Our Advisory Board consists of non-voting leadership that we consider to be some of the best minds to help the continued growth and evolution of the Texas Green Network.  Our current group consists of:

Tom “Smitty” Smith, Texas Director of Public Citizen
Smitty has served as state director of Public Citizen since 1985 and serves on the boards of Clean Water Action, the Texas Wind Power Coalition, Texans for Public Justice, Campaigns for People, the Clean Energy Project of CEERT, a nature preserve, and a solar energy company.   He has recently received the Thomas Paine award from Campaigns for People, 2001 Austin Chronicle’s critics choice award for “Best People’s Lobbyist” as well as an U.S. EPA “Environmental Excellence Award.”

Richard Halpin, Founder of American Youthworks
Richard is the founder of the award winning youth development corporation American YouthWorks where he was the CEO and chief visionary for 30 years. He is a founder in ACSRE a non profit real estate holding Co.  Halpin has founded several other npo remaining as a  director and or board member. Halpin is the Ernst and Young and Silverton Foundation 2008 social entrepreneur of the year. Halpin’s work has been written about in several youth policy books and his team based company has won: the points of light, Liberty Bell, YouthBuild Stewardship and many other acknowledgements. He is a pioneer in the Youth Corps movement with youth built energy efficient affordable home building with Casa Verde builders and environmental corps work. Halpin was one of the early charter school leaders in Texas starting one of the first five Public Charter High Schools in 1996. Mr. Halpin has public policy testimony and recommendations to the Texas Legislature and US Congress.

Brandi Clark Burton, Founder and Chief Inspiration Officer at Austin Eco Network
Brandi Clark Burton is a recognized and respected community and environmental leader, social entrepreneur, and inspiring voice for change with a long history in Austin and broad knowledge around issues of sustainability. Brandi is a passionate promoter of socially and environmentally responsible business practices and consumer behavior with the goal of creating healthier people, communities, businesses and planet. She has exceptional networking skills, strategic thinking, organizational management, fundraising and community-building skills.

A serial social entrepreneur, Brandi has been the generative force behind launching more than a dozen social venture enterprises over the last 15 years – businesses, organizations, service projects and first-time events. Wherever she sees a problem she brings people together to help solve it. A few of her “offspring” include the Austin EcoNetwork, Citizen Gardener, and Austin CarShare (which laid the groundwork for car2go).

Brandi is a graduate of Yale University, Leadership Austin and has received numerous awards and recognition including Austin Business Journal’s 2009 Green Advocate Award, Austin Under 40 Community Service Award and she has been voted “Best Environmentalist” in the Austin Chronicle Readers’ Poll three times. Most recently she was awarded the 2011 Mayor’s Individual Achievement Award given via the Austin Climate Protection Program.

Pliny Fisk, Co-Director of Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems
Pliny Fisk is Co-Director and Co-Founder of the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems (CMPBS), a non-profit design firm established in 1975 dedicated to sustainable planning, design and demonstration, now the oldest of its kind in the US. Pliny is considered one of the originators of the Sustainable Architecture and Planning movement in the United States, with contributions spanning four decades.

Nationally he has held significant positions including being elected to the first AIA’ Committee on the Environment COTE and co-chaired the ERG the Environmental Resource Guide, the first major effort by that institution to green the profession.

He has helped establish such organizations as the National Center for Appropriate technology, and is CEO and founder of S.E.T Sustainable Earth Technologies. Pliny presently is processing 38 provisional patent claims from construction systems to energy, water, food and material systems at home and as well as at an entire city scale, these include areas in the field of incentivized green living through the use of feedback loops at the smallest increment of our everyday relationships to the natural world.