About ecofabulous

ecofabulous is your trusted friend, personal shopper, and inside source for living the well lived ‘eco’ life.

We’re devoted to sharing the wealth of our eco information. And everyday we’ll provide you with a short and quick recommendation with the latest need-to-know info for living a sustainable life without compromising style or quality.

ecofabulous.com  inspires and educates readers about quality eco-friendly products vetted by expert editors and designers. Join us at ecofabulous and don’t miss a beat of the “IT” guide for environmentally conscious beauty, fashion, home, kids and lifestyle products and experiences.

Based in San Francisco, ecofabulous has quickly built its impressive level of trust, credibility and experience by providing fresh, informative reviews of today’s hottest sustainable products that meet our stringent criteria.

Events and Design Projects:

Not only does our team of editors and designers research and write about the best eco-products on the market, but we work together to produce fabulous off-line experiences – whether it’s a “green” event or an interior design project.

Eco-expert Zem Joaquin founded ecofabulous as a result of her personal journey into sustainability. She realized that the products she was using in her home were toxic and thus intensifying the asthma that both of her children battled. The more she learned during the process of transforming her own home into a healthy environment, the less she was able to trust traditional products the way she once had and the more she turned towards an eco lifestyle.

Inspired by her mentor William McDonough, whose Cradle to Cradle philosophy has galvanized many, Joaquin advises organizations with very high sustainability standards including Global Green, Healthy Child, Healthy World, and Teens For Safe Cosmetics, and is committed to keeping ecofabulous consistent with the high-sustainability standards of these organizations, thus providing credible recommendations for ecofabulous subscribers and fans.

Read more about the ecofabulous buzz!

Meet Team ecofabulous:

Zem Joaquin
Founder and CEO

Zem has been a contributing eco-editor at House & Garden, Domino, Architectural Digest and 7×7 Magazines. She received the 2009 Global Green Millennium Founder’s Award for her contributions as a Global Green board member, Co-Chair of Global Green’s San Francisco Committee, and Founder of Global Green’s Successful Annual Fundraiser and Ecofashion event. Mentored by William McDonough, Zem is a certified BuildItGreen design and strategy consultant and Cradle to Cradle enthusiast who helps companies and individuals create beautiful, smart, sustainable spaces and practices. Zem is the eco-luxury specialist for Planet Green’s Alter Eco and regularly contributes to various media. Much of her penchant for superior design came from her years at splendora.com and living in Milan, Paris and London. Her love for the earth, however, can be traced back to her early upbringing on a Palo Alto commune. As a mother of two, Zem is committed to improving all families’ health, education and access to well-vetted information. To that end Zem is an active board member of Global Green, Healthy Child Healthy World,Teens Turning Green, and Architecture for Humanity.

Check out her tribute video from the recent Global Green Millennium Awards:

Nadine Weil
VP, Special Projects

With an industrial engineering degree from Stanford and a business degree from Harvard, Nadine is now dedicated to undoing everything she learned in school to help create a more sustainable planet. Her past experiences include mergers & acquisitions for entertainment companies in Los Angeles, international business in Milan at the LEK Partnership, startup advisory services at Pathway Ventures, and Internet marketing for OpenTable.com. Nadine became an intern at General Motors for the EV1 Electric Vehicle in 1995 and still enjoys watching EVs out-accelerate Ferraris at the track. Nadine has been known to co-host and green events for WildAid, U.N. World Environment Day, An Inconvenient Truth, and the Brower Youth Awards. She serves on the ForestEthics Board of Directors, the Mofilms Advisory Board, and the Full Circle Fund’s Environment & Energy Circle, maintains a personal blog called Heart of Green and is contributing eco-editor for 944 Magazine. Despite her petite nature, Nadine is happiest when standing next to 300-foot tall redwood trees and 600-pound tigers, both of which she hopes to play a role in saving.

Caitlin Bristol
Creative Director

An Oregon native, Caitlin focuses on developing spaces that seamlessly integrate the built environment with nature. With an extensive background in residential design, she is less concerned with the latest trends and prefers to ask her clients the question, “How do you live?” She received her BA from Santa Clara University while managing a design showroom in Palo Alto. After working on the retail side for several years, she transitioned into the custom home industry. She recently completed a graduate program in Sustainable Design at UC Berkeley’s extension campus in San Francisco. She grew up spending summers in her mother’s native Australia, and has traveled to over twenty countries, including India and Africa where she found herself rooming with monkeys, cockroaches, bats and jumping spiders. Despite (or maybe because of) those experiences, her travels instilled a deep appreciation of nature’s beautifully efficient, waste-free, regenerative cycles. Nature is her inspiration and biomimicry her model as she creates interiors that meld sustainability with high design. It’s no surprise that her personal style blends globe-trotting eclecticism with city-girl chic.

Sarah Wilkinson
Graphic & Web Designer

Sarah graduated from UC Berkeley in December 2008 with an undergraduate degree in architecture and a minor in modern dance-technique. Though a midwestern native, Sarah has adjusted to Bay-Area life quite nicely and appreciates the eco-friendly lifestyle California has to offer. Sarah had the privilege last summer to travel to Copenhagen, Denmark to study sustainable business and corporate social responsibility. It was there that she decided to abandon previous goals of becoming an architect and turn her career ambitions to sustainability. As ecofabulous’s Graphic & Web Designer, Sarah enjoys accessorizing the adorable ecofabulous owl and finding her new homes across the world wide web.

