Phil Radford
Philip David Radford is an American consumer and conservation advocate who is the president and CEO of Consumer Reports, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that works with consumers to foster truth, transparency, and fairness in the marketplace. Radford began his career working with nonpartisan organizations such as the Public Interest Research Group and Public Citizen, focusing on consumer protection, fair trade, and public health initiatives.
Over the course of his career, Radford's approach to creating change evolved from activism to a more collaborative, nonpartisan, solutions-oriented model that began to emerge towards the end of his tenure leading Greenpeace and came to fruition at Consumer Reports. While he initially gained prominence through tactics aimed at pressuring corporations and policymakers, Radford made a full-circle return to nonpartisan approaches and pragmatic coalition-building, grounded in his belief that all Americans share a common desire to be safe, healthy, and wealthier.
Early life and education
Radford began his civic engagement as a high school student at Oak Park and River Forest High School in Oak Park, a Chicago suburb, volunteering on a public health campaign to stop the building of trash incinerators in the West Side of Chicago near his family's Oak Park home.His first job in community engagement was canvassing door to door for nonpartisan Illinois PIRG. While studying political science at Washington University in St. Louis, he directed campaign and canvass offices during summers for the Fund for Public Interest Research for clients including PIRGIM and Ohio PIRG. Radford took time off of school to work for Public Citizen on global trade issues. After graduating college in 1998, Radford became a lead organizer at Green Corps, the field school for environmental organizing.
Radford received his B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis in 1998.
Career
Field director of Ozone Action
From 1999 to 2001 Radford was field director for Ozone Action, an organization dedicated to working on the atmospheric threats of global warming and ozone depletion. As field director, Radford planned and executed a number of grassroots campaigns, including a campaign during the 2000 presidential primaries, which was the initial impetus for Senator John McCain sponsoring the Climate Stewardship Act.Radford also managed the grassroots mobilization for the Global Warming Divestiture Campaign, which resulted in Ford, General Motors, Texaco, and other companies ending their funding of the Global Climate Coalition, which spread misinformation about global warming. According to The New York Times, the result of the campaign was "the latest sign of divisions within heavy industry over how to respond to global warming."
Founder of Power Shift
In 2001, Radford founded Power Shift, a non-governmental organization dedicated to driving sustainable energy market breakthroughs and building the grassroots base to stop global warming.As executive director of Power Shift, Radford worked closely with the cities of San Diego, Chula Vista, California, and Berkeley, California, as well as nine other municipalities, to secure investments for installation of solar energy systems and implementation of energy efficiency measures in municipal buildings. Radford also helped to convince Citigroup to adopt innovative new means of financing sustainable energy infrastructure for wind and solar installations that made them affordable to average Americans.
Leading Greenpeace USA
In 2009, at the age of 33, Radford was selected as the youngest executive director of Greenpeace. During his tenure at Greenpeace USA, Radford collaborated with over 100 corporations to improve their environmental practices, focusing on joint efforts to enhance sustainability and corporate responsibility., increasing the organization's net income by 80%; launching the organization's grassroots organizing and significantly growing the canvass programs; and serving as a founder of the Democracy Initiative, a coalition aiming to promote democratic participation and transparency, working across various sectors to support universal voter registration and campaign finance reform. In September 2013, Radford announced that he would step down on April 30, 2014, once he had completed five years of service as executive director.New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin referred to a Greenpeace campaign during Radford's tenure as "Activism at Its Best."
Ben Jealous, former president and chief executive officer of the NAACP as well as co-founder of the Democracy Initiative with Radford, described Radford at the helm of Greenpeace as "a modern movement building giant. He has built powerful diverse coalitions to bolster the fights for the environment and voting rights. In the process he has shown himself to be unmatched in mobilizing everyday people to fund their movements directly." Environmental leader Bill McKibben stated: "During Radford's tenure, Greenpeace has been helping the whole environmental movement shift back towards its roots: local, connected, tough."
Before becoming executive director of Greenpeace USA, Radford served as the director of the organization's Grassroots Program. In that capacity, he directed and significantly grew the organization's street canvass and launched and directed the door-to-door canvasses, online-to-offline organizing team, social media team, the Greenpeace Student Network, and the Greenpeace Semester. Under Radford, the street and door-to-door canvassing programs grew to include nearly 400 canvassers in almost 20 cities across the country and was responsible for doubling the organization's budget.