The Give-Back Years

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In the decade since, Henn has renewed lapsed memberships at the Harvard Business School Club of Greater New York and the Harvard Club of New York City and started an environmental lecture series there that ran from 1991 to '94. A few years later, he asked a former president of the business school club to join with him and a New Jersey school superintendent in a project for fifth-grade students: using their math, geography and social studies knowledge, the students were to design alternative modes of transportation for New Jerseyans commuting to Manhattan's World Trade Center. It was but one of several Linking Industry Nature Knowledge & Systems projects Henn would initiate with the school superintendent.

Henn also joined a multitude of professional organizations, using them as platforms for further projects. He created an environmental division at SOLE--the International Society of Logistics, which generated workshops and conferences on "green" design and accounting practices. At the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Brad Allenby, V.P. for environment, health & safety for AT&T worldwide, found Henn effective in helping technicians design with the environment in mind. In turn, Henn got Allenby to lecture twice: once at the Harvard Club and again for an industrial ecology course that Henn designed and taught for undergrads at Rutgers University. Also at the I.E.E.E., Henn met Clinton Andrews--now an assistant professor for urban planning at Rutgers, but at the time on the faculty at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Last year Andrews and Henn co-chaired a conference at Princeton. "The idea was to inspire Jersey's K-12 educators to embrace an integrative approach to learning and move away from structuring class time into segregated disciplines," explains Andrews. "Another goal was to influence policymakers to integrate environmental issues into the core curriculum of public schools." That conference led to a three-day symposium this past summer at Ramapo College of New Jersey on the same subject for public school teachers and administrators.

It is a most unusual volunteer career. But Henn is an unusual man. Lawrence Mondschein, manager of environmental affairs for Johnson & Johnson, calls him "a visionary," and Rob Young, executive director of New Jersey's Office of Sustainability (created by Governor Christine Whitman last year to encourage ecologically friendly business in the state) proclaims Henn "a sage."

He's not slowing down. Currently he's chairing the City of New Brunswick's environmental commission, and Andrews, who was just awarded a National Science Foundation grant to map the pathways of Trenton pollutants, got Henn named as an adviser. "He gets to donate his insights for free; in turn he is allowed to try and leverage me for one of his next projects," says Andrews. And there will be more projects.

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Which of the many problems in our community that Margot Freudenberg has identified and just thrown herself into rectifying would you like to talk about?" asks James B. Edwards, president of the Medical University of South Carolina. "She's a captivating lady who is a stalwart in the community. Everything that is good here, she has been a part of."