Green Champions

Dominique Hadad & Christy Cook

5.0 (9)
Society & Culture
Updated Weekly

From energy to agriculture, retail to tech — Green Champions tells the stories of real people building sustainable solutions across every industry. Hosted by Dominique Hadad and Christy Cook, each episode provides that progress is already happening and environmental work takes many forms. New episodes every Tuesday.

6d ago

Jake Kheel - Secrets Behind the Caribbean's Most Innovative Resort

A resort that generates 25 tons of waste every single day has two choices: manage it badly or build something worth talking about. Jake Kheel, VP of Sustainability at Grupo Puntacana, chose the latter. He's back this week to get into the real work: composting at industrial scale, coral reef restoration, a hawk conservation project that now has 150 birds on property, and why climate change has stopped being a future problem for coastal communities and started being a right-now one. Jake breaks down what a VP of Sustainability actually does in the tourism industry: part problem-solving, part what he calls "troublemaking," meaning finding things that are broken and convincing people it's worth fixing them. He's candid about the failures that got him here, including an early composting experiment with worms from his New York City apartment that did not go as planned. The organic waste work took years of hardheadedness and iteration to become what it is now: a composting operation that manages food, manure, and green waste from hotels, an airport, thousands of employees, and an entire residential community. The goal isn't just to handle the waste. It's to close the loop and regenerate soil in the process. Then there's Leo. Leo is a Ridgeway's Hawk, an endemic species once down to roughly 200 breeding pairs, who now serves as an ambassador for a conservation project that started with three birds and has grown to over 150. Jake talks through how Grupo Puntacana partnered with the Peregrine Fund to establish a second breeding population on the resort property, and why taking a hawk to a school or a family farm turns out to be one of the most effective conservation strategies around. Episode in a glance 01:32 What a VP of Sustainability Actually Does All Day 04:15 Sargassum: The Seaweed Crisis Threatening Caribbean Tourism 11:28 The Composting Experiment That Flopped (And What It Eventually Became) 18:47 How Kids Are Convincing Their Parents to Compost 20:39 Meet Leo: The Ambassador Hawk Winning Over Communities About Jake Kheel Jake Kheel is the Vice President of Sustainability at Grupo Puntacana, a privately held resort and real estate company in the Dominican Republic that has become a benchmark for sustainable tourism in the Caribbean. With degrees from Columbia and Cornell and over 20 years on the ground in Puntacana, Jake leads a wide-ranging portfolio of environmental programs spanning coral reef restoration, composting, wildlife conservation, and sargassum management. He co-directed the award-winning documentary Death By a Thousand Cuts, which explores deforestation and cross-border conflict on the Haitian-Dominican border, and is the author of Waking the Sleeping Giant, a book about mobilizing the private sector for environmental action. His work has been recognized by National Geographic and Condé Nast Traveler. Connect with Jake Kheel and his work Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/jakekheel/?hl=en Grupo Puntacana → puntacana.com Waking the Sleeping Giant → https://www.amazon.com/Waking-Sleeping-Giant-Unlocking-Business/dp/1544520123 Death By a Thousand Cuts documentary → https://deathbyathousandcutsfilm.com/ Send us a message!
Jul 7

