A Night To Remember

The 2003 Visionary Dinner, Southface Energy Institute’s annual gala fundraiser, lands just two days before Valentine’s Day! Bring your loved ones and spend a special evening dedicated to creating an environmentally and economically sustainable future. Ray Anderson, Chairman of Interface, Inc., and Sam Williams, President of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, serve as Honorary Dinner Hosts for the fourth annual event. Guests will join Atlanta’s business leaders and national design and construction professionals to relish a meal prepared using Slow Food principles, while savoring wine from Fetzer and Bonterra Vineyards. The Argon Award, presented by Atlantic Station and Jacoby Development, will go to a Georgia-based business leader or institution that exemplifies environmental leadership in the market place.

Keynote Speaker Lester R. Brown Lester R. Brown has been described by the Washington Post as “one of the world’s most influential thinkers.” Brown started his career as a farmer, growing tomatoes in southern New Jersey with his bother during high school and college. He earned a degree in agricultural science from Rutgers in 1955, and since then has earned 20 honorary degrees. After spending six months in rural India he joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agriculture Service as an international analyst. Brown went on to earn an M.S. in agriculture economics from the University of Maryland and an M.P.A. from Harvard. In 1964, he became an advisor to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman on foreign agriculture policy. In 1966, Freeman appointed him administrator of the department’s International Agriculture Development Service. “One of the ways of judging the success of a region is the extent to which water has been escalated in public importance. I believe it is going to escalate a lot more in the years ahead as we begin to understand what it is like to live in a water-scarce world.” -Lester Brown, Stockholm Water Symposium comments

Lester Brown, founder of Worldwatch Institute and the Earth Policy Institute, will deliver remarks during a sensuous organic meal prepared by some of the country’s finest chefs. With partners such as California Wine Country Chefs, Atlanta Chefs, Georgia Organic Food Grown Cooperative and Café Campesino, the Visionary Dinner will be an evening to remember!

In 1974, with support of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Brown founded the Worldwatch Institute, a research institute devoted to the analysis of global, environmental issues. In 1984 Brown launched the State of the World reports, an outstanding reference on environmental issues, that is composed of annual assessments and bi-monthly magazines translated into some 30 languages.

Brown has authored six books since 1991. In May 2001, he founded Earth Policy Institute, publishing Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth. The purpose of the Institute is to provide a vision and road map for achieving an environmentally sustainable economy and an ongoing assessment of our progress.

Brown is also a MacArthur Fellow, and has been awarded the 1987 United Nations’ Environment Prize, the 1989 World Wide Fund for Nature Gold Metal and the 1994 Blue Planet Prize for his “exceptional contributions to solving global, environmental problems.”