the green guru
Lea Cullen Boyer
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Photo by Stefan Radtke |
Lea Cullen Boyer is in charge of making sure there’s a Westchester County many, many years in the future. The founder and managing director of the Green Guru Network, Boyer is the sustainability coordinator for Westchester County. She was part of the task force that crafted the Westchester County Climate Change Action Plan, through which she developed and supported initiatives that reduce the county’s carbon footprint.
It all started off, of course, as a website. In 2007, she launched the Green Guru Network, a site for sharing sustainable ideas, finding useful resources and grants, and cultivating a social network within the green community. In 2011, the Green Guru Network received more than 2.7 million hits, and it has more than 500 members. “The network helps members cut through the myriad of government agencies, nonprofits, volunteer groups, schools, consultants, green products, and services to discover the most useful resources,” she says.
The Green Guru Network is Boyer’s answer to the discovery that neighboring communities, schools, homeowners, government agencies, and businesses were each pursuing similar goals, unaware of the others’ work. So she sought to leverage the efficiencies of collaboration. “There is such a parallel between the green movement and social media. Both have had a huge growth spurt, and a very supportive community,” says Boyer. “It just made sense to connect the two.”
