ELYSIAN - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- CEO, Local Reinvestment Group and Managing Partner, Compost Crew Extensive Startup Experience ( SunEdison )
Bethesda Green Mentor, organic and green chemistry expert and founder of her consultancy, Towards Safer, LLC.
Bill Kramer comes to the hemp industry with a broad background in social benefit enterprises and a long history in business. Bill started his career with a family bookstore, Sidney Kramer Books, in Washington DC., a store founded by his father after World War II. The bookshop served worldwide markets in the public and private sectors with its deep coverage of politics, economics, military affairs, business management, science and technology and current affairs. In 1976, Bill conceived and created the first bookstore/café , Kramerbooks & afterwords, which became the model for hundreds of similar operations around the globe.
After starting ten separate book enterprises, from retail to wholesale to publishing, Bill left the sector to start his own NGO focusing on expanding access to knowledge - print and digital - to under-served developing economies. That work led him to join World Resources Institute, a ‘think-and-do' tank in DC, where he co-directed, and worked with, a team on ‘triple-bottom-line' business models serving low-income communities. The team published a pioneering data-driven study, "The Next Four Billion: Market Size and Business Strategy at the Base of the Pyramid", a work that has had deep influence on how aid agencies and the private sector approach poverty reduction. He and the WRI team worked with scores of multinational companies to develop ‘bottom-up' business models that advance social and economic progress, environmental regeneration, while assuring competitive profit margins.
Bill moved to Colorado in 2010 (a long-time goal since he met his wife skiing in Vail in 1976 and where he and the family returned at least annually) in order to work full-time at Colorado State University's School of Business, where he conceived and founded The Center for Advancement of Sustainable Enterprise. During his Fort Collins days, he also co-founded and led a company that cleaned up the 2-stroke motorcycle engines powering Asia's ‘tuk-tuks'.
In recent years Bill has devoted attention to local pro-bono work, serving on committees promoting the North Boulder Arts District, and becoming a trustee of Shining Mountain Waldorf School.
He continues to mentor start-ups that deliver social benefit and potentially large-scale sector transformation, such as Elysian Holding, where he is enthusiastically engaged with Carey and Tom, and the growing Elysian team, in building just such a venture.
A Washington, DC native, Carey has worked in the sustainable personal-care
industry for over 16 years. She trained with Aveda, Aveda London, and Vidal
Eric Steenstra is a hemp industry pioneer and serial entrepreneur. He cofounded hemp clothing and lifestyle brand Ecolution with Steve DeAngelo in 1992 and grew it into a multi-million dollar business. He now serves as the president of Vote Hemp, the leading hemp advocacy organization that he co-founded in 2000. He is also the Chief Strategy and Partnering Officer for Elysian and a consultant to the economic development arm of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and trusted source to the media, including the NY Times, CNN, Rolling Stone, Politico and the Washington Post.
Steenstra lead Vote Hemp's efforts to pass hemp farming legislation nationwide. In 2005, Steenstra worked with Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) to draft the first modern U.S. hemp legislation (H.R. 3037) introduced in Congress. In 2012 he worked with Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) to get companion hemp legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate. Steenstra worked with Congressman Polis (D-CO) and Senate Majority Leader McConnell (R-KY) to have hemp legislation included in the 2014 Farm Bill that enabled the first legal hemp farming in over 50 years and resulted in more than 290,000 acres of hemp being planted across 34 states in 2019. Vote Hemp also played an integral role in the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill including fully removing hemp from the Controlled Substances Act and moving it under USDA authority.
native Pennsylvania, Tom is a seasoned entrepreneur and chemical engineer. He is the co-founder of PaceControls, a DOE-funded smart grid company based at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, as well as Elysian Holdings. PaceControls' award-
Tom brings an extensive background in sustainable technology development and licensing, as well as significant small-company, corporate financing, and strategic partnering experience. He was selected in 2010 as a Fellow under a program for cleantech CEOs, funded by the Citi Foundation and the SJF Institute. He was selected by the Hitachi Foundation in 2011 and 2012 as an entrepreneur mentor to growing companies, and has served as a member and investment reviewer with