About the EWG Board

Note: Affiliations listed for identification purposes only

Ami Aronson is the Managing Director of the Bernstein Family Foundation. Her responsibilities include governance, fiduciary management, grant making and communications. She has played a leadership role in taking this historic foundation into the 21st century through strategic planning, estate liquidation, mergers and acquisitions. In addition, she remains visible in the community to engage in ongoing critical dialogue with community leaders in the foundation’s three focus areas: Jewish causes, American democracy, and arts & culture.

Prior to joining the Foundation, Ms. Aronson worked on public health issues such as women’s health, adolescent health, HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, violence prevention and nutrition education. She has more than 18 years of experience in designing, developing, implementing and evaluating health communications programs. Her areas of expertise include entertainment education, public-private partnership development, special event production, material development (print and video), and research. Ms. Aronson has extensive international experience, having worked in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Ms. Aronson’s clients include Center’s for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Johns Hopkins Center for Communications (JHU/CCP), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). Other public and private sector clients include Digene Corporation, SAKS 5th Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Ripple Effects Software Company, Population Communications International and Cancer Schmancer.

Ms. Aronson is a native of San Francisco, but resides in the Washington, DC, area with her husband, children, and dogs.

David Baker is the founder and executive director of Community Against Pollution, which works with local, state and federal agency officials to address environmental and health issues, particularly the toxic industrial chemicals that originate in West Anniston. Baker is a member of the NAACP and the Coalition for Black Trade Unionists. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the Alabama State Legislative in November 2003, and received EPA awards for best community organization and outstanding leadership and contribution for meeting the goals of environmental justice. He is featured in a book, entitled My City Was Gone, by Dennis Love. Baker has a degree in labor management from Cornell University. He is married to Lisa Cooley-Baker and lives in Anniston, Alabama with their four children.

Reverend Sally Bingham, a native of California, is the Environmental Minister at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. She is the founder and executive director of The Regeneration Project, a nonprofit ministry deepening the connection between faith and the environment. In 2012, Sally was awarded the Audubon Society’s Rachel Carson Award for her environmental leadership. In 2001 the Rev. Bingham received the Green Power Leadership Pilot Award from the Center for Resource Solutions, the U.S. EPA and the U.S. Department of Energy. In 2002, the Regeneration Project received the international Global Energy Award, the “Energy Oscar.” The Rev Bingham lives in California with her three children, Sarah, Stephen, and Lock.

Jennifer Caldwell, former head of marketing for The Nature Conservancy’s California program, founded and led Hope to Action, a non-profit focused on promoting sustainability practices among women. Last year, Hope to Action merged with Environmental Working Group.

Jennifer recently joined the board of the Exploratorium, and has served for the past nine years as a trustee at San Francisco Ballet, where she chairs marketing. In addition, she’s an active board and Executive Committee member at Katherine Delmar Burke School, where she founded and chairs environmental sustainability, as well as development. She also serves on the current Head Search Committee.

Last year, Jennifer initiated the Bay Area Green Schools Alliance, creating the first forum for green school leaders to share sustainability best practices. Jennifer also serves on the Marketing Advisory Board for Sarah Lawrence College, her alma mater.

Prior to her work in the non-profit sector, her career spanned publishing, media communications and broadcasting in New York and Silicon Valley; including positions as executive producer at Paramount Pictures Interactive and senior producer at Hewlett Packard’s Media Technology Group.

Jennifer lives in San Francisco with her husband, John H.N. Fisher, and their two daughters.

Ken Cook is the co-founder and president of the Environmental Working Group. He is widely recognized as one of the environmental community’s most prominent and effective critics of establishment agriculture and U.S. farm policy. Under Cook, EWG’s break-through innovation has been the creation of easy-to-use, online consumer databases to analyze toxic pollution in people, government farm subsidies, nuclear waste transportation routes to Yucca Mountain, mining claims near the Grand Canyon, tap water quality nationwide and provide consumers with cosmetics ingredient safety information.

Cook earned a B.A. in history, B.S. in agriculture and M.S. in soil science from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He and his wife Deb Callahan live in Marin, California with their son, Callahan Cook.

Steven Damato has been involved in the organic agriculture and food industry for the past thirty years. He is an active partner in Changing Seas, LLC, a seafood company dedicated to sustainable and organic seafood. Steven is the co-owner of Restaurant Nora, the first certified organic restaurant in the nation.

