Yellowstone Business Partnership

I do feel pity for the folks I left behind in California. You are missing the experience of arriving home at 9:00 pm after having driven through a sparkling snowstorm with high winds blowing "cold smoke" across the road, and then having to shovel the snow drifts off your stairway in 10F weather. O the joy!

A Yellowstone Business Partnership meeting today brought me for the first time to West Yellowstone, a western winter town in the truest sense--snowmobiles buzzed up and down the street during our visit. The low in West Yellowstone was -30F last night, and it didn't warm up much during the day as the windows on our car iced up on the inside even with the heat running full blast. For some reason, the ending of Jack London's famous story, "To Build a Fire" keeps occurring to me.

More about the Yellowstone Business Partnership (YBP)--a truly inspiring organization and I'm honored to now be a part of their training team. The council has done unprecedented work in greening businesses in the Yellowstone area with its innovative "UnCommon Sense" business leadership program. Businesses enroll in a two-year program that features five group workshops along with a learning team leader who offers resources, coaching, and an accountability check.

I carpooled from Bozeman with a great group from the environmental community: the Director of Environmental Affairs for Delaware North, the new Sustainability Program Manager for the YBP, and a manager for the Bozeman MacKenzie Pizza Company (my favorite pizza!) who transformed her company's culture as a result of her participation in UnCommon Sense. Other participants at the meeting included a retired physicist, the environmental manager for the Grand Teton Lodge Company, and a chemist developing products from potato processing by-products. I am really looking forward to working with this group!