MEET OUR TEAM
AND BOARD OF DIRECTORS
We're tiny but mighty and feisty about fixing recycling.
RAA Team
Mitch Hedlund
Prior to founding the nonprofit standardized label initiative and Recycle Across America®, Mitch had over 20 years experience in marketing, communications, and branding, serving Fortune 500 companies, as well as midsized companies. She has relied heavily on those communications and branding disciplines when developing the society-wide standardized labeling solution for recycling bins. She is a frequent contributor to articles on the subject of recycling and the environment, including Forbes, NY Times, USA Today and industry publications. Mitch is an ongoing national and international speaker and has recently provided the keynote presentation at the European Union’s Environmental Summit in Brussels and she has chaired and been the keynote speaker at national conferences, such as the American Packaging Summit, the U.S. Zero Waste Conference, Package Design Conference, SWANA conference, and others.
Founder & Executive Director
Aimée Lee
Aimée Lee is the National Accounts Director for RAA. She is passionate about people and deeply devoted to this amazing planet. With an extensive background in property management, she is intimately aware of the challenges that exist with public confusion surrounding recycling for residential and multifamily housing. Lee resides in Minneapolis with her loving husband. They share a passion for music and great food, and are devoted to their two adorable granddaughters and their own fur-baby, “Gertie, the Earth Dog”.
National Accounts Director
Alex Bunker
Alexandra worked with sustainable businesses as the Deputy Executive Director for the U.S. Green Chamber of Commerce Southeast Region. She served the citizens of her county as an elected Supervisor for the Seminole Soil and Water Conservation District for over four years. Alexandra received her B.S. in Environmental Studies. Her commitment to the environment has been vividly demonstrated over the past 10 years through her diligent work with several conservation organizations and committees, including the Florida League of Women Voter’s Climate Change Committee and the League of Conservation Voters. In acknowledgment of her strong advocacy on behalf of the federal Wild & Scenic Wekiva River, Alexandra was invited by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush to speak at the Wekiva Parkway and Protection Act signing in 2004. One year later, she received the prestigious “Conservation Award” from Friends of the Wekiva River, Inc.
National Program Director
Eileen Elliott
Eileen is responsible for media outreach and communications. She works with national television networks and both national and local print publications to increase public awareness about the standardized recycling labels. RAA’s public service announcements can be seen on over 60 TV stations and in high-profile magazines including Forbes, People, and Family Circle.
She is also in charge of the Labels for Schools Program. Eileen taught in both private and public schools, founded two learning cooperatives for students in kindergarten through 8th grade, served as an Educational Specialist for an independent study program, and created and published curriculum used in both private and public schools. Eileen believes kids are our best recycling ambassadors because the skills they are learning travel from their schools to their homes and into their communities.
Director of Media Communications and Donations
RAA Board of Directors
Brent Ostrowski - Chairman of RAA Board of Directors
Brent has over 24 years of retail experience in print, packaging, branding, sourcing and supplier management with private brand and branded programs at Target, Best Buy, Flagstone Foods and Good Natured Products. He is currently a Director of Packaging, Engineering, Design and Innovation at Billerudkorsnas, a Swedish based paper company that challenges conventional packaging for a sustainable future.
Brent has been involved and worked on high profile programs at Target such as Michael Graves, Philippe Starck and Robert Abbey. He helped lay the foundation of the Target Packaging Department and many of the processes and supplier relationships that exist to this present day. At Best Buy, he was instrumental in creating processes and forming relationships with strategic partners that resulted in astronomical growth of their private brand portfolio, which includes Insignia, Dynex and Rocketfish. While at Best Buy, he effectively launched and implemented sustainable packaging initiatives that removed 100’s of tons of material and plastics from packaging (resulting in millions of dollars in cost reductions), implemented recyclable identification programs for packaged materials and introduced innovative recycled-based content and bio-based packaging solutions.
