THE KONHEIM FAMILY’S LASTING IMPACT
What began as a memorial to one young person is touching the lives of many — and changing the world
By Kelly Vaughn, Marketing Director for Development at Rocky Mountain Institute and Laurie Stone, Senior Writer/Editor at Rocky Mountain Institute
This past April, the Rocky Mountain Institute community mourned the loss of longtime friend, supporter, and partner, Bud Konheim (pictured left). Bud, who was the chief executive officer of Nicole Miller Inc., worked with RMI to establish the Eric Konheim Memorial Fund to celebrate the memory of his son, who died in a kayaking accident in 1991 at age 28. At the time, the Konheim family discovered tens of thousands of dollars hid den in Eric’s pillow. Those funds, he had written in a will, were to be bequeathed to Rocky Mountain Institute.
Bud realized how strongly Eric felt about the environment and the work RMI was doing. “Eric was very passionate about the environment,” according to Bud. “He would come up to my office and argue with me about why I was using so many plastic bags for our clothing.” One day in the late 1980s, Eric told Bud about RMI, expressing that he found an environmental organization that was not fighting business, but works with businesses to make them greener and more profitable.
After Eric’s death, Bud worked with RMI to create the Eric Konheim Memorial Fund as a memorial to Eric and everything he was passionate about. For 23 years, Bud, along with Nicole Miller, carried on Eric’s support for RMI, spreading the Institute’s work throughout their networks in the fashion industry and the world.
Nicole and Bud’s commitment to sustainability is also evident through Nicole Miller’s clothing and operations. On Earth Day, Nicole Miller created an exclusive pair of denim jeans with Eco Made technology, in which the fabric is derived from recycled water bottles and plant-based materials. The recent fall-winter 2019 runway collections were centered on being sustainable, reusing existing garments to create something new and fresh. Nicole Miller is generously donating 10 percent of the sales of its anti-plastic T-shirts and eco-friendly denim to RMI.
The Eric Konheim Memorial Fund is more than a way to memorialize Eric. It’s now also a way to celebrate and memorialize Bud, and for their family and friends to keep memories of Eric and Bud, and their deep passion, alive. RMI is honored to be trusted with such an important purpose. It’s a responsibility and expectation we strive to live up to every day with the impact we drive in the world — for Eric, for Bud, and for all of us.
“Bud was a wonderful friend and supporter and would be so pleased to know of the direction of gifts in Eric’s memory,” says Marty Pickett, a managing director at RMI. “Losing his son at such an early age was tragic for Bud, but he was so inspired by and proud of helping other young people with the Konheim internship. Bud’s legacy is a wonderful one indeed.”
Since 1991, the Eric Konheim Memorial Fund has financed 17 interns at RMI, and most of these individuals have gone on to work in the energy and environmental sector. Greg Hopkins first came to the Institute in 2016 as a Konheim intern and today is a senior associate in the Buildings Program. Here he shares how his internship reshaped his life:
“After seven years working in various real estate finance roles in New York City, I started to feel a sense of urgency to “course-correct” and apply my skills in the fight against climate change. I wondered if there was a way for me to integrate my passion for the environment without sacrificing the business career I’d been developing. The more I read about sustainable design and deep energy retrofits, the clearer that path became to me, and I was accepted into Harvard’s Graduate School of Design to formalize that education in a master’s program.
After my first semester, I submitted my very first internship application to the one organization that seemed to show up again and again in everything I had been reading and learning about — the one organization whose approach of working with (not against) business to accelerate the clean energy revolution really resonated with me: Rocky Mountain Institute. Fortunately, there was a role for me to play on the buildings team at that time, and there was funding support from the Eric Konheim Memorial Fund.
That 12-week internship changed the course of my life. Not long after I got to Boulder that summer and started working at RMI, things clicked into place for me. To be surrounded by incredibly bright, impact-driven people, who were influencing so many different facets of the global economy, was a humbling and inspiring contrast to all of my previous work experiences.This wasn’t just a job — this was a mission.
Every day since then, I’ve been leveraging my background in real estate finance to strengthen the business case for sustainability in the built environment. Every day I get to develop and scale market-based solutions that reduce carbon emissions from our buildings. My career pivot would not have been possible without the support of the Konheim family, and I will be forever grateful for the opportunity to solidify and start fulfilling my purpose in life.”
More information on the Eric Konheim Memorial Fund is available at rmi.org/donate/ways-to-give/eric-konheim-memorial-fund/.
