Gay Browne is an environmental advisor and author of Living With a Green Heart: How to Keep Your Body, Your Home and the Planet Healthy in a Toxic World, a roadmap for making incremental changes that will not only transform your life but heal the world we share. From the home to the office, from the foods we eat to the clothes we wear, it prescribes a set of simple, holistic steps you can take today that will improve your Personal Environmental Health, and help you stop feeling overwhelmed, reduce illness, improve sleep, mood, and focus, and start making a difference. She is also the Founder of Greenopia, a comprehensive guide to green businesses. It originated as a print-guide series in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York, and rapidly expanded nationwide through the launch of Greenopia.com. Greenopia is currently revamping its business criteria and will re-launch at the end of 2019, with a membership-based business directory, an accompanying mobile app, a daily financial tracker to monitory eco-purchases, and a green financial rewards program.
Greenopia has over fifty rated categories of businesses that range from restaurants to nail salons to burial services. This criterion is based on life cycle analysis principles, tracking impacts from material extraction, manufacturing, packaging, transportation, usage and disposal as opposed to just one supply chain area of a business or product. It also includes social concerns and other ethical considerations found in Environmental, Social, and Governance, (ESG). Through this process, Greenopia takes the guesswork out of sustainability and helps people make healthy, green decisions in their everyday lives.
Gay’s green journey was inspired by her own health challenges. As a former asthma sufferer, she began to search for ways to improve her family’s living environment, and in 1994, she constructed the first green home in Pacific Palisades. Insourcing and working with contractors, interior designers and furniture dealers, she soon realized that there was a wealth of green options, but no simple resource for locating them.
Prior to her work with Greenopia, Gay enjoyed a successful 15-year career in advertising and public relations with various publishing companies including American Express Publishing and Times Mirror. In addition to her role as at Greenopia, she writes a regular blog that is housed on, gaybrowne.com, and is featured on Thrive Global and The Huffington Post. Gay is the Chief Sustainability Officer at Arena Growth Holding, providing growth capital for the next generation of sustainable innovation. Gay is a trustee for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s environmental organization, Waterkeeper Alliance, and serves on the advisory board for the safe soil movement, Kiss The Ground. She serves on the Ford Motor Company Sustainability Council and she recently joined the Advisory Board at Earth Protect TV (EPTV), a new video-on-demand media platform launching in 2019. Additionally she has served as a Board Member for: Grounded, The Hum Sum, Women for Women, the French Heritage Society, P.S. Arts, St. Andrew’s School in Delaware, and the Los Angeles Women’s Foundation, and has been the events co-chair for Environmental Working Group (EWG), and was an eco-spokeswomen for Clorox, and an advisor for Ketchum Public Relations. In 2015, Gay completed Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative Program (ALI), where she furthered her mission of bringing sustainability and personal environmental health to national prominence.
Gay’s passion and commitment have led her to receive numerous awards and recognition. In 2008, Gay was honored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by receiving the annual Climate Protection Award in recognition of her outstanding work fighting climate change. In 2009, she was presented with the Faith 2 Green Environmental Business of the Year award. That same year, Gay was chosen to speak at the Green Inaugural Ball, welcoming President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden to the White House. Gay frequently appears in print, on the radio, and national television.
In her spare time, Gay enjoys hiking, tennis, golf, yoga, meditation, art restoration, freelance writing, traveling and spending time with her three children. Gay currently lives in Santa Barbara, California.
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