Auden Schendler

Auden Schendler is Senior Vice President of Sustainability at Aspen Skiing Company where he focuses on meaningful solutions to the climate crisis, in particular power-wielding, movement building, advocacy, and replicable on-the-ground projects. In particular, Auden has been a vocal critic of conventional corporate sustainability that avoids systemic change for often token, operations-scale actions. At Aspen, he helped build and grow the nonprofit Protect Our Winters as a long-time board chair and helped build a climate-focused ad campaign targeting swing senators. He worked on teams that built innovative new clean energy projects, including the only large-scale coal mine methane-to-electricity plant in the United States, small hydro, utility-scale solar, and all-electric green buildings. He worked previously incorporated sustainability at Rocky Mountain Institute. Auden writes and speaks widely. He has been published in the NY Times, Harvard Business Review, the Los Angeles Times, the Denver Post, and other media, and he has spoken at Starbucks, Google, and business schools at Harvard, MIT, Yale, and Dartmouth. His work has been covered in the NY Times, Businessweek/Bloomberg, Fast Company, Travel, and Leisure, Outside, and elsewhere. Named a global warming innovator by TIME in 2006, Auden has also been called a "Climate Saver" by the EPA and has testified to Congress on the impacts of climate change. His book Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution was called "an antidote to greenwash" by NASA's James Hansen. Speaking Topics: Meaningful Action on Climate Change, Rethinking Corporate Sustainability, Hope in the Climate Crisis, and Reinventing Modern Environmentalism. Auden speaks about the climate crisis and the need to rethink modern concepts of "sustainability" in ways that drive meaningful, large-scale change. His work has been covered by mainstream media as part of a broader critique of ESG investing and business practices. An expert in corporate sustainability, the impact of climate change on the outdoor industry, green building, clean energy, and climate activism, Schendler calls out the broad failure of market-based sustainability solutions to move the needle on global warming. His new vision of corporate sustainability argues traditional footprint reduction and often token operational actions are not nearly enough to solve the climate crisis, and that businesses are obligated to wield power and become involved in the political process. This approach, outlined by Schendler in the NY Times and other media, focuses on movement building and high-leverage, replicable actions. As longtime board chair of the emerging nonprofit Protect Our Winters, Schendler has helped build a nonprofit designed to function as the NRA of the climate movement, mobilizing the 40 million-strong outdoor community as a political force for climate action. He has argued that traditional environmentalism has been co-opted by the fossil fuel industry, steering businesses and individuals towards actions that avoid systemic change. On the ground, Auden has helped pioneer innovative, replicable, and bipartisan climate projects like the Elk Creek coal mine methane-to-electricity project, developed in collaboration with Oxbow, a conglomerate owned by Bill Koch. Auden certified one of the first LEED-certified buildings in the world and helped develop all-electric employee housing structures and ground-source heat pump-based commercial buildings. Using Aspen Skiing Company as a lever, Auden spent fifteen years changing the board of his coal-based regional utility, Holy Cross Energy. That co-op will achieve 100% renewable power by 2030. Aspen's pressure on Kimberly Clark helped move the company towards more sustainable practices. Funny, energetic, and relevant to the moment, Auden's talks are based on stories of success, failure, humanity and hope.