Jake Kheel - How a Generalist Found His Calling in the Dominican Republic

Jake Kheel is VP of Sustainability at Grupo Puntacana, one of the Caribbean's most recognized leaders in sustainable tourism. He's also a conservationist, author, and co-director of the award-winning documentary Death By a Thousand Cuts. It started with a boarding school study abroad program Jake applied to on a whim. He had no idea his great-uncle Ted Kheel was one of the founders of Grupo Puntacana. But a phone call from his grandfather before the trip changed everything, and what began as a detour became the foundation of a two-decade career. Jake talks about falling in love with the Dominican Republic's people first, the warmth and gregariousness of its culture, then its staggering ecological diversity: 13 mountain ranges, two of the Caribbean's highest peaks, coral reefs, mangrove swamps, and desert dunes all on one island. Jake's background is anything but conventional for a sustainability leader. He studied Spanish literature, then went on to Columbia and Cornell to study conservation and soil science. He's a self-described generalist, and he makes a compelling case for why that's exactly what the field needs. The ability to adapt, learn new things quickly, and think creatively across disciplines has kept him sharp through 20 years of constantly evolving challenges. He also gets into what finally pulled him toward documentary filmmaking as a conservation tool, and how a research trip to the DR/Haiti border led him into a story far more layered than he ever expected. Episode in a glance 01:28 Jake’s Accidental Connection to Puntacana 03:11 What's Actually in a Name: The Story Behind "Puntacana" 05:58 Why the Dominican Republic Is Unlike Any Other Caribbean Island 11:24 No Two Days Are the Same: Hawks, Coral Reefs, and Seaweed at 7 AM 15:45 Educating guests about sustainability without overshadowing their vacation 19:40 Why Jake Made a Documentary About Charcoal, Murder, and the Border About Jake Kheel Jake Kheel is the Vice President of Sustainability at Grupo Puntacana, a privately held resort and real estate company in the Dominican Republic that has become a benchmark for sustainable tourism in the Caribbean. With degrees from Columbia and Cornell and over 20 years on the ground in Puntacana, Jake leads a wide-ranging portfolio of environmental programs spanning coral reef restoration, composting, wildlife conservation, and sargassum management. He co-directed the award-winning documentary Death By a Thousand Cuts, which explores deforestation and cross-border conflict on the Haitian-Dominican border, and is the author of Waking the Sleeping Giant, a book about mobilizing the private sector for environmental action. His work has been recognized by National Geographic and Condé Nast Traveler. Connect with Jake Kheel and his work Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/jakekheel/?hl=en Grupo Puntacana → puntacana.com Waking the Sleeping Giant → https://www.amazon.com/Waking-Sleeping-Giant-Unlocking-Business/dp/1544520123 Death By a Thousand Cuts documentary → https://deathbyathousandcutsfilm.com/ Send us a message!
Jun 30

Regina Harmon - Why 235 Million Tons of Food Goes to Waste While 47 Million Go Hungry

In 2023 alone, 235 million tons of food went uneaten or unsold in the United States. The number one item clogging landfills is not furniture, not plastic, not diapers. It is food. And 47 million Americans are food insecure at the same time. Regina Harmon, CEO of Food Recovery Network, returns to break down exactly how that happens, what her organization is doing about it, and how college students across 46 states are at the center of the solution. Food waste is not mainly a story about bad choices or careless people. Regina is clear on that. It is a story about a system configured to throw food away. Contracts with waste haulers already in place. Missed delivery windows that send entire tractor trailers of perfectly good cabbage back to the landfill. Date labels so inconsistent and confusing that 80% of households throw food away unnecessarily just to be safe. The infrastructure for waste is smooth and familiar. The infrastructure for recovery is not, yet. That is the gap Food Recovery Network exists to close. What Regina has built over ten years is a national organization with a genuinely local solution. Over 215 student chapters, trained in food safety, showing up in dining halls with gloves and aluminum trays, packaging surplus food and walking, biking, or driving it to the shelter, soup kitchen, or campus food pantry closest to them. She also walks Dominique and Christy through the Food Date Labeling Act, a piece of legislation FRN has championed for years that would federally standardize date labels and immediately open up millions of tons of surplus food to donation. No federal funding required. Industry already on board. The only thing missing is the political will, and Regina has thoughts on exactly how listeners can help change that. Episode in a glance 00:10 Introducing the Food Recovery Network 03:28 How students recover surplus food across 215 college chapters 07:54 The scale of food waste and why so much surplus ends up in landfills 10:41 The barriers preventing food donation and the laws that protect donors 13:45 The Food Date Labeling Act and how you can advocate with elected officials 20:20 Regina's leadership vision and how to support the Food Recovery Network About Regina Harmon Regina Harmon is the CEO of Food Recovery Network, a national nonprofit and the largest student-led movement fighting food waste and hunger in the United States. With a background in English literature and literary and cultural studies, Regina brings a deeply human-centered lens to anti-poverty work and food access advocacy. Under her leadership, FRN has grown to over 215 chapters across 46 states, doubled its student network to 8,000 members, and expanded its reach to over 400 locations where surplus food is actively recovered and redistributed. Connect with Regina Harmon and her work Regina Harmon on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/reginadmanderson/ Food Recovery Network → foodrecoverynetwork.org Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/foodrecovery/ Send us a message!
Jun 23

