Ralph Meima is VP of Project Development at Encore Renewable Energy. His career spans 10 years in solar energy development plus earlier work in international IT marketing, systems consulting and software development. He also devoted part of his career to research and teaching in management education with a sustainability focus, including serving as founding director of the Marlboro MBA in Managing for Sustainability (2006 to 2012). He has an engineering degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, a Master of Arts from Johns Hopkins SAIS, and a PhD in management from Lund University, Sweden.
Ralph speaks Swedish, French, and German in addition to his native English, and is currently learning Ukrainian. He also wrote a speculative fiction trilogy set in the near future. He is engaged in international regional economic development initiatives through Windham Global Partners, which he founded. Ralph lives in Brattleboro, Vermont with his wife and four children, and gets outdoors as much as possible in all seasons.
3 Questions to Get to Know Ralph
What does a sustainable future mean to you?
It means knowing that our global society is heading in the right direction, not wrong direction, by doing things collectively such as removing GHG’s from the atmosphere, removing plastics from the oceans, and restoring habitat so that Earth’s biodiversity can regenerate and climate stabilize. (But I realize this may take a long time, with a lot of unavoidable damage along the way.)
What’s your favorite way to spend time outside?
A long summer backpacking trip, although skiing, snowshoeing, climbing mountains, and paddling are all super, too. And gardening.
What’s a great book or podcast you’ve engaged with recently?
“Where You’ll Find Me”, by Ty Gagne, about risk, decisions, and the last climb of Kate Matrosova when she tried to do a winter solo traverse of the Northern Presidentials in NH, and the weather went very bad.
The team at Encore Renewable Energy® is proud to be certified as a B Corp, joining over 3,500 other businesses worldwide who also share a commitment to social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency.