John H. Giordanengo
Principal Restoration Economist, Ecologist, CEO
John is an entrepreneur at heart, a passion that dovetails well with his life-long commitment to conservation and sustainable economics. This includes John’s founding of three small businesses, co-found three non-profit organizations, and serving on multiple non-profit boards dedicated to conservation, ecology, systems restoration, and sustainability. Giordanengo’s innate skills include not only the understanding and restoration of highly complex systems, but the facilitation of diverse stakeholder groups pursuing restoration across political, economic, and ecological boundaries.
John’s first career was in recycling and composting systems in the ’90s, before pursuing a graduate degree in ecological restoration at Colorado State University. He has since dedicated his life to restoring degraded systems, including investigative research, writing, and education supporting economic restoration. Thirty years of experience have imbued John with an unexpected quality; the desire to refine humanity’s understanding of the structure of sustainable economies and ecosystems. This has brought John across North and South America, where he has provided a variety of design, planning, research, and implementation services for a range of private, non-profit, and government clients.
John’s educational work includes over 150 articles, technical manuals, and restoration guidelines for state, local, and non-profit entities. His recent book, Ecosystems as Models for Restoring Our Economies, was a finalist in the 2023 CO book awards. Yes, John loves writing a worthy story. Less obvious, he is as comfortable tromping through wetlands and sowing seeds as he is on stage, where he delivers keynote addresses and seminars across the U.S. His lecture circuit includes ecological, economic, sustainability, and restoration topics. As a life-long musician, warming stages for international acts such as the English Beat and No Doubt, John has developed an energetic speaking style, helping him engage audiences not simply to convey novel information in a common-sense manner, but to inspire action. Over the decades, John has come to realize that the surest path to social & environmental well-being is through economic restoration.
Education and Core Skills
M.S. Ecological Restoration, Rangeland Ecosystem Science Department: Colorado State University (2000)
B.A. Business Administration, minor in ecology: San Diego State University (1993)
23 years organizational development and business management experience
15 years senior project management experience
20 years of leadership and technical training program development and delivery
12 years of professional speaking experience
10 years of experience in stakeholder engagement for regional and watershed-scale restoration projects