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 day 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

A former contributing editor at House and Garden and Domino Magazines, Zem Joaquin is 7×7 Magazine’s Queen of Green and KFOG’s Eco-Expert. 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, but her love for the earth can be traced back to her early upbringing on a Palo Alto commune. As the mother of two children, Zem is committed to improving all families’ health, education and access to well-vetted information.

Emilie Cowan
COO

When Emilie worked on environmental policy for Senator Carl Levin in his Washington DC office, she quickly realized the importance of being conscious about one’s community and how one should build and design within it. She spent time working overseas on community development and advocacy projects, specializing in resource management and sustainability, and occasionally living in alternative conditions (such as sharing a hutch with a chicken), in India. While completing her Masters in Business Communications, she worked for BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance, focusing on the development and implementation of a large Sustainable Development program throughout Australia (she did not live with any marsupials but did develop a penchant for kick boxing - coincidence?). She continued her career in high-end real estate sales and development for Starwood Hotels and Resorts. It was there that she refined her passion for new business operations, project management and client relationship development. She then turned her ardent attention towards ecofabulous, to help implement a plan for the continued growth of an evolving green information service - and hasn’t looked back.

Alyssa Warnock
Graphic Designer

Graphic Designer Alyssa Warnock recieved her BA in Art History from USC and her BFA in Graphic Design from CCA. She loves to help people realize their new business ideas by giving life to concepts and making them real through design. She has designed catalogs, brochures, and ads for the Bonhams & Butterfield auction house; done freelance design with Sarah Shaw and Fetish; was on a design team at marchFIRST, Inc. for projects including Apple, Pixar, 3Com and Netflix. Working independently for various clients from San Francisco, L.A., and New York, she focuses on logo identity, branding, packaging, and signage for both boutique and corporate businesses. She enjoys working with and learning about all types of companies, and her clients include Bay Bread, La Boulange, The Brentwood Country Mart, Wilson Meany Sullivan, Coffee Bar, Café du Soleil, woo, Hiball Energy and the Blues Jean Bar.

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.

Our Editorial Team:

Caitlin Bristol
Editor & Manager, Creative Services

An Oregon native, Caitlin Bristol 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 is currently completing 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, where she had the dubious distinction of being bitten by a wild dingo. She has traveled to over twenty countries and volunteered in 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. In her spare time Caitlin indulges her passion for black and white photography and home-made fig ice cream. You can also find her browsing local flea markets for vintage furniture and one-of-a-kind pieces crying out for a DIY makeover.

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.

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.

Emily Dobbins
Intern: Designer

Dobbs, who has had a heightened awareness of the built environment and of interiors since she was young, seeks to save the world through the vehicle of interior design. Beginning her formal career as a design consultant at Ethan Allen, Dobbs’ work can be seen in residences all over the Bay Area as well as in various commercial locations, including Scott Cole & Associates in Oakland and the ZaZa Nail Spa chain locations of Northern California. Her educational background in liberal arts, Interior Design, and Sustainable Design, as well as influences from her childhood in Japan inspire Dobbs’ interdisciplinary approach to design. As a passionate proponent of the sustainability movement, she seeks to create highly sustainable spaces that meld green technologies and ecologically-inspired design, but are still beautiful, functional and reflective of their inhabitants.

Jenny Wong
Intern: Research Assistant/ Style Scout

As ecofabulous’s research assistant, Jenny helps ensure that the stylish products we find are up to par with our stringent quality and environmental standards. Jenny graduated from the University of Redlands in Redlands, CA with an emphasis in Sustainable Development in China. She has worked for mostly social and environmental non-profits in the past and developed a strong distaste for injustice early on. Jenny served two terms with AmeriCorps in the fields of community development and commercial corridor revitalization working as a program and project coordinator. She would eventually like to work in China and saw the potential for social entrepreneurship ventures when she was traveling around the Yunnan province and learned about the need for smart growth and sustainable development there through her coursework and researching in her free time. She likes to stay informed and enjoys being helpful, sending tailored articles and resources to friends and acquaintances, so much so that a few of her friends have created a special folder for all these e-mails.