As Rodale Institute's first CEO, Tim LaSalle champions a science-based hope for a regenerative food system that will mitigate climate change and prevent famine. He has challenged audiences around the world, including Al Gore's Generation Management Investment, United Nations Environment Program, and the National Wildlife Federation. He is also a frequent contributor to Huffington Post and Treehugger.

Tim LaSalle grew up on a dairy farm and worked his way through college milking his cows. This milk money also allowed him to obtain a master's degree in genetics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. LaSalle applied his knowledge of dairy and genetics as a professor at California Polytechnic State University in addition to starting and operating a conventional dairy farm. While teaching at Cal Poly, LaSalle became involved with the California Agriculture Education Foundation. As a professor in the program and ultimately the president and CEO of the Foundation, he arranged educational leadership programs in more than 80 countries with heads of state, as well as ministers of environment and agriculture. What LaSalle experienced during his international travel and engagement with exemplary leaders led him to challenge the conventional agriculture mindset he'd grown up with, worked with and taught.

He saw the need for new systems to regenerate devastated natural ecosystems. As part of that quest, he has provided transformational leadership at the Environmental Center in San Luis Obispo, the Savory Center for Holistic Management, and Northwest Earth Institute. He went back to school and earned a doctorate studying the deep psychological roots of human participation in environmental destruction, and how individuals can awake to the task of repairing the planet.