Our Team
Larry Kopald
Founder & President
Larry Kopald has been a communications and branding professional for over twenty-five years, working at some of the world’s top advertising agencies. He has overseen the advertising for brands ranging from McDonalds to American Express to Honda, and has helped launch multibillion brands like Acura, Oracle, and Huggies. Larry has also been a lifelong environmentalist serving on boards like Oceana, the National Marine Sanctuaries, 1% For The Planet and others. He has done the environmental communications for the UN and the Olympics, and his work for the Earth Communications Office was seen in over 100 countries by over a billion people. Larry has been nominated for both Emmy and Grammy awards.
Tom Newmark
Founder & Chair
Tom Newmark has spent fourteen years in the natural vitamin and supplement industry, building New Chapter into the number one company in the industry before it was sold to Procter & Gamble. Tom is Chairman of the Greenpeace Fund USA, chairman of the American Botanical Council, founder of Sacred Seeds (a plant conservation project administered by United Plant Savers), and co-owner of Finca Luna Nueva, a biodynamic and regenerative farming operation in Costa Rica that administers a tropical farming systems trial. In his past he was a corporate attorney and entrepreneur, from which he claims to be recovering.
Randi Fiat
Director of Development
Working at the intersection of advertising, marketing and design, before she professionally pivoted to work in the non-profit sector to focus on solving complex global challenges, Randi was irresistibly drawn to the work of The Carbon Underground because the mission is audacious and the possibility for success, within reach. In addition to running the day to day operations of TCU, she engages diverse stakeholder groups working together to tackle key initiatives such as TCU’s Adopt-A-Meter program.
Pam Tarr
Program Director, Adopt-A-Meter
With expertise in creating strategic alliances between the worlds of advertising, entertainment and social change, Pam’s role at Adopt-A-Meter is to build a community of brands, organizations and individuals that will form a powerful movement to reverse climate change through carbon drawdown. Her journey to a focus on this goal has taken a long path through advertising and commercial production, where her ground-breaking work included producing over 2000 projects, running trade associations, shepherding the rise of over 100 directors and winning myriad industry awards. Segueing her production career to focus on empowering change, Pam has created campaigns and programs for non-profit organizations and world changers, including Rock The Vote, Council for a Livable World, Homecoming for Veterans, Planned Parenthood and American Farmland Trust.
Jon Cooksey
Program Director
Jon’s focus as a Program Director for Adopt-A-Meter will be on using his experience as a writer/producer to find creative ways to tell the story of the program’s mission. Jon specializes in content creation, from TV and movies to digital series and VR games. But he’s also an activist focused on systemic solutions to Overshoot, driven by overpopulation and consumption in the developed world, a pursuit that grew out of making the award-winning comedic documentary How to Boil a Frog, so working with Adopt-A-Meter is an extension of that work. And with an Economics degree from Stanford, he’s also deeply involved in the financial aspects of the initiative and in the hard data and economics relating to carbon drawdown.
