Auden Schendler

Auden Schendler is Senior Vice President of Sustainability at Aspen One, where he works on scale solutions to climate change, including clean-energy development, policy, advocacy and activism. Along with Protect Our Winters, where he served on the board for a decade, he is working to mobilize the outdoor industry as a political force. Previously a research associate at Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), Auden’s work has been covered in Businessweek, Men’s Journal, Fast Company and Outside, and he is author of the book Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution, which climatologist James Hansen called “an antidote to greenwash.” He publishes widely on climate change, parenting, and the outdoors, in media ranging from Climatic Change, to Harvard Business Review, the L.A. Times, and The N.Y. Times. Named a “climate innovator” by TIME magazine and a “climate saver” by the EPA, Auden served on Colorado’s Air Quality Control Commission, where he designed state climate policy. Between 2016 and 2020, he was elected to the town council of Basalt, Colorado. An avid outdoorsman and dirtbag, he has climbed Denali, North America’s highest peak, kayaked the Grand Canyon in winter, and twice ascended Mt. Rainier’s Liberty Ridge. He has worked as a burger flipper, a medic on a rural ambulance service, a goose-nest island builder in Alaska, Outward Bound Instructor, high school teacher, ski instructor, and low-income housing weatherization technician. His new book, coming out in November, 2024, is called "Terrible Beauty: Reckoning with Climate Complicity and Rediscovering Our Soul." He lives in Basalt, Colorado, with his wife Ellen and children Willa and Elias.