Betsy Rosenberg

Serving more than ten
years in the public interest sector, John Passacantando has been Executive
Director of Greenpeace USA since September 2000. 
From the headquarters
office in Washington, D.C., John leads a team of 72 and oversees an
organization with 300,000 members in the U.S. and a budget of $20 million.
Since 1971, Greenpeace has been a leading voice of the environmental
movement and work throughout the world to protect oceans and ancient
forests, and to fight toxic pollution, genetic engineering, global-warming
and nuclear threats.
With John’s commitment to aggressive and creative
tactics, the organization continues to be known for its direct confrontation
of corporations and governments as a means of forcing change. Greenpeace
has satellite offices in San Francisco and Anchorage.
Prior to joining Greenpeace,
John rallied the grassroots movement to stop global warming as co-founder
and Executive Director of Ozone Action. Founded in 1993 by John and
Karen Lohr, formerly
of Greenpeace, Ozone Action initially campaigned to strengthen the international
effort to stop ozone depletion. Under John’s leadership, Ozone Action
broadened its efforts and emerged
as the largest organization focused solely on stopping global
warming.
He assembled a team that built grassroots support through aggressive
investigative and media campaigns to address the public health, environmental
and economic threats of global warming. The organization was dissolved
into Greenpeace when John took the helm.
Before founding Ozone
Action, John was executive director of the Florence and John Schumann
Foundation, helping focus its grant making programs on the grassroots
renewal of democracy. John worked to support the Foundation’s efforts
on campaign finance reform and environmental issues.
Prior to making the leap
to environmental advocacy, John fine- tuned his marketing and media
skills while working in the corporate world.
He worked as Director
of Marketing for Polyconomics, Inc., providing
economic analysis to the country’s largest institutional investors.
He distilled tax law, interest rate and commodity price changes for
more than 80 clients.
Before that, he sold turnkey computer systems
throughout New York, New Jersey and Connecticut for Triad Systems Corporation.
John received a BA in
economics from Wake Forest University and an MA, also in economics,
from New York University.
John has testified before
Congress and participated in several PBS debates on global warming.
In addition to interviews on Good Morning America and other news programs,
John has been quoted in virtually every major newspaper in the United
States and has had numerous op-eds published nationwide.
In 1999,
he received the Tides Foundation 1999 Jane Bagley Lehman Award for Excellence
in Public Advocacy for his work on global warming solutions.
John is married to Lisa Guide, the Deputy
Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs and the U.S.
Department of the Interior.
They have two young daughters, Sophia
and Mollie.