Ray Anderson (entrepreneur) - Recognition and Awards

Recognition and Awards

Anderson was featured several documentaries and films, such as The Corporation, (2004 Canadian documentary); The 11th Hour (2007 Leonardo DiCaprio film); I Am (2011 Tom Shadyac documentary); Big Ideas for a Small Planet (Sundance Channel series) and others.

The Interface story is the focus of the documentary film “So Right, So Smart” (2009).

Ray served a stint as co-chair of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development during President Clinton’s administration, which led to him co-chairing the Presidential Climate Action Plan in 2008, a team that presented the Obama Administration with a 100 day action plan on climate. Together, he and Interface funded the creation of the Anderson-Interface Chair in Natural Systems at Georgia Tech, where Associate Professor Valerie Thomas conducts research in sustainability.

Ray Anderson received a host of accolades throughout his life, including:

• In 2007, he was named one of Time’s Heroes of the Environment.
• Inaugural Millennium Award from Global Green, presented by Mikhail Gorbachev (1996)
• Recognized by Forbes Magazine and Ernst & Ernst, which named him Entrepreneur of the Year in 1996.
• The American Society of Interior Designers Design for Humanity Award (2010)
• Lifetime Achievement Award from GreenLaw (2010)
• The inaugural Global Sustainability Prize from the University of Kentucky Tracy Farmer Institute for Sustainability and the Environment (2010)
• River Guardian Award from the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper (2010)
• Sustainability Award from the Women’s Network for a Sustainable Future (WNSF), the first time the WNSF has honored a businessman (2010)
• Pillars of EARTH Sustainable Leadership Awards given by EARTH University in Costa Rica (2010)
• Purpose Prize from Encore.org (2007)
• Auburn University’s International Quality of Life Award (2007)
• George and Cynthia Mitchell International Prize for Sustainable Development (2001)

Under Anderson’s leadership, Interface was named to CRO magazine’s (formerly Business Ethics magazine) 100 Best Corporate Citizens List for three years. In 2006, Sustainablebusiness.com named Interface to their SB20 list of Companies Changing the World, and in 2006 GlobeScan listed Interface #1 in the world for corporate sustainability.

Anderson was former Board Chair for The Georgia Conservancy and served on the boards of the Ida Cason Callaway Foundation, Rocky Mountain Institute, the David Suzuki Foundation, Emory University Board of Ethics Advisory Council, the ASID Foundation, Worldwatch Institute, and the Arizona State University Global Institute of Sustainability Advisory Board. He was on the Advisory Boards of the Harvard Medical School Center for Health and the Global Environment and the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper.

He was awarded 12 honorary doctorates from Northland College (public service), LaGrange College (business), N.C. State University (humane letters), University of Southern Maine (humane letters), The University of the South (civil law), and Colby College (law), Kendall College (art), Emory University (science), Central College in Pella, Iowa, (humane letters), Chapman University (humane letters), Clarkson University (science), and the Georgia Institute of Technology (philosophy).