Wayne Elsey

Wayne Elsey's story starts at 15, stocking shelves in a shoe store on a high school work-study program. Nobody could have predicted that the first job would lead to building a global movement.

He rose through the footwear industry to become President of Kodiak-Terra USA, developing deep expertise in manufacturing, supply chain, and market expansion. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami changed everything. Watching the devastation unfold, Wayne saw a simple, urgent need to help people who had lost everything, including their shoes.

He founded a nonprofit and built it from zero to a 74 million dollar organization in under five years. During his tenure, it distributed more than 20 million pairs of shoes to survivors of disasters, including Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

Today, Wayne is the founder and CEO of Funds2Orgs, Sneakers4Good, and TreeRaise, social enterprises operating in the United States and 24 countries globally. The companies are founded on the premise that profit and purpose are highly compatible for companies and consumers.

His latest book, The Reuse Economy: Breaking Away from Throwaway Culture, is his most ambitious work yet. It serves as a challenge to consumers and businesses to stop treating the world as disposable and build communities and enterprises that thrive by keeping products in circulation.

Wayne is the author of more than 10 books on leadership, social entrepreneurship, and sustainable business. He has appeared on Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News, the Today Show, and Fox News, and is a contributor to the Forbes Business Development Council.