Melissa L. Hughes is General Counsel and Director of Government Affairs for CROPP Cooperative in LaFarge, Wisconsin. Since 2003, Ms. Hughes has managed all legal and government affairs for this $650 million dairy cooperative (marketing the following brands – Organic Valley®, Organic Prairie®, and Stonyfield®), including all farmer relations, contracting, employee matters, board governance matters, compliance, securities and organic regulations.

Prior to joining CROPP, Ms. Hughes was an Associate Attorney at Holland & Hart LLP in Cheyenne, Wyoming. She focused on serving natural resource clients with business and litigation matters.

Mark Hyman, MD, has dedicated his career to identifying and addressing the root causes of chronic illness through a groundbreaking, whole-systems approach known as functional medicine. A family physician and five times #1 New York Times best-selling author, he is an internationally recognized leader, speaker, educator and advocate in his field. Mark is founder and medical director of the UltraWellness Center, chairman of the board of the Institute for Functional Medicine,and was awarded its 2009 Linus Pauling Award for Leadership in Functional Medicine. He is a board member of the Center for Mind-Body Medicine, advisor to Dr. Mehmet Oz’s HealthCorps and the Dr. Oz Show. He is a medical editor of the Huffington Post. He co-created The Daniel Plan with Rick Warren, Dr. Oz and Dr. Amen, a faith based initiative that helped a church lose 250,000 pounds. Please join him in helping us all take back our health at www.drhyman.com, follow him on twitter @markhymanmd and on Facebook at facebook.com/drmarkhyman.

Dr. Harvey Karp is a nationally renowned pediatrician and child developmentalist, and a leading advocate in the field of children's and environmental health. He is on the faculty of USC School of Medicine and a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Dr. Karp's books and DVDs, The Happiest Baby on the Block, The Happiest Toddler on the Block, and his newly released The Happiest Baby Guide to Great Sleep, teach parents simple techniques to reduce infant crying, boost sleep, build patience and eliminate tantrums and are translated into over 20 languages. The popularity of his work has made him America's most read pediatrician.

Over the past 20 years, Dr. Karp has been a spokesman on environmental issues for NRDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics, Environmental Media Services, California Department of Health, and Healthy Child Healthy World.

Dr. Karp is an advisor to Parents, Ser Padres and American Baby magazines and a parenting advisor for Barnes and Noble and AOL. He has appeared numerous times on Good Morning America, The View, Larry King Live, Dr. Phil and his work has been featured by the Associated Press, New York Times, Time, Newsweek, People Magazine, etc. Reporting on his innovative ideas, the New York Times proclaimed, "Roll over Dr. Spock!" Dr. Karp lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Nina and their daughter.

Carol McDonnell is a dedicated environmentalist and parent activist who has worked in numerous capacities to educate consumers and organizations about the impact of their daily choices on individual and planetary well-being. For more than a decade, she has committed her considerable energy, personally and professionally, to the advancement of causes that foster environmental sustainability and personal health, particularly in the areas of toxin exposure, nutrition and children’s health.

Carol was a founding consultant at Chartreuse Products, which makes organic cosmetics, home cleaning products, and innovative reusable items. In her early career, she served on the Board of Trustees of Woodley House, a residential facility in Washington, D.C. for people living with mental illness. She also spent eight years providing marketing, communications, technology, and M&A consulting services to Fortune 500 companies.

Carol divides her time between Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay and Mill Valley, California, where she lives with her husband John and four children.

Nina Montée Karp is a producer, director and an environmental activist. In collaboration with Dr. Harvey Karp, she created the award-winning educational DVDs, The Happiest Baby and The Happiest Toddler on the Block. These best-selling films are used across the nation to reduce parental struggles and promote healthy family relations. She also helped create one of the first environmental documentaries, Not Under My Roof, with Olivia Newton John and Kelly Preston. Nina is a founding Board Member of Healthy Child Healthy World.

Nina wrote, produced and directed Breast Cancer: The Path of Wellness and Healing. Hailed as a landmark educational guide, this DVD features the nation's most celebrated breast cancer doctors and wellness experts (including Dr. Susan Love, Dr. Marisa Weiss, Dr. Dennis Slamon, Dr. Deepak Chopra, Dr. Dean Ornish) and celebrity breast cancer survivors (including, Sheryl Crow, Christina Applegate, Melissa Etheridge, Olivia Newton-John). All the profits from DVD sales are donated to breast cancer related charities.

Nina resides in Los Angeles with her husband, Dr. Harvey Karp, and she is the proud mother of their daughter, Lexi.

