At age four, her siblings called her "Junkie Jacquie" when she dragged home treasures from the neighbor's trash. At age thirty-four, Jacquie pioneered green marketing by founding J. Ottman Consulting, Inc. Her mission: apply her in-depth consumer packaged goods expertise, with a creative bent for dreaming up new products and her finely honed strategic instincts, to help businesses develop and market the next generation of products designed with sustainability in mind.
With a client rosted that includes over 60 of the Fortune 500, the USDA's BioPreferred and other U.S. government labeling programs, Ottman is a sought-after keynoter for conferences and corporate forums around the globe. She is a founding co-chair of the Sustainabile Business Committee of the Columbia Business School Alumni Club of New York. She is also the former co-chair of the NYC chapter of O2, the global network of green designers, and was founding jury chair for the American Marketing Association's Special Edison Awards for Environmental Achievement in New Products.
In 2004, she spearheaded the IDSA-endorsed Design:Green educational initiative with the goal of jumpstarting eco-design education in the U.S. Underwritten with an Innovation Grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Design:Green now continues as a course in the online Certificate in Sustainable Design program of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
The author of hundreds of articles on green marketing topics, she blogs at Jacquie Ottman's Green Marketing Blog (www.greenmarketing.com/blog), as well as for the Harvard Business Review and other websites.
Her three previous books on green marketing have been translated into five languages.
Ottman is a graduate of Smith College and lives in New York City. The widow of Geoffrey S. Southworth, an industrial recycler, she is the proud stepmother of his three children and two grandchildren.