Jeffrey Mittelstadt - CEO and Triple-Bottom-Line Director

The founder of Rootspective, Jeffrey Mittelstadt, has built an extensive career within sustainability and filmmaking. His goal is to use his background in policy, economics, business, higher education and documentary journalism to educate and help others improve social, economic and environmental aspects of our communities. He has worked in many different sectors and has always emphasized stakeholder engagement and understanding.

Jeff is also the President of WildSides, a non-profit education and documentary multimedia non-profit. He was Davidson College's first Director of Sustainability. Jeff worked for the U.S. EPA's Office of Inspector General in Research Triangle Park evaluating national air quality programs. He was a vice president and senior analyst at Bank of America working on green building, sustainable purchasing, green cleaning, renewable energy and more. Jeff designed, implemented, and managed a national sustainable manufacturing initiative for a D.C. nonprofit, the National Council for Advanced Manufacturing. The U.S. Department of Commerce appointed him to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's Advisory Expert Group on Sustainable Manufacturing and Eco-Innovation. He taught at Winston-Salem State University; including Media Writing, Law & Ethics of Mass Communication and a course he created in Food and Sustainability Communications.

Jeff is honored to currently serve on the High Point Theatre Advisory Board, the leadership of the Food Security Fund in High Point, and has served on boards such as the Davidson Farmers' Market and the start-up incubator Project for Innovation, Energy and Sustainability (PiES). He earned a master's degree in journalism and mass communication at UNC-Chapel Hill where he worked on the 2011 Powering A Nation team to make the award-winning interactive documentary Coal: A Love Story. He holds the following degrees: B.A. in Psychology from Davidson College (1999); Master of Environmental Management, concentrating in Resource Economics and Policy, from the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Science at Duke University (2003); M.B.A., concentrating in Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Enterprise, from Kenan-Flagler Business School at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2007); and M.A. in Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2012).