[Photo: Courtesy of Groundswell]
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“The green building movement is a beautiful demonstration that it doesn’t cost a pound of flesh to do the right thing and that you can build economic prosperity without destroying the place we live.”
Groundswell organizes local residents and institutions into collective purchasing groups, guiding them through the process of securing clean energy. The organization is based in Washington DC and helps end-users in the mid-Atlantic region to request supplier bids and to negotiate optimal rate schedules. Additionally, it organizes consumer activists to advocate for cleaner energy and healthier local environments.
Moore took the helm of Groundswell in mid-2015, but is also a strategic advisor to the International WELL Building Institute and an advisory board member for Tribal Planet, which builds mobile platforms that motivate consumers to take action for social good. She is also a senior fellow with the Council on Competitiveness, a Washington-based NGO that joins labor leaders, corporate CEOs, university presidents, and national laboratory directs in such things as infrastructure rebuilding.
Moore believes in the free market. “Information and consumer markets move a lot faster than government,” she observes. “The things the sustainability movement is fighting for—from clean energy to healthier food—are analogous to a technology upgrade for our economic system,” the White House and Clinton Foundation veteran says. “It’s prosperity and profitability that doesn’t come at someone else’s expense.”
She suggests a greener world requires people who can lead others. “As David Gottfried [author, Explosion Green, and considered father of the global green building movement] has reminded us time and time again it’s about the people,” says Moore. “It wouldn’t be a movement without all of the individuals who’ve dedicated their time and bet their businesses on a better way.”
Those people should include women who are paid the same as men. “Culture plus commerce equals change,” she says. “The green building movement is a beautiful demonstration that it doesn’t cost a pound of flesh to do the right thing and that you can build economic prosperity without destroying the place we live.”
Moore holds a pay stub from one of her two grandmothers who both worked in cotton mills more than 40 years ago. A week’s work paid $60 in 1966. “I will never forget how hard they worked alongside my grandfathers to raise and educate my parents, nor will I forget that their hard work is why I am here,” she says.
