Life Members

Life members are those individuals who are recognized for their special contributions to IGIHOF. Life members can be keynote speakers, ex-Board members, volunteers or Lifetime Sponsors. We would like to recognize their contributions by honoring them with our Life Membership.

• Donald Simon

  Donald is a national leader and speaker for the green economy and has devoted himself to creating the framework necessary for incenting business to become the engine of environmental sustainability. He co-founded the two organizations that have made California the global green building leader, the U.S. Green Building Council’s Northern California Chapter and Build It Green. He is general counsel to both organizations, as well as the California Solar Energy Industry Association and Efficiency First. Donald also hosts the West Coast Green, the leading conference and trade show for green innovation. On the international level, he teamed with the City of San Francisco in 2005 to organize and host the United Nations’ largest international conference of local government leaders to address urban environmental sustainability issues.

  Active in environmental issues for many years, Donald previously worked for Environmental Defense Fund to develop the first international framework for cross-border air pollution offsets. He has also represented various organizations on issues related to old-growth forest protection and logging concerns, including Sierra Club, Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters, the California Heritage Tree Initiative and Buckeye Forest Council. In law school, he served as president of the Ohio State University Environmental Law Association.

• Rod Diridon, Sr.

  Since 1995, Rod Diridon, Sr., has been executive director of the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI), a transportation policy research center created in 1991 by Congress. He is known as the “father” of modern transit service in Silicon Valley and has chaired more than 100 international, national, state and local programs, most related to transit and the environment. He frequently provides legislative testimony on sustainable transportation issues.

  Mr. Diridon was appointed in 2001 and 2006 by Governors Davis and Schwarzenegger, respectively, to the California High Speed Rail Authority Board of which he is chair emeritus. He helped found and is chair emeritus of the American Public Transportation Association’s ( APTA) High Speed and Intercity Rail Committee and National High Speed Rail Corridors’ Coalition. He served as president of the national Council of University Transportation Centers.

  In 1992, he served as the chair of APTA in Washington DC and for a decade as North American vice chair of the International Transit Association (UITP) in Brussels. In 1976, he chaired the state’s first successful half-cent sales tax for transit and subsequently chaired a state-wide and five successful regional transportation financing and bond elections.

  In 1996 he founded and chaired the Transportation Research Board’s study panel, “Combating Global Warming through Sustainable Transportation Policy”. He advised the Federal Transit Administration and in 1995 chaired the National Research Council’s Transportation Research Board’s Transit Oversight and Project Selection Committee. He has provided keynotes, especially for high speed rail and sustainability, in more than 50 US cities and for a dozen international conferences, and he has published numerous related articles. He has driven electric cars since 1996 and his home’s photovoltaic array is a net contributor to the grid.

  His political career began in 1971 as the youngest person ever elected to the Saratoga City Council. He retired in 1995 because of the adoption of term limits after completing six terms as chair of both the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors and the Transit Board. He is the only person to have chaired the San Francisco Bay Area’s (119 cities, 27 transit agencies, and 9 counties) three regional governments: the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, and the Association of Bay Area Governments. He chaired nine successful rail system development project boards. The main train station was renamed the “San Jose Diridon Station” upon his retirement from public office.

  After receiving a BS in accounting and MSBA in 1963 in statistics from San Jose State University, he served as a naval officer during two Vietnam combat tours. In 1968 he founded the Decision Research Institute which was sold in 1977 after his election.

  Mr. Diridon has two successful children, Rod Jr. and Mary Margaret, and two grandchildren. He is married to Dr. Gloria Duffy, former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and now president and CEO of the Commonwealth Club of California.

• Ray Anderson

  Ray Anderson is founder and chairman of Interface Inc., the world’s largest manufacturer of modular carpet for commercial and residential applications and a leading producer of commercial broadloom and commercial fabrics. He is “known in environmental circles for his advanced and progressive stance on industrial ecology and sustainability.” Since 1995, he has reduced Interface’s waste by a third, and plans to make the company sustainable by 2020.

  For instance, under his leadership, Interface seeks to reduce and then eliminate “petroleum from its manufacturing processes.” He is pioneering recycling efforts with nylon and polyester which “is recyclable, leading to more closed loop technologies for the future.” However, Anderson wasn’t always a friend of the environment. He had his epiphany in 1994 when he read The Ecology of Commerce, by Paul Hawken, who argues that the industrial system is destroying the planet and only industry leaders are powerful enough to stop it.

  Anderson is featured in the documentaries The Corporation and The 11th Hour as well as an interview in The Day After Peace, in an episode of David Suzuki’s television series The Nature of Things and in the episode of Ethical Markets TV Series “Redefining Success.” He is also a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council.

  Ray Anderson is the author of Mid-Course Correction: Toward a Sustainable Enterprise: The Interface Model. Inspired by Daniel Quinn’s novel Ishmael, Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce, and many others, Ray Anderson has successfully composed a piece that covers his personal journey towards sustainability in his work. His 2009 book is “Confessions of a Radical Industrialist: Profits, People, Purpose: Doing Business by Respecting the Earth”.