About Us

We shepherd the Age of AI into sustainable ecosystems.

AIforE is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation that benefits the Earth, Everyone, Everywhere — with Efficient use of energy and resources.

Our Mission

We are AI for E.

A 501(c)(3) that shepherds the Age of AI into sustainable ecosystems and ecologies that benefit the Earth, Everyone, Everywhere — with Efficient use of energy and resources. We're focused on the Five R's: ROI, Right-Sized, Renewable, Recycled, and Remediate.

We're a collective of experienced and enthusiastic tech and sustainability professionals with hundreds of years of aggregate experience at the top tech companies and sustainable organizations.

501(c)(3)
IRS-recognized nonprofit corporation
100s
Years of aggregate tech + sustainability experience
E·E·E
Earth, Everyone, Everywhere — our scope, by design
AIforE network-leaf mark
Why Us

Uniquely qualified. Genuinely passionate.

Our team isn't assembled — it's converged. We've spent decades building the technologies that now must become sustainable, and decades building the sustainability practices technology must adopt. We've shipped products at the world's largest tech companies, and stewarded ecosystems in some of the world's most fragile ones.

We've also managed the costs, ROI, and efficiencies of leading tech products and services — the same discipline AI sustainability now demands at scale. That dual fluency — deep technical expertise paired with real ecological conviction — is rare, and it's exactly what AI sustainability now requires.

We're not consultants circling the problem — we're practitioners who've lived on both sides of it. That's why we're building AI for Ecology now.

Team

Leadership, at the intersection of tech and sustainability

Charles FinkelsteinCF
Charles Finkelstein
CEO & Founder

40+ years of tech leadership across engineering, innovation, product incubation, security, sustainability, sales, and marketing. Passion for tech and the ecology of the world. Microsoft, Salesforce, NetApp, Startups.

Stu SutherlandSS
Stu Sutherland
VP & Secretary, Board

Partner at Cardinal Insights, based in the Greater Seattle area.

Forrest FisherFF
Forrest Fisher
VP, Outreach

20+ years of product leadership across identity, AI, and platform strategy. Co-founded MeeBoss, a chat-first AI job-matching platform. Led initiatives at Disney, Adobe, FloSports, and startups. Grew up in Honolulu, transplanted to the PNW, with a passion for environmental stewardship.

Erwiena WrichnyEW
Erwiena Wrichny
VP, Finance & Treasurer

Finance manager at Amazon Web Services, focused on capital expenditure and AI infrastructure capacity planning.

Anusha KandelAK
Anusha Kandel
VP, Data Engineering

Data engineer at Blue Origin.

Jack BurnsJB
Jack Burns
VP, Technology

Senior Software Engineer at Nordstrom, leading the Data Streaming and Temporal platforms; previously at Datadog and founder of multiple startups.

Governance

Board of Directors

AIforE is governed by an all-volunteer Board of Directors. Several of the leaders above — including Stu Sutherland (Secretary) and Erwiena Wrichny (Treasurer) — currently serve as board officers. One of our Year 1 goals is growing the board toward 8 members and putting D&O insurance in place as we scale.

Update this section with individual board bios/photos as governance structure is finalized and publicly announced.

Ecosystem

How AI for Ecology complements related organizations

Many organizations are doing vital work at the intersection of AI and the environment. AI for Ecology complements them — we focus on the piece few address directly: sustainability certification standards and benchmarks for the AI industry itself.

Earth Species Project

Builds AI models to decode animal communication, expanding what we can understand about other species. We work to keep the AI behind research like this efficient and accountable as it scales.

WattTime

Provides real-time grid emissions data and automation that shift energy use toward cleaner power. That kind of signal feeds directly into the AI-specific benchmarks we're building.

Rainforest Connection (RFCx)

Deploys AI-powered acoustic sensors to detect illegal logging and track rainforest biodiversity. Their field work shows AI delivering ecological value; we focus on making the AI side of it sustainable.

Climate Policy Radar

Uses AI to organize global climate law and policy into open, searchable data — the evidence base for climate action. We add the standards layer: defining what low-impact, responsible AI looks like in practice.

Green Software Foundation

A Linux Foundation project setting broad green-software standards, including the Software Carbon Intensity spec. We build on that foundation and extend it to the AI-specific questions that training and inference raise.

Supporters

Partners & Supporters

We'll name our partners and supporters here as those relationships are confirmed.

Partners & supporters — to be announced TBA