About Better World Advisors

 

Brian Webster is the Senior Advisor and Manager of the practice.

He is a community organizer, strategic services consultant and creative ideas professional, based in San Francisco. He runs his own strategic consutling practice.

Brian has over 35 years on hands on experience working with business, organized labor, government, community groups and campaigns.

More importantly, he has year after year current experience with constantly changing markets, environments and technologies - while successfully accomplishing goals and getting things done.

Brian has a long carreer as a sales and marketing professional presenting new ideas and managing sales to clients such as; AT&T, Kaiser Permanente, the California Lottery, Microsoft, Adobe and Bank of America.

Originally from New York, Brian's world view is based on Buckminster Fuller's philosophy of using personal commitment and design science for problem solving and the sustainable success of humanity.

 

A background of ideas, community organizing and strategic service.

Brian is a social and political activist by nature. At age 12 he was a volunteer for the Eugene McCarthy for President campaign in 1968. Trained in nonviolent civil disobedience, Brian was one of 2,000 Clamshell Alliance activists organized in "affinity groups" that occupied the Seabrook, N.H. nuclear power plant in 1977. He has personally organized, trained and deployed hundreds of "Safety Monitors" for security duties at "Peace Jobs and Justice" marches and rallies of 75,000 to 150,000 people.

Brian is a big believer in the power of music, technology and culture to advance peace and human rights. Active in the anti-apartheid movement, he was a leading organizer of Rock Against Racism USA. During the US Soviet citizen diplomacy movement, he co-produced the Soviet American Peace Walk Concert in Golden Gate Park. In 1994 he worked with the Unity Foundation to organize a live two-way television "Space Bridge" between artist festivals in Sarajevo and San Francisco. This was part of an "Interactive Plaza" series of videoconferences focused on citizens peace building initiatives to the city of Sarajevo, which was then under the siege of war. In 1995 he co-produced an International Culture and Technology Festival for the 50th of the United Nations in San Francisco.

For many years he produced a nationwide live radio Earth Day Auction of guitars autographed by the world's most well-known rock artists. Brian used to work for Bill Graham Presents and was a volunteer with the Rock Medicine Unit of the Haight Asbury Free Clinic for 5 years.

Brian is an advocate for the idea of "concert-rallies" and produced a report on the U.S. concert industry and concert-rally opportunities for the Dean for America campaign in 2004. That same year, working with Music for America, he arranged for voter registration and information tables to be set up at over 50 nightclub shows in ten states during the Super Tuesday Democratic primaries.

He is a founding member of Business Partnership for Peace, Business for Social Responsibility, and the Impact Hub in San Francisco. He is a pioneer of Internet industry community organizing. He was the Corporate Relations Manager for the Association of Internet Professionals, published the San Francisco's Dot-Com Directory, and produced SF Web Business Mixers and 415TECH networking events. In 1996 he came up with the idea and sold the first "beyond the banner" Internet advertising campaign to Microsoft for the Launch of Office 97.

Based on a remark by Bill Clinton in a 1992 interview, that Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank, "should be given a Nobel Prize", Brian then took the idea and did the original work for the nomination process and team that made it happen. Brian aranged for Charlie Rose to interveiw professor Yunus for a full hour in 2004. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank in 2006.

For 30 years Brian has been active in the global movement to "make poverty history". As a marathon runner in the mid-80s he got involved with World Runners. In May of 1986 he ran in Sport Aid, with 20 million runners in 274 cities, wich raised $100 million for famine relief in Africa. That experience inspired his idea for Human Race Day, a social business focused achieving the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.

Brian is an active global partner in RESULTS and the ONE Campaign working on creating global political will to end extreme poverty. He worked on UNICEF's ten-year campaign to achieve the goals of the 1990 UN World Summit for Children. That campaign was the origin of the Millennium Development Goals campaign. From 2006 to 2010 Brian organized annual Stand Up events for the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in San Francisco.

In 2009, 173 million citizens gathered at 3,000 events in 120 countries standing up and demanding that their governments eradicate extreme poverty and achieve the MDGs. That Stand Up holds the Guinness World Record as the largest mobilization of human beings in history for a humanitarian cause. Brian is a strong advocate for the idea that global communications are exponentially increasing the ability for transnational citizens campaigns to achieve unprecedented results for humanitarian goals.

Brian is a firm believer in the power of business and organized labor to build a better world. For ten years he organized the National Labor-Community Awards at the largest hotel banquet rooms in San Francisco. He originated the idea and produced Green Labor-Capital Forums, focused on using public employee & union pension funds to support green jobs and sustainable infrastructure.

At the start of the Interenet industry Brian was Corporate Relations Manager for the Association of Internet Professionals. During the Internet boom days in San Francisco from 1997 to 2001, he organized the monthly SF Web Business Mixer. He produced 415TECH a large regional IT networking event from 1999 to 2001 and published the San Francisco's Dot Com Directory in August of 2000.

Brian is an active advocate for affordable housing solutions. He is proud to have provided strategic services to the Mission Housing Development Corporation to develop their 1950 Mission Street green affordable housing project.

Brian has a personal passion for criminal justice reform. He is a graduate of the Delancey Street Foundation. He received his basic business vocational training at their School of Marketing. He was their top salesperson at the time.

Brian is a "clean and sober" person that works for drug policy reform and the end marijuana prohibition. For several years he worked for the United Food and Commercial Workers union on their national cannabis workers organizing campaign.

He has a specialized business development consultancy for the emerging California hemp industry and currently produces California Hemp Business Workshops throughout the state.

Brian is the general manager of Better World Associates, a small agency focused social business development and connecting professionals to build a better world.

He has recently developed outlines for three new enterprises in San Francisco, Better World Transportation, Farm Workworker Farms (both social businesses), and the Space Tourism Agency.

Brian is currently working with Life On Earth Media on developing Internet broadcast channels as well as the Bill Graham Mensch Hall of Fame Awards.