Heidi Atwal
Contributor

An aesthete with a passion for film, fashion, and literature, Heidi strongly believes that style and social-consciousness go hand in hand. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in English and a Minor in Gender and Women’s Studies, and afterward, logged time as the Managing Editor of Splendora.com. Heidi’s wanderlust has led her to diverse cultural locales, with extensive time spent traveling in Asia and a brief stint in Barcelona. Heidi now resides in Los Angeles, where she can be found vintage shopping at the Melrose Trading Post, soaking up L.A.’s rich cultural landscape, hiking in Griffith Park, and seeking out chic and environmentally-friendly finds for ecofabulous at every opportunity. Heidi’s writing has also appeared in The San Francisco Bay Guardian and SOMA Magazine.

Charlotte Baxter
Contributor

Originally from Pasadena, CA, Charlotte abandoned the land of Rose Queens and storied collegiate football games in pursuit of her studies at UC Berkeley. Upon her arrival, Charlotte fell in love with the Bay and hasn’t looked back since. (She just really misses the street tacos down south.) Though Charlotte avidly implemented her family’s first recycling system as an eager 8-year-old, her passion for all things green truly blossomed on one particularly lovely Berkeley afternoon. While sampling the wealth of local, artisanal, and organic food products in the city’s “Gourmet Ghetto”, she realized the importance of sparing her body from the horrors found in mass-produced grub. This discovery quickly prompted her to transform all other facets of her lifestyle in accordance with the highest principles of environmental responsibility and sustainability. Currently, Charlotte is soaking up la vie parisienne while studying abroad at the Sorbonne, but will say her adieux at the semester’s end and return to real life to conclude her degrees in Media Studies and French.

Sara Little
Contributor

Sara Little is a yoga instructor and writer in New York City. An Oregon girl at heart, a graduate of Syracuse University (with degrees in Journalism and Italian), and an international traveler, Sara believes that leading a socially responsible life doesn’t mean giving up your culture. She came to this realization while living in Florence, as the Italians have always followed the principles of ecofabulousness: eating fresh, organic, local foods, conserving precious resources by walking and biking, and cultivating relationships (not to mention reducing stress) during those wonderful midday siestas.For Sara, a commitment to living ahimsa – the yogic principle of non-harming – means behaving in way that is non-harming towards the planet, our bodies, and each other. And what good is living an ecofabulous life without happiness? In her spare time, Sara finds happiness in good books, good coffee, and wandering the Lower East Side with her husband and German shepherd. Check out saralittleyoga.com for more info.

Arielle McGowen
Contributor

Originally from West Virginia, Arielle McGowen comes from a long line of organic, sustainable gardeners.  She was raised on a farm by a family that was pressing apples into cider, canning, composting and recycling long before it was mainstream.  All of this exposure to a sustainable, ecofabulous lifestyle has had a great impact on her life; eating fresh, local food is a must!  A freelance writer, Arielle now lives in Brooklyn, NY with her fiance Chris. She spends her free time cooking vegetarian food, exercising, hanging out with her dog, Jack, and sampling the eclectic mix of restaurants in her neighborhood.

Rebecca Rogers
Contributor

Rebecca Rogers lives in Los Angeles however she accredits her appreciation of the natural world from growing up next to Walden Pond in Massachusetts.  She is an environmental activist, filmmaker and new media consultant. Rebecca serves on the Leadership Council for the NRDC.org (Natural Resources Defense Council) and has also worked for them as a media consultant. She is an executive producer for the recently released documentary film F.L.O.W. on the world water crisis. Rebecca was the founding Creative Director of Altnet / Kazaa, the world’s largest licensed media distribution network and first legitimate Peer to Peer network; started by the creators of Skype.  In 2000-02 Rebecca pioneered 3-D interactive animations and games for the web including a hugely successful online campaign for NRDC.org starring Cameron Diaz. The campaign garnered hundreds of thousands of new members in 6 weeks and over 1 million petitions to stop drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Rebecca’s work has been nominated for two MTV Music Video Awards and has screened in the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles(MOCA), the San Diego Museum of Art and as Official Selection in several international festivals.

Tiffany Fan
Intern: Media/Marketing

Growing up in suburbia, Tiffany came to equate sustainability with the stereotypical granola eating, protest loving hippy lifestyle. However in her first year at college, she discovered the rich, green culture of the city, an incubator for the eco-friendly, TOMS-wearing, wayfarer-sunglasses-donning minds. Gradually, Tiffany began to accumulate environmentally friendly habits, from composting to bringing her own tumbler for coffee. On her down time, she enjoys scouring nearby neighborhoods for local joints and continuing her venture into a more sustainable lifestyle.
 
Currently, Tiffany is entering her second year at UC Berkeley as a Media Studies major, pursuing a career in public relations. As the Media/Marketing intern, Tiffany enjoys applying her PR experience and knowledge while exploring the modern green industry.