Richard Bolus

Brainstormer, Change Agent, Connector, Educator/Teacher, Entrepreneur, Environmentalist, Event planner, Idea generator, Marketer, Social entrepreneur

I began as an Architectural Engineer focusing on energy efficient house renovation. I took a sabatical year to complete the Tokyo Riot Police Instructor's Course which is a year-long intensive Aikido course which enabled me to be an internationally qualified aikido instructor. i was invited to stay on after the year and teach in the Japanese dojo for a further 3 years. I wanted to get back into better design for helping the environment so I decided to spend a year in Australia skilling up in Australian best-in-class environmental design before heading back to the UK. In the Australian environmental sector I realised there was a lot of people that wanted to do amazing things for the environment however they were restricted by the lack of money so I set up an organisation called Green Canary that raised money by people purchasing eco-friendly products and the retail margin went towards their environmental projects. I then moved the concept onto GreenPower in schools and helped the energy company Jackgreen set up the School GreenPower Initiative where schools raised money for environmental projects when parents switched their home electricity to renewable energy. I work as a volunteer on the promotions team of the homeless aid magazine 'The Big Issue'. I am setting up a charitable foundation for the Unity4 Group, one of the initial projects is launching the Australian wing of Google-owned GrandCentral's ProjectCARE which is free voicemail for homeless. Other projects involve organising charity events for charities such as CareFlight. I am a founding director of Carbon Training International, an organisation which builds capacity within companies to cope with the new carbon constrained future; teaching companies how to fish, rather than the consulting approach of giving them a fish and only feeding them for a day.

Making a difference and having fun in the process.

1000 characters are not enough.

Marketing + Communications, Social Entrepreneurship

A friend sent me a link to TED when I was building a social capacity building organisation called Green Canary. He said it would provide me with insights and mentoring and he was right. I find TED an invaluable source of inspiration.

Making teams successful. Whenever I am involved with a team doing especially hard things, I provide the glue that keeps everyone focused, excited and we achieve great things.