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Built for a Better World: The Seventh Generation Story and the Future of Purpose-Driven Business
Few figures in the sustainability movement have earned their scars as visibly — and instructively — as Jeffrey Hollender. As co-founder and longtime CEO of Seventh Generation, Hollender didn’t just build one of America’s most recognizable natural products brands; he helped pioneer an entirely new paradigm for what a company could be: radically transparent, culturally intentional, employee-owned, and mission-driven to its core. Then the board fired him. And then Unilever bought the company. And the lessons embedded in that full arc — from scrappy Vermont startup to $700 million acquisition, from visionary founder to ousted CEO to vindicated board member — constitute one of the most candid and revealing case studies in the history of responsible business.
In this Luminarias fireside chat, Impact Entrepreneur’s Laurie Lane-Zucker welcomes Jeffrey Hollender, whose new book, Built for a Better World: How Seventh Generation Pioneered a Movement That Changed the Purpose of Business, tells the full story for the first time. Drawing on four decades of impact entrepreneurship — and an unflinching willingness to examine his own failures alongside his achievements — Hollender offers our practitioner community a rare blend of operational wisdom, governance cautionary tales, and a provocative critique of where the sustainability movement has gone wrong.
Join us for a candid, deeply personal conversation with one of the architects of the responsible business movement — a dialogue that promises to be as instructive for the next generation of impact entrepreneurs as the forty-year journey that made it possible.
Author, Impact Pioneer
Jeffrey Hollender is the co-founder and former CEO of Seventh Generation, which he built into a leading natural products brand known for its authenticity, transparency, and progressive business practices. Seventh Generation was sold to Unilever in 2016; Hollender remains on the Board of Directors. He is also the founder and former CEO of Sustain Natural, which developed and marketed sustainable feminine care products. A former Board Chair of Greenpeace US and co-founder of the American Sustainable Business Network, Hollender currently serves as an Adjunct Professor of sustainability and social entrepreneurship and Executive in Residence at NYU’s Stern Business School, and as a mentor through SKU and Unreasonable. He serves on the boards of Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility, Aquavitea, Vermont Cheese Products, and the Sustainability Advisory Board at Morgan Stanley. He is the author of seven previous books, including The Responsibility Revolution and Planet Home. His latest, Built for a Better World (Fast Company Books), publishes March 26, 2026.