organization aimed at promoting sustainable agriculture and reducing malnutrition in Benin, West Africa. Over four years, he realized he needed to hone his business skills if he wanted to produce financially self-sustaining projects that would play a larger role in tackling environmental and societal problems. A biology undergrad and a self-proclaimed tree-hugger, Sam was attracted to the Stanford Graduate School of Business because it "emphasized traditional core business knowledge, in addition to entrepreneurship and triple-bottom-line perspective." He hopes, during this final year of his MBA program, to concentrate on building the entrepreneurial skills that will allow him to scale ideas in developing countries.

Sam is passionate about working with business leaders, among whom he perceives some misunderstanding of the great opportunities inherent in environmental issues. Along with other students at the Stanford GSB, he helped start the Environmentally Sustainable Business Club in 2005, and he is most excited about the club's upcoming Greening the Bottom Line program, a series of lectures and interactive projects intended to "use the GSB as a living case-study to demonstrate how environmental initiatives can result in economic benefits."

Sam believes that a relatively small number of influential companies can "turn the tide on environmental performance." He recently worked with Wal-Mart's Strategy and Sustainability team to develop a community recycling program, and he believes that as Wal-Mart's successes and environmental initiatives become better understood, there will be a tipping point that will influence change on a much larger scale. In the future, Sam hopes to play a role consulting similarly important companies, ideally helping to create viable business models that provide monetary incentives to adopt sustainable policies.

Sam welcomes new participants in his work, and invites anyone "interested in helping to develop or execute green projects at the GSB that have positive environmental and economic benefits" to contact him at samg@stanford.edu.

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Erin Gaines

Earth Systems
Class of 200X

"Universities have a responsibility to not only educate students, professors and staff in their academic pursuits, but also recognize how their every day activities affect the local and global environment."

Erin has been a leader in promoting sustainability at Stanford. As an active member of Students for a Sustainable Stanford since her freshman year and a driving force behind the school's sustainable food program, she has worked with Stanford Dining to engage faculty and staff in all nooks of the university to help bring sustainable dining home. She has been a pioneer in bringing together the diverse resources of the university - research, students and campus operations - and sees great potential to create a sustainable local community in the unique environment of a university.

Erin's commitment to green food does not stop at the campus borders. She has worked with organic farms in Santa Barbara and Costa Rica and hopes to dedicate her future to campaigning for community-wide sustainability agendas. Where will she be? She has her eye on Portland, OR, but the far future has yet to be determined. It will be by a small, organic farm, and, also for sure, a body of water. "I hope to find a working balance between living a simple, vibrant, active life and promoting sustainable food programs on a community level," she says.

A dedicated student as well as community citizen, Erin loves the interdisciplinary academic opportunities offered by Stanford, particularly her major, Earth Systems, which attracted her to Stanford from the beginning. She has also participated in a variety of research, beginning with helping her dad with marine ecology research since she was a kid. At Stanford she took a two-quarter-long course at the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, where she experienced hands-on training and had the opportunity to teach to a sixth-grade class. "I loved traveling every Thursday to Jasper Ridge to learn about biology, geology or anthropology from various Stanford professors and community members and then having the opportunity to apply these principles specifically to the northern California ecosystems at the preserve."

In between all her activities saving the earth, Erin enjoys finding time for biking to farmers' markets, cooking, knitting and waterfall jumping.

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Craig Segall

Law Student
Third year

"To undo our environmental crisis we need not just technical fixes, but a fundamental re-imagining of how to build a lasting civilization."

Craig Segall, entering his third year of study in administrative and environmental law at the Law School, has been a leader in a growing movement that realizes the need to engage all areas of society to address the increasingly complex environmental crises.

"I came to Stanford because I believed the university and the law school were ready to examine the truly complicated issues facing the global environment in ways attentive to social justice," Segall says.

Segall is an active leader in the environmental law community, serving as co-president of the student-organized Environmental Law Society and as co-editor in chief of the Stanford Environmental Law Journal. He has also seen a number of legal successes with the Environmental Law Clinic, which provides legal assistance to non-profit organizations on a range of environmental issues, and which he describes as his "most fulfilling experience at the university." His work there ranged from working on a Supreme Court brief to defend the Clean Water Act to halting illegal wetland development in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina. As he illustrates, "We've won cases, waded through the wetlands, and gone to court - there's nothing so satisfying as applying the law to protect the biosphere."

