Keynote Speakers

Scott Seydel
President, The Seydel Companies
Board of Directors Chairperson, Global Green USA

A member of a family with longstanding involvement in Atlanta’s history, Scott Seydel oversees an enterprise he founded in his twenties, offering its products through U.S. and global manufacturers in over three dozen countries. Sustainability and environmental stewardship has been a cornerstone of Scott’s business endeavors, influencing his companies’ emphasis on energy and waste minimization, recycling and recyclability.

Scott is the chief executive of several process chemical companies that illustrate his stewardship principles. The Seydel Companies’ Pendergrass (Georgia) plant has repeatedly captured first place in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National WasteWise competition. EvCo Research in Atlanta recycles plastic beverage bottles into water barrier coatings applied to textiles, paper, carpet, and building products. The Chemol Company in Greensboro ( North Carolina) recycles spent vegetable oils from restaurants and fast food fryers and tallow from processing plants to make lubricants, cosmetic emollients, carton coatings, and cutting oils, substituting non-renewable and non-biodegradable paraffin waxes.

Serving as Board Chairman of Global Green, the U.S. arm of former Soviet President Gorbachev’s global sustainability organization headquartered in Geneva (Switzerland), Scott has been involved in guiding the organization’s initiatives in promoting commercial and residential green building projects and renewable resource power generation, water conservation, municipal waste recycling, and the decommissioning of military bases and weapons of mass destruction.

His interests in municipal waste diversion and recycling have been furthered through his Chairmanship of the Board of the GreenBlue Institute (Charlottesville) and it’s Sustainable Packaging Coalition. Scott is currently focusing on Cradle-to-Cradle conversions of solid waste components at their point of origin in an effort to increase downstream spent material values and the attendant cash incentives for collection and recycling. He is pursuing this transformative objective through his membership on the Executive Committee of ATLANTA RECYCLES and in a similar project in New York City where he resides.

The Seydel Companies have earned national recognition for their recycling and resource conservation research from The Society of Plastics Engineers, the Association of Plastics Recyclers, the International Council and several textile associations.

Through strategic partnerships with U.S. and European companies in the beverage, paper, and construction materials industries, EvCo Research has contributed to significant reductions in packaging wastes, energy use, greenhouse gasses, and nonrenewable resources, while stimulating resource recycling and environmental stewardship.

As a long time civic leader, Scott serves as Chairmen of Georgia State’s Robinson College Board and has Chaired the Boards of the Atlanta YMCA, The Georgia Hi-Tech Alliance, the Georgia World Congress Institute and the Atlanta Chamber’s International Committee during the 1996 Olympic Games. In local preparatory education, Scott has served as a Director for the Brandon Hall School, the Schenck School, the Mt. Vernon Presbyterian School, and as a member of the Board of Visitors of the Darlington School in Rome.

Andy Savitz
Sr. Consultant, Sustainable Business Strategies

Andrew Savitz is a creative business leader, advisor, author and speaker, with over 20 years of hands-on experience assisting corporation to become leaders in sustainability and environmental performance and reporting. An internationally known expert on corporate social responsibility and sustainability, Mr. Savitz is the author of The Triple Bottom Line: How the Best Run Companies are Achieving Economic, Social and Environmental Success - and How You Can Too (Wiley, August 2006). He is a frequent keynote speaker on this subject.

As a lead partner in PricewaterhouseCooper's global Sustainability Business Services practice, Savitz was PwC's liaison delegate to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and represented the firm on environmental and sustainability related matters at the Conference Board. Andy authored PwC's widely cited 2002 Sustainability Survey- the first of its kind in the United States.

Now working as a senior consultant at Sustainable Business Strategies, Andy assists companies to assess, design, develop and implement sustainability programs from vision to reporting, including policies, procedures and programs related to human rights, supply chain management, HIV/AIDS, political contributions, environmental, health and safety management and compliance, community and investor relations, codes of conduct, and international and national standards and guidelines including the United Nations Global Compact, the Global Reporting Initiative, the CERES principles, the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, and the McBride principles. He is an expert in stakeholder analysis, mapping and engagement as well as an advisor on socially responsible capital expenditures and investment.

Andy created the environmental advisory services practice at Coopers & Lybrand, building it to become the partner-in-charge of PwC's Environmental Enforcement and Compliance Management services. His practice assisted companies to develop and implement environmental compliance and performance management programs. Savitz also was a regional leader of PwC's Governance, Risk and Compliance services and the environmental due diligence and dispute analysis group.

Prior to PwC, Andy served as General Counsel in the Massachusetts Office of Environmental Affairs. He directed all legal matters for the Commonwealth related to environmental affairs, environmental law, regulations and policy. As the Commonwealth's first Assistant Secretary for Environmental Law Enforcement, he was instrumental in creating the Massachusetts Environmental Crime Strike Force which coordinated the environmental enforcement of criminal and civil laws throughout Massachusetts. Andy also worked on the regulatory and policy aspects of Environmental Impact Assessments under the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MEPA), and on efforts to improve the Commonwealth's hazardous waste cleanup, air pollution control and coastal zone development laws.

While General Counsel, Andy worked closely with the Environmental Law Institute in Washington, D.C. where he taught courses on environmental law and regulations, compliance and enforcement, environment and the media, environmental ethics, and environmental negotiations. Working in conjunction with ELI and the Flashner Judicial Institute, he obtained a grant and created, organized, directed and helped teach the nation's first environmental training program for state court judges to approximately 75 judges in New England. He created and taught a two day communications training program for the Global Environmental Management Initiative (GEMI).

While attending Georgetown University Law Center at night, Savitz was a staff member for United States House of Representatives, Commerce, Consumer and Monetary Affairs Subcommittee. He conceived and organized hearings on regulatory policy related to finance and consumer protection. He drafted the Corporate Democracy Act, which was introduced to Congress in 1980 and presaged many of the corporate governance issues being debated today.

Savitz founded and currently chairs the Board of the Massachusetts League of Environmental Voters and serves on the Board of Directors of the Environmental League of Massachusetts and the Advisory Board of the Boston Zoos. Appointed by U.S. EPA Administrator Carol Browner to the National Environmental Educational Advisory Committee, Savitz now serves on the Steering Committee of the Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Environmental and Natural Resources Program.

Savitz was graduated from the Georgetown University Law Center, where he was an editor of the Georgetown University Law Review. He attended New College Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, earning a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. He was graduated, Phi Beta Kappa, from The Johns Hopkins University.

Andy lives in Brookline, Massachusetts with his wife and two children. He is an avid, life-long Boston Red Sox fan. top^