ADVANCE SOCIAL IMPACT AWARD WINNER 2019
Richard Fuller OAM, is an Australian-born, U.S.-based engineer, entrepreneur and environmentalist best known for his work on global pollution issues. He is founder and president of the nonprofit Pure Earth (formerly known as Blacksmith Institute) dedicated to solving pollution problems in low and middle-income countries, where human health is at risk. Pure Earth focuses on polluted places where toxins cause a significant public health risk, initiating projects that solve these exposures thus ensuring healthier lives for local inhabitants.
Mr Fuller initiated and is chairman of the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution, a multi-stakeholder group focusing on pragmatic solutions to pollution and health in the poorer countries. Members include the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, UNEP, UNIDO, UNDP, and governments of over 25 countries severely affected by pollution. In 2010, he was profiled in Time magazine’s Power of One column about his efforts fighting pollution. In 2014, Bloomberg Businessweek chronicled the growth of Blacksmith Institute/Pure Earth and Fuller’s work on toxic pollution problems around the world, including a dangerous cleanup of a secret former Soviet arms site in Ukraine.
In October 2017, he co-Chaired the seminal Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health. Bringing a group of 50 top researchers together and working for over two years, that report outlined the enormous health and economic costs of pollution, while also showing the pathways and solutions that can help cure what is now become the largest cause of death in the world. The report had a global reach of unprecedented proportions, reaching 2 billion across the globe with over 4,000 media articles.
In 2018, Mr Fuller was awarded the medal of the Order of Australia for his work on pollution globally. Mr Fuller is also the founder and absentee Chairman of Great Forest Inc., one of the leading sustainability consulting companies in the U.S. He is the author of The Brown Agenda, published in 2015. He lives and is headquartered in New York. He is married, with three children. He is on the board of the Children’s Environmental Health Fund, the Executive Committee of the Global Alliance of Health and Pollution, Blacksmith Institute, and the National Academy of Science Environmental Health Matters Initiative.
Winner of the Advance Social Impact Award for 2019
> Meet Richard Fuller | Watch
> Celebrating the work of winner Richard Fuller | Watch
> Acceptance speech by Richard Fuller | Watch
