Advisory Board

Ralph Earle is the founder of the Assabet Group, a consulting firm working with market leading companies and financial organizations to catalyze superior financial performance through investments and action on energy efficiency, clean technology, and pollution reduction. Mr. Earle is also a member of the Clean Energy Venture Group, an investment organization with activity in the areas of fuel cells, wind power, clean coal, and energy conservation. He is the author of numerous papers and speeches on the link between environmental performance and shareholder value, environmental strategy, environmental management, recycling, life cycle analysis, and solid waste management.

Mr. Earle has developed financial and market-based solutions to problems of pollution, efficiency, and waste in the private, non-profit, and public sectors for two decades. Prior to the Assabet Group, Mr. Earle was founding Director of the Alliance for Environmental Innovation, a project of the Environmental Defense Fund and The Pew Charitable Trusts. There he established the Alliance as one of the leading business/NGO partnership organizations in the country. The Alliance’s projects with SC Johnson, Starbucks, and UPS have been widely hailed as examples of positive environmental change.

Prior to the Alliance, Mr. Earle spearheaded Arthur D. Little’s Competitive Environmental Strategy practice, consulting with corporations to integrate environmental considerations into their long-term decision-making. Mr. Earle worked with corporations, both large and small, and in industries from chemicals to consumer products. He also developed and conducted a public training program in the approach. Also at Arthur D. Little, he managed an $8.5 million environmental auditing contract for the Department of Energy and led numerous projects in green marketing, environmental management systems assessments, and environmental business opportunities. An associate director in the firm, he was the recipient of Arthur D. Little awards for Innovation, Marketing, and Staff Development.

Mr. Earle also served as Assistant Secretary of Environmental Affairs for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. There he was responsible for setting and managing state policy in the areas of solid waste disposal and recycling. He managed the issuance of the state’s first ten-year Solid Waste Master Plan, negotiated voluntary recycled paper purchase agreements with the state’s newspaper publishers, and supervised five operating agencies in their solid waste and recycling policy making activities. Mr. Earle also worked for two years as the Director of Market Development for Recycled Materials.

Prior to his service in government, Mr. Earle was a strategic planning consultant with Strategy Associates and Strategic Planning Associates (now Mercer Management Consulting). His work focused on the cosmetics, oil and gas, and software industries.

Mr. Earle serves on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Sustainable Product Design, the faculty of SustainAbility and the Board of Directors of the Environmental League of Massachusetts; he was formerly Vice Chair of the Dimock Community Health Center. He holds an M.B.A. from the Yale School of Management and a B.A., cum laude, from Harvard College.