Regina Harmon - Who is Running America's Largest Food Recovery Movement?

Regina Harmon is the CEO of Food Recovery Network, the largest student-led movement fighting food waste and hunger in the US. Before she was leading a national nonprofit, she was a kid in Maine with a cloth lunch bag, a working poor family, and a growing sense that the world was not set up fairly. Dominique and Christy sit down with Regina to hear how a life shaped by nature, identity, and literature quietly built the leader she is today. Regina Harmon grew up in Maine at a time when it was the whitest state in the union, in a mixed-race family, without a single Black teacher in her entire schooling. The discomfort of being asked to check one box on a census form when no single box fit her family stayed with her. So did the shame of using SNAP benefits as an AmeriCorps volunteer, watching people's eyes land on her in the checkout line. Those experiences did not harden her. They gave her a very clear sense of who she wanted to fight for. What makes Regina's path so interesting is how much of it runs through books. She studied English literature in college and will tell you, without hesitation, that the humanities gave her everything she needs to run a nonprofit. Critical thinking. The ability to stay focused in hard, slow work. And most importantly, empathy, the capacity to be in someone else's story long enough to actually understand it. By the time she found Food Recovery Network, she had a framework for the work that went well beyond logistics. Food, she says, is a bridge to a valley of abundance. If people can agree that everyone deserves food, that conversation can open doors to everything else people deserve simply because they are human. Episode in a glance 00:10 Meet Regina Harmon, CEO of the Food Recovery Network 00:59 How growing up in Maine shaped her environmental values 03:36 Finding her voice through mixed-race identity and history 11:16 Discovering her life's purpose through AmeriCorps and anti-poverty work 15:26 How studying English literature shaped her as a leader 21:21 Inside the student-led movement fighting food waste and hunger About Regina Harmon Regina Harmon is the CEO of Food Recovery Network, a national nonprofit and the largest student-led movement fighting food waste and hunger in the United States. With a background in English literature and literary and cultural studies, Regina brings a deeply human-centered lens to anti-poverty work and food access advocacy. Under her leadership, FRN has grown to over 215 chapters across 46 states, doubled its student network to 8,000 members, and expanded its reach to over 400 locations where surplus food is actively recovered and redistributed. Connect with Regina Harmon and her work Regina Harmon on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/reginadmanderson/ Food Recovery Network → foodrecoverynetwork.org Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/foodrecovery/ Send us a message!
Jun 16

