Patti Prairie, CEO of Brighter Planet, has over three decades of intrapreneurship starting new businesses and revitalizing under-performing ones at IBM, American Express, BankBoston, and a host of Fortune 500 clients. She was tapped in the fall of 2006 to become an entrepreneur at Brighter Planet and to bring to life the embryonic concept conceived in a college classroom for a credit card with environmental rewards.

Today Brighter Planet finds surprising sustainability solutions in the world's flows of data and money, engineering them into scalable science-based technologies. With over 150,000 customers and 1.6 million carbon calculations under its belt, Brighter Planet helps its customers meet the 21st century’s urgent climate and resource challenges.

The Brighter Planet credit and debit cards have become the leading environmental card program in the country, Brighter Planet's personal footprint calculator is arguably the best in the world, and Brighter Planet's carbon modeling web services are a new class of business sustainability software. Patti and her team have garnered high praise including Discovery Channel Treehugger's 2010 Small Business of the Year.

Patti's prior ventures at IBM ranged from developing fault-tolerant computing for data-intensive rocket science applications, to forging strategic alliances for mid-range computers, to helping build IBM Management Consulting into a mainstay of the company's services strategy. At American Express, she ran information technology for corporate cards, small business services, and travel. At Beneficial Management, she spearheaded comprehensive re-engineering of core loan office businesses. At BankBoston, she managed small business, middle markets, and private bank. She's analyzed and published best practices for information technology in large companies, and founded a graduate program in design automation.