Leadership Award
The Green Burial Council Leadership Award is presented to an individual, organization, or business that has demonstrated foresight, innovation, and extraordinary commitment to the environment through sustainability and attainability in the area of human death-care practices.
2025 Leadership Award
The GBC Board of Directors has named Pete McQuillin and Nancy Chubb as the recipients of the 2025 Leadership Award. In honor of Earth month, the GBC’s leadership award is presented to “ individuals or organizations that demonstrate foresight, innovation and extraordinary commitment to the environment in the area of human death care practices”.
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Past Recipients
Lee Webster is an internationally known educator, author, and advocate for funeral reform, home funerals, and green burial. She is the longtime Director of New Hampshire and Vermont Funeral Resources & Education.
Amy Browne, Tony Hale, Brian Wilson, and Jeremy Kaplan are co-producers of A Will for the Woods, the award-winning film that documents a man searching for a final resting place who becomes the inspiration for creating green burial space.
Mark Harris, author of Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial which spurred the green burial movement. He is a former environmental columnist with the Los Angeles Times Syndicate and member of the Society of Environmental Journalists,
Suzanne Kelly, is author of Greening Death: Reclaiming Burial Practices and Restoring Our Tie to the Earth, and administrator for the Town of Rhinebeck Cemetery where they opened a natural burial ground in 2014.
Dyanne Matzkevich of PineForest Memorial Gardens in Wake Forest, North Carolina, is recognized for her work in creating green burial space for Clark Wang, the subject of the film, A Will for the Woods.
Shari Wolf is a true pioneer, educator, activist, and early adopter of eco-friendly death and after-death options. She is a funeral director and owner of Natural Grace which provides a natural approach to the funeral business.