His leadership extends outside the university, too. He coordinated a panel aimed at the future of American agricultural communities as a part of the Shaking the Foundations conference, and event promoting social justice that involved lawyers, businessmen and policy makers from all walks of life, demonstrating Segall's belief that public involvement and awareness is critical to addressing issues of conservation. In summers and school breaks he has worked for Environmental Defense, Earthjustice, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. In his spare time, Segall bikes and hikes-most notably taking a summer to ride his bicycle from Oregon to Illinois.

Looking into the future, Segall hopes to help coordinate the legal strategy for a multi-disciplinary anti-global warming movement. He believes his Stanford experience will contribute significantly to his future success, noting "this has been a marvelously supportive environment for young environmental scholars."

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Max Romano

Human Biology
Class of 2009

"A lot of people are eager to make simple changes in their lives to help the environment, but unless they understand the extensive effects of their consumption, people have no reason to act."

Max is passionate about food in his life and believes it is a key component to saving the environment. "I love food in every way I can, I love learning about it, I love growing it and meeting people that grow it, I love cooking it, and I love eating it," he says. At Stanford he has been able to express his enthusiasm about food and sustainability through his involvement in the Stanford Student Community Garden Group. Through the group, Max has helped develop local, organic gardens right on campus by working with Stanford Dining and various other campus units. He was recently instrumental in winning the support of the university provost to fund a full-time staffer for the gardens, a great boost to the cause of sustainable foods on campus.

A Human Biology major at Stanford, Max looks to combine his academic interests and zeal for food in a career in human health. In addition to his interests in food, Max has had a diverse array of experiences both inside and outside the environmental field. He studied abroad in Germany at 15. He was as a forestry technician for the U.S. Forest Service in Prescott National Forest in Arizona, where he did wild-land management to prevent forest fires. He took a year off before attending Stanford to take part in AmeriCorps, a national community service program, for 10 months. The experience imbued him with "a sense of how important environmental activism is in our world," an ethic that drives him to this day.

Max is also a fan of the backcountry. In 2006-2007, he will be an instructor for Stanford's student-run Outdoor Education Program, a job that will give him the opportunity to "spend some quality time in the forest."

Max is impressed by the tremendous amount of institutional support that Stanford gives it students for projects related to the environment, and as a sophomore, plans to take full advantage of the university's vast resources.

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Hammad Ahmed

International Relations/Anthropology

"Universities incubate ideas and that's what we need when it comes to 'protecting our natural resources.'"

Hammad is a philosopher and an activist when it comes to the environment. Though those two roles often exclude each other in society, through Stanford, Hammad has found a way to delve into both facets of his character, only beginning with his double majors in International Relations and Anthropology.

Hammad is a fervent champion of the power of ideas to shape social change. "I think too many green activists rely overmuch on technical and scientific discourses and need more training in critical, post-modern thinking," he says. His dream job is to be a writer "and formulate new ways of thinking about some basic questions that people engage with on a day-to-day basis - like the idea of "waste," the notion of "nature" itself, the changing meanings of 'rural' and 'urban,' the relationships of bodies to food and work, to name a few."

On campus, Hammad is a local leader in promoting sustainability at the university. He is an active member of Students for a Sustainable Stanford and a principle organizer for the Stanford Climate Crew, a group of students lobbying for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing renewable energy at Stanford. Along with helping to breed a "culture of sustainability," which he sees as a key role of universities, Hammad has also found great personal value in action: "Contacting faculty, publishing a full-length report, meeting with [Stanford] President Hennessy, and advocating for an institutional commitment to greenhouse gas reduction has taught me more about environmental politics and the problem of global warming than any other experience of my life."

In quieter quarters, Hammad is a lover of cooking and all things aromatic. He makes a habit of "snipping some rosemary from a decorative plant for the night's dinner, or pulling a magnolia flower down to inhale its perfume." Stanford's many edible plants are only one reason among many why he is happy to live in "liberal and idiosyncratic California."

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