Today, we have a guest post from Churchill Franklin, an invaluable member of our team and Board of Directors. Churchill graduated from Middlebury College a in 1971, married his college sweetheart, Janet, and has had three children graduate from Middlebury. As you can see, he’s very devoted to the school and furthering its mission of academic excellence, global responsibility and environmental stewardship.

You all know the song by Crosby, Stills & Nash, “Teach Your Children Well.”  My story has a lot to do with listening to my children and learning from them. My daughter, Lindsey, Middlebury College class of ‘07, majored in environmental studies. Her thinking was shaped by Jon Isham and Bill McKibben. As she showed up from successive semesters at Middlebury, she told an increasingly articulate story about the importance of protecting the environment so that her generation will have a planet on which to live.

Having spent the five years at an environmentally-oriented engineering manufacturing company, Thermo Electron, I knew that creativity was important in solving environmental challenges. I had also come to realize that the only way to galvanize the public’s will to reduce the use of fossil fuel was for the price of oil to increase dramatically. Since that has happened, all kinds of neat things are surfacing–even GM is developing (for the second time) an electric car.

So, Lindsey motivated me to stop driving my Chevy Suburban, buy a Toyota Prius and to begin to think creatively about ways to reduce our personal carbon footprint.  Through her inspiration, it was very hard to say no to Brighter Planet, this compelling, student-driven, entrepreneurial idea that came out of a Middlebury classroom (and that has now grown to a company present coast-to-coast through its alliances and the magic of the internet). So, now I find myself on the board of this exciting new company and trying to figure out how to get more Brighter Planet credit cards and debit cards into the hands of the global populace.

It’s the least I can do!

-Churchill