Ray Anderson

Ray C. Anderson was founder and chairman of Interface, Inc., one of the world’s leading carpet and flooring producers. His story is now legend: Ray had a “spear in the chest” epiphany when he first read Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce, inspiring him to revolutionize his business in pursuit of environmental sustainability. In doing so Ray proved that business can indeed “do well by doing good.” His Georgia-based company has been ranked number one in a GlobeScan survey of sustainability experts, and it has continued to be an environmental leader even after Ray’s death in 2011. Ray authored the 1998 classic Mid-Course Correction, which chronicled his epiphany, as well as a later book, Confessions of a Radical Industrialist. He became an unlikely screen hero in the 2003 Canadian documentary The Corporation, and was named one of Time magazine’s Heroes of the Environment in 2007. He served as cochairman of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development and as an architect of the Presidential Climate Action Plan, a 100-day action plan on climate that was presented to the Obama Administration.