David Yarnold

Executive Director, Environmental Defense; Former Editor of the San Jose Mercury News

David Yarnold is the Executive Director for Environmental Defense, which he joined in April, 2005. He is a boundary-crosser, a NGO leader from the for-profit ranks -- with a media background. He authored Environmental Defense’s California strategy and was a key leader in the passage of the nation’s most sweeping climate change legislation. In May, he announced that Environmental Defense would be the first environmental advocacy group to open an office in Bentonville, Arkansas, to work with Wal-Mart. Yarnold spent nearly 27 years at the San Jose Mercury News where, as editor, he shared a Pulitzer Prize and helped the paper become one of the one of the nation’s most acclaimed publications. He managed a complex, global newsroom of more than 400 people while chronicling the rise of Silicon Valley.

He is on the board of directors of American Leadership Forum Silicon Valley, ecoAmerica and the Stanford University Graduate School of Businesses’ Center for Social Innovation publication.