Mason McNeill - Rerouting America's Food Waste, One Grocery Store at a Time

Most people don't think much about what happens to the food that doesn't get sold. Mason McNeill does. As Chief Commercial Officer at Denali, the nation's largest organics recycler, he's spent his career building the systems that catch that material before it hits a landfill and put it back to work. Denali runs routes to grocery stores and food producers across all of the lower 48, collecting food waste and organic residuals and routing them to recycling facilities where they become compost, animal feed, fertilizer, or renewable fuel. Mason breaks down how that circular chain actually functions, including the part most people don't see: you need customers on both ends. Someone has to send the material, and someone has to want what comes out the other side. Keeping that balance is a big part of his job. He also gets into depackaging technology, one of the more practical breakthroughs changing what's possible in organics diversion. Manually separating food from packaging used to be slow, inconsistent, and a contamination risk. The equipment that handles it now has made it possible to take on waste streams that weren't workable before. And looking ahead, Mason is clear-eyed about how much is still left to build. Landfill costs are rising. Communities across the country are asking hard questions about what's going into the ground. The infrastructure to answer those questions at scale is still catching up. He doesn't frame that as a problem so much as a direction. Episode in a glance 00:10 Denali and organics recycling 01:03 Inside Denali and what a Chief Commercial Officer actually does 03:48 The current state of organics recycling and Denali's strategy to lead it 05:52 Serving customers on both sides of the circular supply chain 09:54 How depackaging technology is unlocking more food waste diversion 14:08 Looking ahead at landfill diversion, infrastructure, and grassroots momentum About Mason McNeill Mason McNeill is the Chief Commercial Officer at Denali, the nation's largest organics recycler, where he leads customer relationships, sales, and infrastructure growth across the country. He holds degrees in finance, accounting, and history from the Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas and began his career at Stephens, a leading investment banking firm, advising private and family-owned companies on accessing capital markets. His work at Denali centers on building the infrastructure and partnerships needed to divert organic material from landfills and return it to productive use as animal feed, fertilizer, compost, and renewable energy. Connect with Mason McNeill and his work Mason McNeill on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/masonbmcneill Denali Website → https://www.denalicorp.com/ Send us a message!
Jun 9

Mason McNeill - The Banker Who Bet on Waste

Mason McNeill is the Chief Commercial Officer at Denali, the nation's largest organics recycler. But before he was thinking about food waste and circular supply chains, he was a young investment banker in Little Rock, learning how to tell the story of businesses that had spent decades building something worth believing in. Mason grew up in the Arkansas River Valley and showed up to college knowing he wanted to study business. What he didn't plan on was picking up a history major along the way. That combination turned out to matter more than he expected. Finance taught him how businesses actually work. History taught him how to think, how to read a situation, and how to make a case. He's been doing both ever since. The conversation gets into what drew him from investment banking to the waste and recycling space, and why he thinks sustainability advocates underestimate how important it is to speak the language of capital. His take is pretty direct: great ideas don't move without money behind them, and if you can't tell the story in a way that gets investors excited, it stays an idea. That's not cynicism. It's just how he's watched things work, and not work, over the course of his career. Episode in a glance 00:44 Growing up in Arkansas and studying business and history 01:52 Why critical thinking and liberal arts matter in business 05:06 Investment banking explained and connecting capital to sustainability 09:48 Joining Denali and the organics recycling mission 13:27 Advice for sustainability businesses and the next generation About Mason McNeill Mason McNeill is the Chief Commercial Officer at Denali, the nation's largest organics recycler, where he leads customer relationships, sales, and infrastructure growth across the country. He holds degrees in finance, accounting, and history from the Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas and began his career at Stephens, a leading investment banking firm, advising private and family-owned companies on accessing capital markets. His work at Denali centers on building the infrastructure and partnerships needed to divert organic material from landfills and return it to productive use as animal feed, fertilizer, compost, and renewable energy. Connect with Mason McNeill and his work Mason McNeill on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/masonbmcneill Denali Website → https://www.denalicorp.com/ Send us a message!
Jun 2