Drummond Pike (Chair) is a Principal with Equilibrium Capital, an impact investments firm concentrating on sustainability investments in water, land, and energy. Pike founded and served until 2010 as chief executive officer of Tides Network, a collaborative group of social justice organizations, including Tides Foundation, Tides Center, Tides Shared Spaces, and Thoreau Center for Sustainability. He pioneered a national structure of fully-staffed donor-advised funds in philanthropy, and has supported grassroots and public interest organizations through environmental and social change philanthropy since 1970. Prior to founding Tides in 1976, Drummond served as executive director of the Shalan Foundation, an organization dedicated to economic change and environmental sustainability. He co-founded and served as associate director for the Youth Project in Washington, D.C. He also co-founded Working Assets/Credo Mobile, a telecommunications company dedicated to progressive philanthropy and political activism. Pike serves on the boards of Tides Canada Foundation, Island Press, and the Democracy Alliance. He graduated with honors from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and earned a Masters of Political Science from the Eagleton Institute at Rutgers University.

William G. Ross, Jr., is the former secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources. He led the agency from 2001 to 2009. While he was secretary, the department played a principal role as the state doubled the size of the state park system; enacted the NC Clean Smokestacks Act, landmark state legislation that mandated the reduction of harmful emissions from the state's coal fired power plants by more than 70 per cent; and built the Nature Research Center, an innovative new wing for the NC Museum of Natural Sciences.

Before serving as secretary, Ross practiced environmental law with the Greensboro and Raleigh, NC, law firm of Brooks Pierce. In addition, he was a leader in numerous parks, greenways, environmental education, and environmental law organizations and programs in North Carolina.

Since leaving the secretary's office, Ross has focused on matters of environment and health as a visiting professor at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, in Durham, NC. In addition, he is an attorney and a consultant in matters relating to natural resource conservation and sustainability at his former law firm, Brooks Pierce, in Raleigh, NC.

Ross serves as chairman of the NC Parks and Recreation Authority and of the National Advisory Council on Environmental Policy and Technology of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He is also a member of the board of the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, DC..

A North Carolina native, Ross is a graduate of Davidson College, in Davidson, NC, and of the University of Virginia School of Law, in Charlottesville, VA. He and his wife Susan Gravely reside in Chapel Hill, NC.

Laura Turner Seydel is a national environmental advocate and eco-living expert dedicated to creating a healthy and sustainable future for our children. Laura is chairperson of the Captain Planet Foundation, which promotes environmental education and gardens in schools, and Zero Waste Zone, an organization that promotes communities working together to change current disposal methods of consumedproducts. She co-founded Mothers and Others for Clean Air and the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper.

She is passionate about keeping toxic chemicals out of consumer products, which can be especially harmful to pregnant mothers and children, and works with EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson and Environmental Working Group to educate the public about the effects of these toxins.

Laura serves on her family’s foundation boards including The Turner Foundation, Jane Smith Turner Foundation, the Turner Endangered Species Fund, and Ted’s Montana Grill. She also serves on national boards including League of Conservation Voters, Defenders of Wildlife, Waterkeeper Alliance, the Green Schools Alliance, Environmental Working Group and the Carter Center Board of Councilors. She is also a member of the Rotary Club of Downtown Atlanta.

She earned a Bachelor of Arts from Oglethorpe University, and is a contributing eco-editor and environmental speaker living with her husband Rutherford and her three children in their home, EcoManor, the first LEED certified Gold residence in the Southeast.

Francesca Vietor is the Environment Program Officer at the San Francisco Foundation, where she oversees the Foundation's efforts to improve the environmental health and well-being of the Bay Area's most vulnerable and impacted communities while protecting and preserving the region's natural environment. Francesca is also president of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, where she leads policymaking for the City and County of San Francisco’s water, wastewater, and municipal power services. Most recently, she was executive director of the Chez Panisse Foundation, where she advanced nutrition education. Previously, she was president of the Urban Forest Council, president of the Commission on the Environment, and chair of the Mayor’s Environmental Transition Team. She has served on the boards of the Center for Environmental Health, Commonweal, Environmental Working Group, and the Goldman Fund. Francesca holds a Bachelor of Sciences degree from Georgetown University and is pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from California College of the Arts. She also pens a blog for The Huffington Post.

Alicia Wittink is a trustee with the Park Foundation based in Ithaca, NY. She currently serves on the boards of Center for a New American Dream and Mother Jones magazine. She is a co-founder of DC EcoWomen’s Hour. Alicia graduated from Cornell University and lives in Ithaca, NY, with her husband and their daughter.