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Nic Frances
Founder and Executive Chairman - EasyBeing Green
Malaysia

Nic Frances, 45, Easy Being Green founder and executive chairman, is aworld leader in showing how social enterprise can lead the globalmarket agenda to address human society’s big challenges like climatechange and poverty. Nic holds an MBE from the British Government,and is a frequent speaker at international events, including theprestigious annual World Economic Forum, on the convergence ofbusiness, personal ethics and social innovation.
A former stock broker, Nic left a successful early career in the UKprivate sector to found the Furniture Resource Centre (FRC). Under his leadership, the FRC grew from a public charity into a leadingprofit-generating social enterprise, which has been recognised as theblueprint for the ‘Mutual State’ model proposed by leading UK thinktank, New Economics Foundation. “I spent five years looking at it as asocial problem, and then five years looking at it as an economicopportunity,” says Nic. “The economic opportunity is that every socialor environmental thing has a cost. Get a dollar price on that cost andyou’ve now made a market, and the problem will change or even go away.”

Nic became an Anglican priest in 1996 and moved to Australia from theUK in 1998, heading up the Brotherhood of St. Laurence for five yearsuntil 2004, working with Australia’s leading welfare and social policyorganisation.
In 2001, Nic was invited to be one of the first 30 Schwab socialentrepreneurs, a group convened by World Economic Forum founder andchairman Klaus Schwab, and received a Centenary medal for his charitywork with the Brotherhood of St Laurence in 2002.
Nic left the Brotherhood in 2004 to launch Easy Being Green, afor-profit business with a social purpose to cut greenhouse pollutionemissions and campaign for action on climate change. In 2005, he formeda partnership with Paul Gilding, a former head of GreenpeaceInternational, who is the founder of sustainability strategy firm EcosCorporation and a former World Economic Forum Global Leader ofTomorrow. Nic began Easy Being Green with a vision to create aglobal leadership company that helps people by making it easy andeconomical to make their lives cleaner and greener.
In 2006, Nic was honoured with an invitation to sit on the council ofSchwab entrepreneurs and was presented with The Iremonger Award forWriting on Public Issues by Allen and Unwin, who will publish hisforthcoming book The End of Charity: Social solutions through socialenterprise in 2008. In January 2007, Nic was a prominent participant inthe World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which focusedheavily on market solutions to the climate change challenge.