Bill
As Founder of the Healthy Building Network (2000-2022), he oversaw the development and launch of the Pharos Project, a non-profit database providing the most robust hazard, use, and exposure information on over 200,000 chemicals and building products. Today Pharos provides hazard data to support ChemFORWARD’s safer alternatives data set. Walsh was also a founding board member of the Health Product Declaration® (HPD) Open Standard, the first standard format for accurately, reliably, and consistently reporting the material contents of a building product, and associated health information. He is a Fellow of the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production, one of the earliest academic centers dedicated to advancing chemical hazard reduction strategies with industry. He served as a founding Advisory Board member to the Safer Chemistry Impact Fund In 2023. Immediately before joining the Safer Chemistry Impact Fund, Walsh was the Executive Director of the Passport Foundation, a San Francisco-based philanthropy supporting numerous environmental health non-profits in the US.
Solutions that accelerate the adoption of safer chemistry in industry by systematically replacing hazardous chemicals with alternatives that are verified to be safer for humans and the environment.
HEFN has historically been the gathering place for funders at the forefront of intersectional efforts to keep people safe from toxic chemicals. Many of the members have been comfortable funding activists in front line environmental justice communities, as well as scientists and engineers working at the front lines of industrial transformation.This connection is the soul of my work.
HEFN is uniquely positioned to help philanthropy align its carbon and plastics reduction strategies in a way that accelerates an equitable transition to safer materials that we can use in and harmony with planetary boundaries and healthy life for all on earth.
As a recent transplant to Southern California from the East Coast, I can't get enough of the diverse desert environments accessible within a few hours drive of my home.