- Source of Wealth: Non-Governmental Environmental Organization (Greenpeace)
- Age: 55
- Birth Place: Seattle, Washington, United States
- Marital Status: Divorced
- Full Name: Annie Louise Leonard
- Nationality: American
- Date of Birth: 1964
- Occupation: Executive Director of Greenpeace USA
- Education: Lakeside School, Barnard College, and Cornell University
- Children: 1 (Dewi)
Annie Leonard is an American critic of consumerism and proponent of sustainability. In 2007, she created the animated movie “The Story of Stuff” that described the life cycle of material goods. She eventually became the Greenpeace USA’s Executive Director. She was born and grew up in Seattle, Washington. This lady completed her undergraduate degree from Barnard College and her graduate degree in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University.
After becoming an intern at the National Wildlife Federation in the late 1980s, she began to work on a campaign with Greenpeace to ban the traveling and dumping of international waste all over the world. Her aim was to track garbage as well as hazardous waste that came from developed countries and are transferred to less developed countries. After taking soil and hair samples from the workers in the factories where these were disposed, it became proof that they are indeed harmful to health and the environment.
She testified in front of the American Congress in 1992 about the trafficking of international waste. Because of her work with Greenpeace, an international treaty called the Basel Convention was formed to protect the less developed countries from the dumping of hazardous waste that came from the developed countries’ transnational corporations.
Leonard became famous as the narrator and creator of The Story of Stuff which is an animated documentary about the life cycle of material goods. The documentary started as an hour-long talk and eventually became a condensed film version. She also created the film’s book version which got published in 2010.
Aside from working with the movie Story of Stuff, she is also the coordinator and co-creator of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives or GAIA. She previously worked as a coordinator of the Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption, Greenpeace International, Essential Information, and Health Care Without Harm. She served on the boards of the Environmental Health Fund and the International Forum on Globalization (IFG).
In 2014, Leonard was named as Greenpeace USA’s Executive Director.