In 2012, Charles Orgbon founded Greening Forward, a nonprofit organization that trains and funds young people to lead climate solutions, and transition economies away from consuming more dinosaur juice. His youth climate activism caught the attention of national environmental leaders, from Audubon to the White House. Funders such as singer-songwriter Jack Johnson, media mogul Ted Turner, and many corporations took notice.
Through Greening Forward campaigns sponsored by Disney, Wells Fargo, and State Farm, Charles saw how corporations could drive real climate action. This drove his decision to become a consultant with Deloitte, specializing in helping Fortune 100 companies identify climate risks, measure environmental impact, and accelerate commitments towards solving the climate crisis, transforming sustainability buzzwords into actionable KPIs.
In 2022, Charles joined EY to continue his climate work, now navigating a rapidly shifting market where voluntary corporate sustainability actions are quickly becoming mandatory regulatory standards. Charles is a highly sought after leader on topics such as understanding and implementing the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), and the European Union’s Due Diligence Directive (EU3D), as well as California's climate legislation, SB-253 and SB-261. Like regulatory Rosetta Stone, he’s not only fluent in Spanish, but also corporate climate action.
Ask Charles about bandwidth as a high achiever. He holds a B.S. in Environmental Science from the University of Georgia, where he serves as a founding trustee for a diversity scholarship. He also holds an M.A. in Liberal Arts from Johns Hopkins University, where he studied the intersection of climate and social issues. Meanwhile, the two-time TEDx speaker continues to serve on the Board of Directors for Greening Forward and has been named a Captain Planet Foundation Superhero for the Earth, an Environmental Excellence Award recipient from SeaWorld, and a GreenBiz 30 Under 30 Awardee.