No. 9: Marie Chandoha, Charles Schwab

Marie Chandoha
President and CEO, Charles Schwab Investment Management

Environmental conservation and finance tend to attract two very different kinds of people. But Marie Chandoha, the president and CEO of Charles Schwab Investment Management, is bridging the divide. As a trustee of the California chapter of the Nature Conservancy, Chandoha says she frequently draws on her experience at Schwab to develop innovative ideas for preserving the environment. She recently helped the Nature Conservancy create a temporary habitat for migrating birds by paying rice farmers in California's Central Valley to flood their fields. Chandoha says her commitment to environmentalism is rooted in a childhood spent in the great outdoors. Today, she and her husband try to practice the conservationist ethics they preach on their 160-acre Sonoma Mountain ranch. The couple has also worked to increase biodiversity on the property through techniques like intensive grazing, in which cattle chow down on grass in different pastures for short periods of time. To make sure their efforts last, they've placed half the ranch in a conservation trust.

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