Joe Whitworth
Meet the President
Joe Whitworth has been responsible for strategic direction of The Freshwater Trust for more than two decades, growing the organization’s budget tenfold during that time. He is focused on the next generation of conservation tools at the intersection of technology and finance to get results on the ground. In addition to formal advisory roles in B Corp, foundation and government settings, he is a patented inventor, author of the book “Quantified: Redefining Conservation for the Next Economy” published by Island Press and has served as founding board chair of the Council for Responsible Sport. Joe has also served as a guest lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He holds a B.A. from Dartmouth College and a J.D. from Lewis & Clark College with an emphasis in natural resources and water law.
Conservation has hit a wall.
Traditional tactics used over the last quarter century are proving inadequate against the demands placed on our freshwater ecosystems.
Right now, more than half our nation’s waters are impaired. While we have all the ingredients for success: willing landowners, well-intended agencies, capable locals and millions of dollars of annual investment, we are not gaining ground at the pace and scale that’s desperately needed.
Ensuring a future with clean, healthy rivers requires understanding the impact we’re having and being adamant about tracking and achieving results. The Freshwater Trust is focused on outcome-based conservation. We use 21st century tools and technologies that ensure every restoration action is indeed linked to a net positive for the environment. Our goal is to move conservation from process to precision. From well-meaning measures to hard and fast measurement. From intention to innovation.
Now is the time for us all to become the innovators and change makers of our environment, of our economy, of our era. We can be the ones to find the solutions that work. We must be the ones to make them real.
History tells us that every generation makes era-appropriate decisions – and now is the time to make ours. We’ve kicked the can down the road long enough. James Jannard, the founder of Oakley, once said something that applies here:
“Everything in the world can and will be made better. The only questions are when… and by whom.”
To this challenge, I answer:
Now, and by us.
Joe Whitworth
President + CEO
Quantified: Redefining Conservation for the Next Economy
Google, Apple, Amazon, Uber: companies like these have come to embody innovation, efficiency, and success. How often is the environmental movement characterized in the same terms? Sadly, conservation is frequently seen as a losing battle, waged by well-meaning, but ultimately ineffective idealists. Joe Whitworth argues it doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, it can’t be this way if we are to maintain our economy, let alone our health or the planet’s.
In Quantified, Whitworth draws lessons from the world’s most tech-savvy, high-impact organizations to show how we can make real gains for the environment. The principles of his approach, dubbed quantified conservation, will be familiar to any thriving entrepreneur: situational awareness, bold outcomes, innovation and technology, data and analytics, and gain-focused investment. This no-nonsense strategy builds on the inspirational environmental work begun in the 1970s, while recognizing that the next economy will demand new solutions.
Buy the Book