Van Jones

Founder and President, Green For All

Van Jones is working to combine solutions to America's two biggest problems: social inequality and environmental destruction.

Van recently founded Green For All (www.greenforall.org), a national organization dedicated to building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty. Launched at the Clinton Global Initiative in 2007, Green For All grew out of Van's work creating a ‘Green Job Corp' in Oakland, California, as part of a program at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights (www.ellabakercenter.org). Van founded the Center in 1996, which promotes alternatives to violence and incarceration, including its successful “Books Not Bars” campaign that has helped reduce California's overall youth prison population by more than 30 percent.

An advocate for the toughest urban constituencies and causes, Van has won many honors, including: the 1998 Reebok International Human Rights Award, the international Ashoka Fellowship, selection as a World Economic Forum "Young Global Leader," and the Rockefeller Foundation "Next Generation Leadership" Fellowship. Van has also served on the boards of the National Apollo Alliance, Social Ventures Network, Rainforest Action Network, Bioneers and Julia Butterfly Hill's "Circle of Life" organization.

A 1993 Yale Law graduate, Van is also a husband and father.