Executive Director, Greenpeace USA

Serving nearly twenty years in the public interest sector, John Passacantando has been Executive Director of Greenpeace USA since September 2000.

From the headquarters office in Washington, D.C., Passacantando leads a team of more than 200 and oversees an organization with a quarter million members in the U.S. and a budget of $26 million. Since 1971, Greenpeace has been a leading voice of the environmental movement and works throughout the world to protect oceans and ancient forests, and to fight toxic pollution, genetic engineering, global warming and nuclear threats. With his commitment to creative tactics, the organization continues to be known for its direct, yet peaceful, confrontations with corporations and governments as a means of forcing change. Greenpeace USA has satellite offices in San Francisco and Alaska and coordinates with Greenpeace organizations in 40 countries.

Prior to joining Greenpeace, Passacantando rallied the grassroots movement to stop global warming as co-founder and Executive Director of Ozone Action. Founded in 1993, Ozone Action initially campaigned to strengthen the international effort to stop ozone depletion. Under John's leadership, Ozone Action broadened its efforts as it emerged as the largest organization focused solely on stopping global warming. He assembled a team that built grassroots support through aggressive investigative, constituent building and outreach campaigns, organizing students, scientists, presidential candidates, mayors, businesses and coastal communities all to further push efforts to solve global warming. The organization was folded into Greenpeace when Passacantando took the helm.

Before founding Ozone Action, Passacantando was executive director of the Florence and John Schumann Foundation, helping focus its grant making programs on the grassroots renewal of democracy. Passacantando worked to support the Foundation's efforts on campaign finance reform and environmental issues.

Prior to his career change to environmental advocacy, Passacantando worked as Director of Marketing for Polyconomics, Inc., providing economic analysis to managers of the country's largest institutional investment portfolios, distilling tax law, interest rate and commodity price changes. Before Polyconomics he sold computer systems throughout New York, New Jersey and Connecticut for Triad Systems Corporation.

Passacantando received a B.A. in economics from Wake Forest University and an M.A., also in economics, from New York University.

Passacantando has testified before Congress, has been quoted in virtually every major newspaper in the United States, has had numerous op-eds published nationwide and appeared on programs from PBS to CNN to Fox News. In 1999, he received the Tides Foundation's Jane Bagley Lehman Award for Excellence in Public Advocacy for his work on global warming solutions.

Passacantando is married with two children and resides in the Washington DC metro area.