David Strelneck

Biography

David leads the Nourishment Economies Coalition: an international group of social entrepreneurs, community enterprises, and scientists focused on nutrient-cycling strategies to stimulate biological, cultural, and economic vitality in society.

David founded this initiative – which operates at the overlap of health, food, farming, and environmental conservation – after a decade helping examine patterns of systems change with more than 200 social entrepreneurs at Ashoka, Skoll, and elsewhere. This revealed many economic, biological, and cultural benefits being capitalized on across sectors upon when enterprises cycle a full spectrum of nutrients between land and people and back again, spawning regenerative rather than extractive economies and ecologies.

Nourish^N and the members of the Nourishment Economies Coalition now pursue community-enterprise, school-system, and science strategies for spreading this dynamic in society.

Prior to Nourish^N, David helped instigate and lead public and private environmental initiatives in the Americas, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Examples include designing and managing Montreal Protocol programs to eliminate freon pollution among automobile mechanics in 18 countries; launching the world’s first live wilderness webcam (QuetzalCam) in Costa Rican cloud forests in 2000; and creating the early online social network Backyard Jungle (in 2002), licensed by the U.S. Public Broadcasting System (PBS), to embrace rather than reject computers as a way of motivating children to go outside and explore nature.

David holds degrees from Stanford University and Harvard University.