When Business Becomes a Global Force for Good

Zareen believes she is only just getting started. Her vision and mission have never been stronger and her commitment to work together with her daughter to create a positive legacy is helping millions of women globally. She’s connecting women and girls from the most upmarket bathrooms in Mayfair to the most difficult camps on the Syrian border.

A brilliant entrepreneur whose only client is the planet

In London there is a top 50 law firm with 200+ employees that you can not become a client of – this firm only has one client, planet Earth.

Client Earth was started by James Thornton as a way to use the legal system to protect the environment. To date, the firm has mobilized tens of billions of dollars away from coal and into green technology, it has successfully sued the UK government three times over air pollution and won hundreds of cases against companies that harm the natural world.

Thornton is a perfect example of the rebel and the misfit that Steve Job’s famously referenced when talking about who he was building computers for. Not content to follow in his father’s footsteps as a more conventional lawyer, he decided to blend his passion for the natural world with his family heritage in law. The result was a deep knowledge of the underpinnings of how the law is created and used focused on how it can protect the environment.

“Humanity sits on top of laws,” says Thornton. “If you change those laws, you change the way humanity runs.”

As an ordained Zen priest, he believes that entrepreneurs and change-makers can perform at their best when leveraging a mindfulness practice. “I’ve been involved in some insanely hard legal fights that last for years, involve billions of dollars and massive, negative outcomes if I fail; without a Zen practice, I wouldn’t be able to stay centered and focused.”

Entrepreneurship is a way of creating change. And these two inspiring entrepreneurs are showing exactly how business can be the engine for positive change for people and the environment we live in.