Larry Goldenhersh
Larry Goldenhersh is a lawyer-turned-entrepreneur with 35 years' experience in the sustainability and environmental sectors. Goldenhersh founded Enviance Inc., a leading environmental technology company, and served as its president/CEO from 1999 to 2015 when the company was sold to a private equity firm. Enviance pioneered the use of the internet to provide environmental management software to industry and government.
At the time of the sale, the Enviance System was deployed in more than 60 countries, serving leaders in the utility and energy sectors as well as the Department of Defense and Department of Energy. As president/CEO of Enviance, Goldenhersh led the strategic and operational direction of the company. He raised the capital, defined the chasm-crossing strategy that drove the mainstream adoption of Enviance's internet technology early in the internet era, managed the creation of on- and off-shore software development organizations, built a powerful advisory board and recruited and collaborated with a leadership team that built successful sales/marketing and services organizations.
Goldenhersh and his leadership team succeeded in navigating Enviance through several critical platform leaps as the internet evolved from an island that could not be connected to industry's enterprise software to the fully mobile, completely integrated technology ecosystem it is today. Along the way, Enviance achieved many firsts, including the delivery of the first cloud-based system for greenhouse gas management (2005) and the first greenhouse gas "boot print" for the U.S. Army (2008).
Prior to founding Enviance, Goldenhersh was a partner at Irell & Manella, a Los Angeles law firm of more than 150 lawyers, where he served on the firm's management committee. Goldenhersh specialized in complex commercial litigation, including environmental resource disputes. He successfully defended the constitutionality of California Proposition 132, a voter-passed initiative that protects marine mammals and other ocean life by banning the use of monofilament gillnets in California waters. He also represented the H.J. Heinz Company as its StarKist subsidiary introduced the first dolphin-safe tuna practices in the world.
Previously, Goldenhersh served as a law clerk to the Honorable Richard P. Matsch, U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado. In addition to his duties at the Center for Sustainable Energy, Goldenhersh serves as a nonresident senior fellow at Boston University's Institute for Sustainable Energy.
Goldenhersh received his J.D. from the University of Virginia in 1980 and a B.A. degree in political science from Duke University in 1977.