• • Executive Director, RECONOMICS Institute: The Society of Revitalization & Resilience Professionals.
  • Editor, REVITALIZATION: The Journal of Urban Rural & Environmental Resilience.  It’s the global source of news, research, and opportunities related to social, economic, and natural resources renewal. Over 10,000 articles in over 200 issues published in the past decade.

• • Keynoter, Workshop Leader & Renewal Strategy Coach. Since 2002, public and private leaders worldwide have relied on Storm to privately coach them on harnessing the latest trends, resources, and opportunities of the fast-growing $3 trillion global restoration economy. He advises mayors, governors, members of U.S. Congress, and executives of foundations, non-profits and corporations. In these confidential roles, he normally stays in the background, so his clients can take full credit when they launch leading-edge policies and initiatives. But in his role as keynoter and workshop leader, he’s very much in the foreground.

• • Author, The Restoration Economy (Berrett Koehler, 2002) Buy it here.

• • Author, reWealth (McGraw-Hill Professional, 2008)  Buy it here.

• • Author, RECONOMICS: The Path to Resilient Prosperity (January 2020) Buy it here.

About Storm

For two decades, Storm Cunningham has helped public and private clients around the globe understand how to lead or support resilient prosperity. He reveals:

1) a proven community / regional revitalization process; and
2) how to position their career or organization within that process.

As Executive Director of RECONOMICS Institute: The Society of Revitalization & Resilience Professionals, Storm helps ensure that communities worldwide have Certified RISING PLACES Planners.

As editor of REVITALIZATION: The Journal of Urban, Rural & Environmental Resilience, Storm tracks the latest trends and techniques in urban/rural regeneration, natural resource restoration, and resilience worldwide.

As a speaker and workshop leader, his specialty is inspiring all stakeholders to effectively engage in the process of local revitalization.

Everywhere one turns these days, “re” words appear. Urban regeneration. Regenerative agriculture. Regenerative economies. Coastal resilience. Fishery/reef restoration. Watershed restoration. Economic revitalization. Infrastructure renewal. Historic renovation/reuse. Ecological restoration, etc.

Many consider Storm to be a major catalyst in that recent acceleration of the global “re” trend. He started writing The Restoration Economy (Berrett-Koehler, 2002) in 1996, and has been lecturing on the subject ever since.

Storm has been called “the world’s thought leader on community revitalization and natural resource restoration” by George L. Ochs, Managing Director, Global Real Assets, JP Morgan. Ochs calls Cunningham’s 2008 book, reWealth (McGraw-Hill): “The secret weapon…for economic recovery at both local and global scales.”

Storm has also helped colleges and universities raise millions of public and private dollars to endow new chairs and launch institutes related to community redevelopment, natural resource restoration, and climate adaptation. His Restorative Careers symposium is tremendously popular with young people seeking meaningful lives. It has been held at many of the world’s top universities, including Harvard, Ryerson, and the Universities of Toronto, Guadalajara, Virginia, Ohio, Roskilde (Denmark), Texas, and many more.

Cunningham is the author of 2002’s The Restoration Economy, which has been hailed by government and business leaders around the world as “Extraordinary“, “Remarkable“, “A modern classic“, “A landmark work“, “Required reading“, and “The most important and valuable business book I have read in many years.”

His second book, reWealth, was published by McGraw-Hill in 2008. The Foreword was written by legendary 4-term Indianapolis mayor Bill Hudnut, now a Senior Resident Fellow at the Urban Land Institute. Bill Leary, former Director of Natural Resources, White House Council on Environmental Quality, says of reWealth: “This is the book world leaders should be talking about! In reWealth they will find the path to revitalizing our economy, restoring our environment, and renewing the quality of our lives.”

Storm’s third book, RECONOMICS: The Path to Resilient Prosperity was published in January of 2020 in both paperback and e-book form. It’s the first book on how to boost economic growth and resilience simultaneously. RECONOMICS is also the first book to reveal the zero-cost factor that triples the ROI of revitalization efforts, but sabotages them when it’s missing. It’s the guide to healing economies, societies and nature for policymakers, real estate investors, social entrepreneurs, non-profit leaders and climate restoration champions.

Storm also writes chapters for the books of other authors, such as Project Management Circa 2025 on the future of the project management profession (Project Management Institute, 2009) and Restorative Redevelopment of Devastated Ecocultural Landscapes (CRC Press, June 2010).

Storm volunteers his time to advise a wide variety of public service efforts, such as serving on the Education & Outreach Committee of the National Working Waterfronts Network (an initiative of the U.S. EDA, NOAA Coastal Management, and NOAA Sea Grant).

Storm addresses all aspects of renewal; natural and cultural resources, urban and rural communities, industrialized and lesser-developed countries, etc. On any given day, he might be working with educators, fishery biologists, city planners, agronomists, watershed managers, transportation engineers, economic development agencies, environmentalists, real estate developers, GIS software firms, project managers, mayors, ecosystem restorers, brownfields experts, historic preservationists, or catastrophe recovery agencies.

Storm Cunningham was—from 1996 to 2002—Director, Strategic Initiatives at the Construction Specifications Institute, a 60+ year-old association of 14,000 architects, engineers, contractors, and manufacturers. During this time, he was CSI’s staff liaison to the U.S. Green Building Council.

He was previously CEO of a small manufacturing company that developed aquaculture systems based on a pioneering water purification technology invented at the Smithsonian Institution.

A former Green Beret SCUBA medic with the U.S. Army’s 7th Special Forces Group, he is an avid SCUBA diver, motorcyclist, and amateur herpetologist. His passion for integrating economics and nature goes back to his undergraduate economics major and biology minor at Windham College in Vermont. He went to school in England when very young, and now lives in Arlington, Virginia with his wife, Dr. Maria MacKnight.

Abbreviated Bio

Storm Cunningham is Executive Director of RECONOMICS Institute: The Society of Revitalization & Resilience Professionals, which helps ensure that communities worldwide have Certified RISING PLACES Practitioners. Look for the “RPP” after their names.

As editor of REVITALIZATION: The Journal of Economic & Environmental Resilience, Storm tracks the latest trends and techniques in urban/rural regeneration, natural resource restoration, and resilience worldwide.

Storm is the author of 2002’s The Restoration Economy, which has been hailed by government and business leaders around the world as “Extraordinary”, “Remarkable”, “A modern classic”, “A landmark work”, “Required reading”, and “The most important and valuable business book I have read in many years.”

His second book, reWealth, was published by McGraw-Hill in 2008. George Ochs, Director of Real Asset Investment at JP Morgan calls Storm “the world’s thought leader on community revitalization and natural resource restoration” and calls reWealth: “The secret weapon…for economic recovery at both local and global scales.”

Storm’s third book, RECONOMICS: The Path to Resilient Prosperity was published in both paperback and e-book form on January 9, 2020. It’s a guide for policymakers, real estate investors and social entrepreneurs.

From 2006-2009 Storm was Distinguished Visiting Professor at Seneca College (Canada’s largest college) in Toronto. From 1996 to 2002, he was Director, Strategic Initiatives at the Construction Specifications Institute, a 60+ year-old association of 14,000 architects, engineers, contractors, and manufacturers.

A former Green Beret SCUBA medic with the U.S. Army’s 7th Special Forces Group, he is an avid SCUBA diver, motorcyclist, and amateur herpetologist. He lives in Arlington, Virginia, USA.