Alexandra Destler

Alexandra Destler, EdM, is the founder and executive director of Commonweal’s  SafetyNEST program. For more than two decades, Alexandra has worked to spark swift  change in our public health system. Her aim? To promote global sustainability—not in  theory but in practice. Rather than preaching to the converted, she brings together public and private organizations, champions and naysayers, leading healthcare, non-profit, and Fortune 500 companies, to drive change. She launched the Public Health Institute’s Center for Climate Change and the American Hospital Association’s environmental stewardship initiative; co-developed The Greenfield Path, a communications project driving Ford Motor Company’s move to a more sustainable business; and directed Playworks’s capital campaign, raising a record $27.3 million in two years. Most recently, vexed by a vinyl bathmat leeching chemicals into the bathwater of her baby, she resolved to focus on prenatal environmental education—our lack of which costs the US $340 billion a year and many children their health. Alexandra holds degrees from Harvard, Cornell, and the Sorbonne.