Earth Day Network Climate Leadership Gala May 8th to Honor Nancy Pfund and Kathy Bushkin Calvin

MAY 1, 2018, Washington, DC –  Earth Day Network’s annual Climate Leadership Gala will be held on May 8th at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. This year’s honorees include Nancy Pfund, Founder and Managing Partner of DBL Partners who will receive the Climate Visionary Award, and Kathy Bushkin Calvin, President and CEO, UN Foundation, who is the recipient of the 2018 Women and the Green Economy (WAGE) Leadership Award. Kathleen Matthews will serve as emcee for Gala. We are particularly honored this year to have two extraordinary and pioneering women as our award winners,” said Kathleen Rogers, president of Earth Day Network. “Nancy Pfund is a global leader in the growing field of impact investing and has been instrumental in helping to tap the power of ven­ture cap­i­tal to pro­mote social and envi­ron­men­tal change. Kathy Calvin has had a distinguished career in business, technology and media.  Since joining the UN Foundation she been instrumental in promoting the inclusion of women in all sectors.” The Climate Leadership Gala was launched in 2010 to honor those who have demonstrated extraordinary leadership on climate issues.  Past WAGE Leadership award winners include Rachel Kyte, CEO of Sustainable Energy for All, Lisa Jackson, former Administrator, USEPA, Connie Hedegaard, EU Commissioner for Climate Action and Ambassador Melanne Verveer, US Ambassador for Global Women’s Issues. Previous Climate Visionary Award recipients include Paul Polman, Unilever CEO, Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres, and Elon Musk of SpaceX and Tesla (presented by Sir Richard Branson). Speakers at the event will include U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire; Andrew Revkin, strategic adviser for environmental and science journalism at the National Geographic Society; NFL veteran and philanthropist Ovie Mughelli; and Denis Hayes, President of the Bullitt Foundation, Board Chair Emeritus of Earth Day Network and organizer of the first Earth Day 1970. Sponsors include Toyota, NRG, ImpactPPA, HP, EcoPlanet Bamboo, Ion360, Lavit, and DBL Partners. _____________________________________________________________________________ The first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, activated 20 million Americans from all walks of life and is widely credited with launching the modern environmental movement. Growing out of the first Earth Day, Earth Day Network, the world’s largest recruiter to the environmental movement, works with tens of thousands of partners in 192 countries to build environmental democracy and to broaden, diversify and mobilize the environmental movement. For more information, visit us at www.earthday.org and follow us on Twitter @EarthDayNetwork Press Contact: [email protected] 202.518.0044