Lauren Graham
Title: Founder
Organization: Velvet Frame
Lauren E. Graham is social entrepreneur, environmentalist, and educator with an eclectic background in environment and sustainability, social innovation and entrepreneurship, and creative media for public engagement. She is the founder of Velvet Frame, a social impact strategy and communications consultancy where she works with mission-driven organizations and individuals across the environmental-social impact spectrum on their capacity-building and change management challenges using an ecosystems approach.
Her previous roles include the Chief of Staff at Hunger Free America, Senior Associate at the sustainability consulting firm Cadmus, and Director of Innovation at the strategic climate communications nonprofit Climate Access. Lauren is an adjunct professor teaching courses on nonprofit management, leadership for sustainability, and entrepreneurship.
Her university affiliations include the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice, Baruch College-Zicklin School of Business at CUNY, the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), and Bard College MBA in Sustainability. Through The Carbonauts, she teaches employee cohorts at corporations including Amazon, Disney, and AT&T how to lower their carbon footprints and advance their company’s sustainability goals. Lauren’s TEDx talk, The fight for democracy and the planet begins in the classroom is about the intersection of democracy, environment, and higher education and the need to build a new social contract that works for people and the planet. Lauren holds a BA in International Relations and an MA in Sociology from Stanford University, an MEM from Yale School of the Environment, and an MS in Nonprofit Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice.
