This month we are celebrating EcoTuesday's Anniversary!

A little over three years ago, my friend Oren Jaffe and I were having coffee and talking about how challenging networking events could be sometimes. We both find it incredibly important to focus our work on projects and companies that are are doing good for the planet, and wanted to connect with other people who have similar values. I told him about some recent experiences I had at networking events where I had a hard time learning about what people were truly interested in. We thought that it would be effective to create an event where everyone introduced themselves - quickly - so that afterwards everyone could find who they most want to talk to (and it wasn't just an accident that people found each other). We also thought that people would enjoy hearing from an expert each month, too, which added an educational aspect to the event.

And that's how EcoTuesday was born.

Since then, we've come a long way! The Ambassador Program started a few months later, after Nora Pittenger attended EcoTuesday in SF. She was moving back to Minneapolis and wanted to bring people of like-minded interests together in her hometown. This inspired the development of the EcoTuesday Ambassador Program. We have such wonderful, dedicated and smart Ambassadors across the country! I am truly grateful for their dedication to EcoTuesday and for their patience as we all work together to find out what works best for everyone (and what needs improvement). This month we celebrate with 9 cities across the country, with more to come.

We recently launched the EcoTuesday Local Blog pages, which feature posts from Ambassadors in EcoTuesday cities across the country. It's been wonderful to learn about other events. I wish I could attend all of these fantastic events! The Ambassadors are doing a great job at sharing highlights every month and also expanding on the speaker's topics before the event (in addition to blogging about other sustainability-related topics). We've wanted to create more ways for Ambassadors to shine & share important information with participants, and I'm happy to be going into our third year with this new feature!

The support that we've received from our community is incredible. People have shared their wisdom, experience, insights, expertise and their time to help EcoTuesday get to where it is today. The list is too long to write - but to those of you who know that I'm talking about YOU - thank you from the bottom of my heart.

As time goes on, we look forward to bringing people from all areas of sustainability together so that we can collaborate with one another to mitigate climate change, improve technology that will create a positive impact on people's lives, and increase the awareness of all about healthier living choices. That continues to be our mission.

Happy Three Year Anniversary to us! Please join us on Tuesday, February 23rd! We hope to see you all at one of the events across the country!