Libba Pinchot is an educator, entrepreneur, consultant, and author who is dedicated to helping people and teams shape innovative approaches to a better future—at work, in communities, and with nature.

Her innovation story starts in her early 20’s, when, fresh out of Stanford with a philosophy degree and no job prospects, Libba went knocking on her department head’s door and was surprised to be the second person hired for his new multi-million-dollar, multi-year grant for the development of the first computer-assisted primary school math and reading projects. It was a fruitful collaboration over four years between teachers, programmers and hardware people, co-creating ways to use all new technology to improve kids lives.

Next Libba was tapped to lead one of the new Head Start teacher training programs based at a community college—credentialing the first cohorts of college-educated Head Start teachers. The program also supported over 100 children annually while offering their parents community college tuition, a living stipend and mutual aid circles. Educating the whole family has positive life-long impact on kids and families and this program was ready to scale. With the next change in federal administration, the parent support program was eliminated, and still needs restoration.

In 1973, she and her new spouse Gifford joined family members on a 300-acre biodynamic dairy farm in upstate New York, where they were mentored by pioneers from Threefold Farm who brought biodynamics to the U.S.

While on the dairy farm, the Pinchots developed a successful nationwide crafts business, engaging 18 underemployed local young adults in co-creating a values-based artist blacksmith business.

In 1978, still on the farm, Libba and her spouse Gifford co-invented the concept of intrapreneurship—the practice of bringing entrepreneurial spirit and innovation inside organizations—and launched their unlikely innovation consulting business. In 1985 they wrote the NY Times bestselling book Intrapreneuring.

For three decades, Libba co-led Pinchot & Company’s intrapreneuring practice that educated people in organizations to transform their workplaces from the bottom up with innovative and entrepreneurial initiatives that were values based, customer focused and profitable.
One long-lasting result of the Pinchots’ intrapreneuring work began under Gore’s government reinvention program, leading to a multi decade program in the Forest Service based on their next book, The Intelligent Organization: Engaging the Talent and Initiative of Everyone in the Workplace. After co-designing the internal finance and personnel structures with Forest Service leaders, they trained self-selected intrapreneurs to grow “Enterprise Teams” (internal service enterprises) with entrepreneurial freedoms to serve internal customers across the Forest Service and into other agencies. When audited, the program’s Enterprise Teams were found to be 1.8 times as productive as the average Forest Service team.

Their seven years immersed in biodynamic farming proved invaluable decades later, when in 1993 they assumed the stewardship of Gilean Douglas’s 150-acre homestead in BC and developed it into a permaculture learning center that became the first home for the Bainbridge Graduate Institute and a model of place-based learning.
In 2002, Libba co-founded the Bainbridge Graduate Institute (BGI)—the first school to offer an MBA in Sustainable Business. This new kind of business education trained intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs alike to build profitable companies that benefit both people and planet. BGI graduates—over 800 of them—are now proving that mission-driven companies can lead markets and still stay true to their values. In 2016 BGI merged with Presidio Graduate School, now the Presidio Center for Sustainable Solutions at the University of Redlands’ Marin campus.

Since 2024, Libba has been part of a Pinchot Institute for Conversation team advising the Forest Service leadership on wildfire strategies. She is also an active co-founder of Visual Magic, a startup designed to support the national, state and local parks. Both activities support a passion of hers— championing the nation’s public lands.

Most recently, she co-founded Climate Unbound, a nonprofit dedicated to accelerating the implementation of people-positive climate innovations.
In addition to being a director of the Climate Unbound non-profit board and before that the founding BGI board, Libba chaired the board of a model elementary school, Wightwood, for 9 years and was a founding director of Yes! Magazine’s board. She has taught the legal responsibilities of boards pro bono to a handful of non-profits.

Libba holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Systems and Change from Saybrook University, as well as two master’s degrees—in education and psychology—and a bachelor’s in philosophy from Stanford. She is co-author of The Intelligent Organization: Engaging the Talent and Initiative of Everyone in the Workplace. Her dissertation, Learning with Corporate Sustainability Leaders, explored both the systemic barriers and the collaborative breakthroughs needed to address corporate sustainability.
Her work has been recognized with the Purpose Prize, the Social Venture Network’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and Saybrook’s Dissertation of the Year in Organizational Systems and Change.

You can find Libba online at ClimateUnBound.org, Intrapreneuring.com, or on LinkedIn.