Top NavTop NavTop Nav

CSUEB grad helps the Boys & Girls Club go green

Jim Richards

CSUEB alumnus Jim Richards (By: lvbusinesspress.com)

  • August 10, 2011 5:12am

CSUEB alumnus Jim Richards has been helping children and practicing conservation his entire adult life. As the vice president of operations for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Las Vegas, Richards combined those two passions and was recognized by the Las Vegas Business Press as the "2011 Best Green Nonprofit." Read article.

Richards reduced their overall need for water by switching to turf and desert landscaping; reduced the use of landscape by using auto watering; and modernized the club’s HVAC equipment, daylighting and daylighting controls and recycled materials. Their newest building is also LEED gold-certified.

“I have a lifetime interest in the environment, starting in the 1950s in my backpacker days, said Richards.”We moved the Boys & Girls Clubs of Las Vegas from the '70s' and '80s' management model to a model where caring for the environment is important to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Las Vegas.”

After receiving a master's in public administration from Cal State East Bay, Richards spent about four decades working in an administrative capacity with the Boys & Girls Clubs. That included a position as executive director of the Boys & Girls Club in Alameda, Calif. But a call from former Boys & Girls Clubs of Las Vegas Chairwoman Mary Kaye Cashman convinced him to move to Las Vegas in 2007.

Congrats, Jim!

KL

© California State University, East Bay. All Rights Reserved.