Draft:Allen White

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Allen White is Vice President and Senior Fellow, Tellus Institute, research, and activist organization dedicated to advancement of planetary future rooted in ecological resilience, economic prosperity, and social justice. Under the rubric of a Great Transition, he has focused on the role of corporations—past, present, and future—in achieving this vision. Since the mid-1980’s, White has played major roles in advancing models, policies, and institutions aligned with the Great Transition paradigm.

White received a B.A. in Geography from George Washington University in 1968 under the supervision of S. Moryadas. During 1970-71, he served as a volunter in the first ever contingent of U.S. Peace Corps, , working with small farmers to advance best practices, formation of marketing co-operatives, and training incoming volunteers.. From 1971-76, White was a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography at Ohio State University. In 1974-75, he served as a Fulbright Scholar in Lima, Peru, leading to completion of his Ph.D. in 1976. From 1976-78, White worked as a Research Associate at Battelle Laboratories in Columbus, Ohio. Beginning in 1978, he held a series of teaching and research positions at Tufts University, University of Connecticut, and Clark University prior to joining Tellus Institute in the early 1990s as a Senior Fellow. At Tellus, he co-founded the Global Reporting Initiative. In 2006 he co-founded Corporation 20/20, a multi-faceted research program focused on the roots, responsibility, and redesign of corporations in fostering—and impeding—a planetary Great Transition. In 2018, White became a Medal Laureate of the Society for Progress, hosted by International School of Business Administration (INSEAD), Fontainebleau, France.

In the early 1990s, White was a key advisor to the founder of CERES, introducing the concept of environmental/economic/social corporate disclosure, the precursor to contemporary sustainability now practiced by thousands of corporations worldwide. By the late 1990s, the rapid escalation of such reporting demanded a new institution, aligned with but legally separate from Ceres, to manage the burgeoning practice of corporate sustainability reporting. By 2000, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) emerged, with White its first Executive Director, the United Nations as a key partner, Amsterdam as its host city and thousands of companies and scores of civil society organizations and governmental agencies as partners in driving uptake and standardization of sustainability reporting. Following his retirement from GRI, White co-founded Corporation 20/20 with the mission of replacing the shareholder primacy paradigm with a new vision built on six principles of governance, wealth creation, and accountability. In 2011, as a next step in driving fundamental change in the character and quality of corporate sustainability performance, White co-founded the Global Initiative for Sustainability Ratings.

• “Corporations in the Crosshairs”.
• “Who Speaks for Future Generations?”
• “The Missing Third Party: Corporations and the New Social Contract”
• “The Soul of a Great Transition: Social Life Cycle Assessment and the Quest for a Humane Future”
• “Why We Need Global Standards for Corporate Disclosure”
• “Corporations in a Great Transition”
• “Reinventing the Corporation"

• Great Transition
• Tellus Institute
• Stockholm Environment Institute
• Global Scenario Group
• Planetary Boundaries
• Scenario analysis
• Sustainable Development