He also serves in the Washington Army National Guard as a Chemical Warrant Officer with the 420th Chemical Battalion.
He is enthusiastic about opportunities to create sustainable impacts to our world by lessening the material impacts of consumerism and promoting recycling solutions.
Laura Turner Seydel
Laura gives credit for her passion to take care of the planet to her father, Ted Turner, the original Captain Planet. He instilled the importance of environmental stewardship in Laura and her siblings every chance he got.
In 1990, Laura's father created the Captain Planet animated TV series with Barbara Pyle. Captain Planet is still in syndication around the world and continues to inspire a new generation of Planeteers. Laura is the Chairperson of the Captain Planet Foundation which supports high-quality, hands-on environmental stewardship projects that have enabled more than 1.1M youth across the U.S. and around the world to make significant environmental improvements to their schools or communities.
Laura has dedicated her life to continuing her father’s legacy of environmentalism and humanitarianism. Captain Planet taught us that the Power is Ours, and we endeavor through education and outreach to leave this planet a place our children and grandchildren will want to inherit.
Kathy Loftus
As Global Sustainability Leader for Whole Foods Market, Kathy develops vision, strategy and execution for sustainable engineering and green building; facilities, environmental, energy, waste, and water management and procurement for Whole Foods Market. She sits on the Sustainability and Sustainable Consumption Committees for Retail Industry Leaders Association.
Kathy also helped grow a start-up energy technology firm and was Director of Energy & Environmental Management for Shaw's Supermarkets. She was a past chairperson of FMI's Energy & Technical Services Committee, a participant on the 2005 New England Roundtable on Federal Renewable Energy Policy, the State EE Action Network’s Utility Working Group and served as an advisor for the Grocery sector for USGBC’s LEED program. She also served eight years on the Advisory Committee of the MA Renewable Energy Trust & Large Scale Solar, EE & Smart Buildings Committees. Kathy was named one of Progressive Grocer's Top Women in Grocery in 2013 and was elected one of Massachusetts’ High Tech Council’s Women to Watch in 2012. She was appointed to the town of Scituate, Massachusetts’ Renewable Energy Commission, where she was lead influencer in the town becoming the first 100% renewably powered in the state (PPA’s for a 1 MW wind turbine and 3 MW landfill solar installation).
Her passion is to reinforce resiliency through business continuity and community-strengthening through circular and regenerative economic principles and alternative distributed system design, development, financing, resource leveraging and connectivity.
Gene Han
Gene is Vice President of New Ventures at Target Corporation and head of its San Francisco Innovation Office. He is responsible for developing and incubating new concepts for the $70B retailer, oversees Target’s consumer lab (“Open House”), the company’s prototyping center as well as it’s enterprise accelerator programs in Minneapolis, MN and Bangalore, India. Gene previously led Target’s corporate strategy team and has co-championed the company’s internal design thinking practice.
Prior to joining Target, Gene designed robotics and led new product development in the automation industry. Outside of work, he is a mentor with TechStars and an active board advisor for several start-ups. Gene is also an active angel investor and serves on the Board of Advisors for Recycle Across America. He received an MBA from the Chicago Booth School of Business and holds an Engineering degree from the University of Illinois.
Mitch Hedlund
Prior to founding the nonprofit standardized label initiative and Recycle Across America®, Mitch had over 20 years experience in marketing, communications and branding, serving Fortune 500 companies, as well as small to midsized companies. She has relied heavily on those communications and branding disciplines when developing the society-wide standardized labeling system for recycling bins. She is a frequent contributor to articles on the subject of recycling and the environment, including Forbes, NY Times, USA Today and industry publications. Mitch is an ongoing national and international speaker and has recently provided the keynote presentation at the European Union’s Environmental Summit in Brussels and she has chaired and been the keynote speaker at national conferences, such as the American Packaging Summit, the U.S. Zero Waste Conference, Package Design Conference, SWANA conference, and others.