Gifford Pinchot is co-founder and President  of the Bainbridge Graduate Institute, which offers an MBA that integrates environmental sustainability and social responsibility with innovation and profit. BGI is one of the first graduate schools to weave sustainability throughout its entire curriculum, so that standard business subjects include ethics, cutting-edge sustainability practices, and students’ spiritual perspectives. For the last three years, BGI has ranked at the top of Net Impact's survey of business schools interested in socially responsible business.

Mr. Pinchot is a well-known author, speaker, and consultant on launching businesses and innovation management. He has helped to launch over 700 businesses, several of which are each doing over a billion dollars in sales. He has built four companies and sold three of them, one for a profit of over 100-to-1 for the original investors. He is a partner in a successful angel capital firm, Alacrity Ventures.

Mr. Pinchot has published three books. The first, in 1985, INTRAPRENEURING: Why You Don’t Have to Leave the Corporation to Become an Entrepreneur, was a business best-seller and introduced the concept of intrapreneuring – creating innovation within existing organizations. Intrapreneuring has now been published worldwide in fifteen languages and is a classic text in business education.  The word “intrapreneur,” which was coined by Mr. Pinchot to describe the intra-corporate entrepreneur, has been included in the American Heritage Dictionary and Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary.  In 1999, he co-authored Intrapreneuring in Action – A Handbook for Business Innovation, the long awaited follow-up. Mr. Pinchot has appeared on Larry King Live and the Today Show to discuss his approach to innovation.

In his second book, The Intelligent Organization (Berrett Koehler, 1994), written with Elizabeth Pinchot, the vision is broadened to include a revolutionary way of organizing all work, from the most innovative to the most mundane, that increases intrapreneurship and promotes democratic participation.

Since 1983, Mr. Pinchot has led Pinchot & Company, a firm that helps companies launch new businesses and implement more sustainable business practices. Its client list includes half of the Fortune 100 and numerous government and non-profit organizations as well as clients on every continent except Antarctica.

Mr. Pinchot has facilitated numerous sustainability projects. He has licensed two of his inventions. Mr. Pinchot graduated with honors from Harvard University in 1965 with an A.B. degree in economics, then completed his coursework for a Ph.D. in neurophysiology at Johns Hopkins University.

In 2008, Executive Excellence Publishing listed Gifford as number 32 in their Excellence 100 - The top 100 Leadership Consultants. Also, in 2008 he was awarded a Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa from the University of Puget Sound.

In March 2009 he was awarded The Olympus Lifetime of Education Innovation Award. The national program, executed by Olympus in partnership with the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA), recognizes individuals who have fostered or demonstrated innovative thinking in education.