Rinaldo is President of the Chopra Foundation, Chairman of the Unstoppable Foundation, and serves on the board of the JUST Capital Foundation. Rinaldo has served on the Board of Directors of the $2.5 billion market capitalization men’s clothing company, Men’s Wearhouse, since its IPO in 1992 and has served on numerous non-profit boards, including the Gorbachev Foundation of North America.

Mr. Brutoco is an economics and business consultant specializing in energy policy, renewable energy, finance, innovation, and adaptation strategies for climate change. For almost thirty years he has been an international leader in advancing the nature of good corporate governance, corporate accountability, business transparency, and ways that corporations can fulfill their social compact by providing goods and services that the public needs and wants in appropriate, and financially prudent ways. He received a Congressional Commendation to this effect in October, 2010 for his outstanding contributions to the field of corporate responsibility.

 

At the age of 25, in 1972, Mr. Brutoco became the youngest attorney at that time to argue before the California Supreme Court in the case of California Public Interest Law Center v. Public Utilities Commission. Brutoco, Founder and Principal of the California Public Interest Law Center, won what was then the largest class action lawsuit in the history of the United States.

 

Mr. Brutoco ran a start-up and turnaround practice for many years, in which he regularly dealt with forensic accounting (this work included a number of matters where financial issues were misrepresented). In this work, he was required to serve as an acting CEO, Board Member, Chairman of the Board or in some other senior management function in order to turn his client’s companies around or to guide them successfully past the start-up phase.

 

In this capacity, Mr. Brutoco was appointed by the Federal District Court in Washington, D.C. as one of three directors in charge of United Press International (“UPI”) the first time it went into bankruptcy, with the specific task of taking over, running, turning around, and selling all of the company’s television (in major markets like Chicago) and radio (over 240 stations) assets that were held in a UPI subsidiary, and returning the proceeds of those sales to the parent on whose board he sat. Mr. Brutoco successfully kept every one of these stations out of bankruptcy, turned them around and sold them all within 18 months.

 

In the 1980’s, Mr. Brutoco conducted complicated analyses of tax shelters. This work was reviewed by the United States Tax Court, and Mr. Brutoco was approved as a tax expert for all purposes without restriction in connection with his provision of testimony in complex cases before the tax court on behalf of individual plaintiffs. Mr. Brutoco is currently designated as a financial expert for purposes of reporting to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

 

As an entrepreneur, Mr. Brutoco has spearheaded several businesses. He is: Principal and Chief Executive Operator of the ShangriLa Consulting Group, Inc.; Founder, Executive Chief and CEO of Seven Oaks Ranch, an organic food and cosmetic manufacturer and distributor of several propriety brands with distribution in over 3,500 outlets in the United States, which is growing at highly compounded annual rates; and is the Founder and Chairman of H2 Clipper, which has developed a revolutionary, highly-patented, hydrogen-powered dirigible which utilizes advanced aeronautical, clean energy, and materials technologies.

 

Co-Founding Channel 100, Mr. Brutoco was the CEO of the first company in the world to offer pay cable television services, and was the Founder and CEO of Universal Subscription Television, one of the first companies to offer over-the-air television transmissions of major motion pictures. Also, he was the Chairman of the Board for the two start-up years of an organic beverage company, KeVita, which, as one of the fastest growing companies of its kind in the history of the country, currently has sales in excess of $25 million per year after less than three years of being actively in the marketplace.

 

Additionally, Mr. Brutoco served as the CEO and Chairman of the Red Rose Collection, the sole distributor for 12 years of Mother Teresa’s personally endorsed biographical motion pictures, Mother Teresa (1986) and Mother Teresa: The Legacy (2004).

 

In 2007 Rinaldo co-authored Freedom from Mid-East Oil, a comprehensive treatment of the energy and climate change landscape. His most recent book is Liftoff: The Rise of the Hydrogen Economy.