Gil Friend is president and chief executive officer of Natural Logic, Inc., a consulting and software development company that helps companies and communities prosper by embedding the laws of nature at the heart of enterprise. Tomorrow Magazine called him “one of the country’s leading environmental management consultants—a real expert who combines theoretical sophistication with hands-on, in-the-trenches know-how.”Natural Logic provides advisory services in strategy, design, operations and information systems that help build economic advantage through exceptional environmental performance.

A systems ecologist and business strategist with thirty years’ experience in business, communications, and environmental innovation, Friend has founded and managed companies in the fields of social marketing and sustainable development, and has developed management strategies and business, operating and marketing plans for large and small companies in a wide range of industries. He was a founding board member of internet pioneer Institute for Global Communications, and played key or founding roles in such seminal environmental enterprises as EcoNet, GreenLine, the California Office of Appropriate Technology, Turner Broadcasting’s Planet Live, University of California’s AgroEcology Program, and Buckminster Fuller’s “World Game.” He was co-founder and co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, one of the nation’s leading urban ecology and economic development think-and-do tanks. He holds an MS in Systems Ecology from Antioch University, a black belt in Aikido, and is a seasoned presenter of The Natural Step environmental management system.

Friend authors “The New Bottom Line,” an internationally distributed column offering strategic perspectives on business and environment, formerly distributed by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, now published by Natural Logic.

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