A Message from the President

1 million!

Environmental Working Group's list of email subscribers closed in on this stunning benchmark as 2010 ended.

The power of information meets the power of voices.

With 1 million people behind us, we can have a resounding impact on the national conversation. We can build consensus for change. We can move markets.

Our email list has grown 1100 percent since January 1, 2007. That tells us we're doing something right.

Our online audience is growing rapidly. In the month of January 2011, we logged more than 1.7 million visits, up 171 percent over January 2010. Our January 2011 audience had 10,397,031 page views, up 53 percent over the previous January. In 2010 our Facebook fan base expanded 152 percent.

We're all over the mainstream media: in 2010, EWG's work was featured in more than 2000 articles and in hundreds of local and national outlets, including CNN, NPR, ABC News, CBS News, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Associated Press, the San Francisco Chronicle, Vogue and the Des Moines Register.

You've supported us unfailingly, with dollars and also by taking time to spread the word. It's a tough environment for progressive change. But we are making change happen, at an accelerating pace – thanks to you. You lend your voices. We do our best to amplify them.

Best,

Ken Cook
President and Co-Founder
Environmental Working Group

About The President

Ken Cook, president and co-founder of Environmental Working Group, is widely recognized as one of the environmental community's most prominent and effective critics of establishment agriculture and U.S. farm policy. Under his leadership, EWG's research and analysis are major forces in national policy debates over toxic chemicals, pesticides and air and water pollution.

In 2009, Cook was voted the "Ultimate Green Game Changer" by readers of The Huffington Post. As Arianna Huffington put it, "The EWG is an environmental superhero with a full set of digital tools in its arsenal."

Cook is a principal architect of the landmark conservation provisions of the 1985 farm bill, which for the first time attempted to shift the emphasis in U.S. farm policy from a narrow focus on maximum crop production to the conservation of land, water, wetlands and wildlife.

» Read more about President Ken Cook

Under Cook, EWG's break-through innovation has been the creation of easy-to-use, online searchable databases to drive policy debates and bring about systemic change. The EWG Farm Subsidy Database has generated thousands of stories about America's broken farm policy. The New York Times said the website helped "transform the [2002] farm bill into a question about equity and whether the country's wealthiest farmers should be paid to grow commodity crops while many smaller family farms receive nothing and are going out of business." Cook and EWG played a similarly prominent role during the crafting of the 2008 farm bill.

EWG has expanded this hallmark interactive data analysis model to map toxic pollution in people for EWG's human toxome project, plot nuclear waste transportation routes to Yucca Mountain, display mining claims near the Grand Canyon, analyze tap water quality nationwide and provide consumers with cosmetics ingredient safety information. EWG's databases and data visualization projects transform abstract concepts to tangible, personal connections with millions of people.

Cook earned a B.A. in history, B.S. in agriculture and M.S. in soil science from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He is a board member of The Organic Center and the Amazon Conservation Team. He and his wife Deb Callahan live in California with their son, Callahan Cook.

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