Short biography of Vicki Robin
PO Box 1363
Langley, WA 98260

Vicki Robin is well-known as the coauthor with Joe Dominguez of the national best-seller, Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship With Money and Achieving Financial Independence (Viking Penguin, 1992). Available now in seven languages, the book will be released in Chinese in Spring 2002. Vicki is President of the Seattle-based New Road Map Foundation, an educational and charitable foundation teaching people tools for sustainable living.

Vicki has appeared on hundreds of radio and television shows, including "The Oprah Winfrey Show," "Good Morning America" and National Public Radio's "Weekend Edition" and "Morning Edition"; she has also been featured in People magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Mirabella, Woman's Day, Newsweek, Utne Reader and the New York Times. Newspapers around the world have reported on her work on lowering consumption in North America. Fluent in Spanish, she traveled to Europe in the Spring of 1997 to introduce the German and Spanish translations of Your Money or Your Life.

Called the prophet of "consumption-downsizers" by the New York Times, she is a frequent speaker on this issue at conferences; to corporate, academic, religious and environmental institutions; and at professional meetings of organizations seeking to understand and contribute to the national trend toward sustainable lifestyles.

Inspired by years of experience in communication and dialogue skills - and by the challenge to democracy, ecological sustainability and social justice represented by the 9/11 crisis - Vicki took responsibility for spreading Conversation Cafés throughout Seattle - and the world. Conversation Cafés are hosted conversations among diverse people in public places on subjects that matter. An engaged, lively and socially fearless populace is more able to respond intelligently and compassionately to the complex systemic challenges of the 21st century.

Vicki served on the President's Council on Sustainable Development's Task Force on Population and Consumption. She is the Chair of the Simplicity Forum, an association of academic, activist and artistic leaders of the Simplicity movement dedicated to making the values and practices of simplicity a key part of the national conversation about sustainability. In addition, she is on the Board of the Turning Tide Coalition, dedicated to bringing the power of transformation to the work of sustainability.

She has received awards from Coop America and from Sustainable Northwest for her pioneering work on sustainable living.