Elizabeth & Marissa - Community-Centered Strategy for a Changing World

Elizabeth Schuster and Marissa Ferrari are the co-founders of Sustainable Economies, a research-driven consulting firm working at the intersection of nature and community. They're back together on the podcast to share how they built a business from a single lunch conversation, why strategy and storytelling are stronger when they're developed side by side, and what it actually looks like to help conservation nonprofits find their footing in an uncertain world. Elizabeth brought a decade of independent consulting in strategic planning to the table. Marissa brought deep experience in community-centered branding and communications. What they discovered, first at the Women in Sustainability Network, then over a shared project at Summit Metro Parks, was that their two approaches were almost identical in process. That realization became Sustainable Economies. Together, they walk us through what it looks like to help a conservation nonprofit move from a rigid five-year action plan to something more honest: a North Star that holds steady while strategies stay flexible. They share the story behind Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District, a watershed that covers 20% of Ohio, and how years of community engagement led to a funded research collaboration that's now shaping real policy. And they make a case for why right now, in the middle of funding cuts and policy uncertainty, is exactly the wrong time for mission-driven organizations to go quiet. Episode in a glance 00:00 Introduction 00:41 How They Met and Teamed Up 03:33 Why Strategy Needs Story 07:25 Founding Sustainable Economies 13:54 Client Wins and Resilience 23:37 Measuring Impact and Wrap Up About Elizabeth Schuster & Marissa Ferrari Elizabeth Schuster and Marissa Ferrari are the co-founders of Sustainable Economies, a consulting firm that helps conservation nonprofits and public agencies develop strategy, clarify identity, and measure impact. Elizabeth brings over 10 years of experience in strategic planning, community engagement, and facilitation. Marissa brings expertise in brand development, communications, and stakeholder research. Together, they work with clients in Ohio and across the country to build resilient organizations rooted in research and plain-language storytelling. Connect with Elizabeth and Marissa Sustainable Economies on LinkedIn → Sustainable-Economies Sustainable Economies → sustainableeconomies.com Send us a message!
May 26

Marissa Ferrari - From Ms. Magazine to Mission-Driven Work

Marissa Ferrari is Partner and Creative Director at Sustainable Economies, where she works with mission-driven organizations at the intersection of nature and communities. Her winding path that took her from a childhood in rural Michigan to a career in brand strategy and communications, and what she's learned about creativity, storytelling, and finding your way when the road doesn't run straight. Marissa grew up in a small town in southwestern Michigan, spending her childhood building tree forts, wandering creeks, and roaming the woods behind her house. It was a relationship with the natural world that never left her. She went to college expecting to become a doctor, switched to literature and women's studies, and landed an internship at Ms. Magazine during the Gloria Steinem era. When that door didn't open the way she hoped, she spent years wondering if she'd missed her shot. What she found instead was a richer path with AmeriCorps, economic development, copywriting, advertising, and eventually a creative directorship that draws on every one of those stops. For Marissa, storytelling is the engine behind effective nonprofit communications. The best stories make the audience the hero. We drive decisions on how stories captures emotion, not by the data they share. Marissa’s ambition as a woman, from the internal friction of having teachers tell her to stop raising her hand, to how building her own practice - gave her room to finally see what she could accomplish. Her realization from this work is that we are not separate from nature, and the more people remember this, the more it fuels her hope. Episode in a glance 00:00 Introduction 00:53 Tree Fort Roots 02:38 From Biomed to Literature 06:17 Nonlinear Career Lessons 10:10 Storytelling and Creativity 21:32 Hope and Staying Connected About Marissa Ferrari Marissa Ferrari is Partner and Creative Director at Sustainable Economies, a consultancy supporting mission-driven nonprofits and public sector organizations working at the intersection of nature and communities. With a background in literature and women's studies and more than two decades in communications, brand strategy, and creative direction, she brings both artistic sensibility and research-driven rigor to the work of helping organizations find and tell their stories. Connect with Marissa Ferrari and her work at Sustainable Economies Sustainable Economies on LinkedIn → Sustainable-Economies Sustainable Economies → sustainableeconomies.com Send us a message!

5

out of 5

9 Ratings

From energy to agriculture, retail to tech — Green Champions tells the stories of real people building sustainable solutions across every industry. Hosted by Dominique Hadad and Christy Cook, each episode provides that progress is already happening and environmental work takes many forms. New episodes every Tuesday.

Creator

Dominique Hadad & Christy Cook
Years Active

2024 - 2026
Episodes

122
Rating

Clean
Copyright

© 2026 Green Champions
Show Website

Green Champions

Society & Culture

Society & Culture

Updated Weekly