Michael Dupee

Mike is an experienced global sustainability and innovation thought leader specializing in innovation, biomimicry, design for environment and scenario analysis. His wide-ranging expertise includes: sustainable design, social entrepreneurship, strategic corporate philanthropy, supply chain community outreach, local community engagement, employee engagement and volunteerism, supplier codes of conduct, energy and waste management, greenhouse gas emissions management, and public reporting. He is co-founder of Revolution Rail Company, and a lecturer at the University of Vermont Grossman School of Business inn  their Sustainable Innovation MBA Program.

Previously, Mike was Vice President for Innovation at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, where he led efforts to embed sustainability into the company’s product innovation and design processes. Before that, as Vice President for Corporate Social Responsibility, Mike established and built its award-winning, internationally-recognized corporate sustainability function by delivering shared value, providing strategic direction and focus for the company’s programs, managing the company’s portfolio of integrated sustainability initiatives, effectively deploying over $49 million globally, and generating increased understanding of and recognition for the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility programs.

Mike served on the board of Grounds for Health, an international nonprofit whose mission is to create sustainable and effective cervical cancer prevention and treatment programs in coffee-growing communities, and on the Vermont Council on Rural Development, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping Vermonters and Vermont communities develop their capacity to create a prosperous and sustainable future through coordination, collaboration, and the effective use of public and private resources.

Reflecting on being a Fellow, Mike writes that it, “helped me to profoundly reconnect with the natural system in which we live and my own potential as a creative being. The result for me has been a deepening experience of a very powerful way of being in the world – a way of being that creates the space for me to show up for life differently, to connect with people differently, to ask different questions, and to generate different responses to the challenges I encounter.” He became a Donella Meadows Leadership Fellow in 2005 and an Aspen Institute First Mover Fellow in 2011.

Previously, Mike was a Vice President at Goldman Sachs & Co. in New York, NY, making and managing opportunistic investments in distressed financial assets from 2000 to 2004. He earned his JD, cum laude, and Master’s in Business Administration degrees at Georgetown University and his BA in History, magna cum laude, from Boston College.

Michael plays guitar, sings, writes music, snowboards, sails, meditates, gardens, and roots for the New York Yankees. He shares his home with his wife Carmen Negron-Dupee and their son Ezekiel José.

Selected Publication
Mike wrote an article for the Dot Earth section of the New York Times entitled “A Coffee Seller Seeks to Cut Hunger Among Coffee Growers.”

Selected Videos
After the Harvest: Fighting Hunger in the Coffee Lands, produced by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters.