Coming Clean
Michael Brune is the executive director of Rainforest Action Network (RAN). Since 1998, Brune has shaped RAN's campaign strategies, resulting in more than a dozen landmark commitments from America's largest corporations, including Citi, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Kinko’s, Boise, and Lowe’s. Brune provides vision and energy to fuel RAN's current efforts to promote freedom from oil, responsible forestry, clean energy, and sustainable agriculture with innovative media campaigns, grassroots action, and sophisticated corporate negotiations.
Brune has been a leader at RAN since age 26, when he was hired to direct a campaign to convince Home Depot to stop selling wood from endangered forests. After a year of creative protests, celebrity activism, and shareholder advocacy, Home Depot agreed. Time magazine called it the top environmental story of 1999, and the announcement led to the protection of 5 million acres in British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest.
Brune is the author of “Coming Clean – Breaking America’s Addiction to Oil and Coal,” which has been called” a smart, heartfelt guide to building a better world” by writer Jeff Goodell and “the resource we have long needed” by Bill McKibben. Brune is also a founding board member of Oil Change International, an organization dedicated to dissolving the political barriers to a clean energy transition.
Brune lives in Alameda, California with his wife and two children.