Marstel Day

History and Leadership

Marstel-Day CEO and President Rebecca R. Rubin founded the company in 2002 to assist clients with conservation and natural resource issues. Rubin developed a groundbreaking conservation conveyance strategy that the Department of Defense (DOD) used to convey 80,000 acres of surplus military land to public and private organizations for permanent conservation or recreational use. A U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, Military Base Closures, noted that the DOD used conservation conveyance in the largest single transfer of surplus property that the U.S. Army has undertaken, conveying almost 58,000 acres from the Sierra Army Depot in California to qualified not-for-profit groups for natural resource and conservation purposes. The White House named Rubin a Champion of Change for Community Resilience in 2013. She currently leads a regional initiative on climate, environment and readiness in Virginia, and Gov. Terry McAuliffe named Rubin to the State Air Pollution Control Board. In addition to Rubin, the Marstel-Day leadership team includes H. Lee Halterman, partner and general counsel; James P. “Phil” Huber, partner; Sean B. Donohoe, Ph.D., partner; and Jennifer Graham, partner and Air Force program manager. Halterman, who served as policy director of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, also known as the United States House Committee on Armed Services, and general counsel to U.S. Rep. Ron Dellums, co-authored Lying Down with the Lions: A Public Life from the Streets of Oakland to the Halls of Power (2000) and Defense Sense: The Search for a Rational Military Policy (1983).

Services

Marstel-Day provides environmental and conservation policy and planning services, and it develops and executes implementation strategies. Its clients predominantly include military and civilian agencies, businesses, local governments, and nonprofit conservators. Marstel-Day’s efforts focus in particular on habitat preservation, and land, water, and energy conservation. The company’s core capabilities include the following:

Vital Voices of the Environment

The Environmental Business Journal gave Marstel-Day a project merit award for launching the Vital Voices of the Environment series featuring Marstel-Day President and CEO Rebecca R. Rubin’s interviews of environmental thinkers and planners on key environmental and conservation issues. The Vital Voices collection includes Rubin’s discussion with extreme snowboarder Jeremy Jones about the dire future of winter playgrounds due to climate change. All-star drummer Rich Redmond tells Rubin in an interview about his eco-friendly drum set made of bamboo and how the music industry can practice sustainability. In John Englander’s discussion with Rubin, the oceanographer explains the certainty of 50 feet of sea level rise. During her Vital Voices interview, Earth Day Network President Kathleen Rogers talks about how individuals make a difference for the planet.

Wildlife Conservation Awareness Campaign

CEO and President Rebecca R. Rubin created Marstel-Day’s 2015 Wildlife Conservation Awareness Campaign to highlight issues and celebrate ways that individuals and organizations can make a difference. The campaign’s speaker series featured conservationists highlighting the illegal wildlife trade, applauding ways to reconnect children to nature, and hailing the smartphone’s ability to help people interact with public lands. Other speakers have spotlighted the havoc that plastic pollution wreaks on oceans, and the challenges that environmental journalism faces.

Internal Green Business Practices

Marstel-Day demonstrates its commitment to greening its internal practices in various ways. The company established an internal Green Vision Council that works to decrease Marstel-Day’s carbon footprint, increase company sustainability, and promote an ethic of environmental awareness. Run by employees serving for six-month terms, the council has greened the company’s supply chain by buying from sustainable sources and buying green products. The company has offset its carbon dioxide emissions since it joined Carbonfund.org, one of the nation’s leading nonprofit carbon-offset organizations, in 2010. Marstel-Day has offset carbon emissions attributed to employee business travel by air and personal vehicle and the carbon footprint of the company’s U.S. offices. The offsets occur through payments to support renewable energy, energy efficiency, or reforestation projects, or to buy carbon reductions that are then retired. Marstel-Day became the nation’s first company to achieve certification as a sustainable service provider under the National Standards Foundation (NSF) International P391 program. The certification requires demonstration of sustainable achievement in the categories of environment, labor, and social responsibility across a framework of more than 100 criteria. At NSF’s request, Marstel-Day helped test-pilot the protocol even before P391 standards were officially introduced as North America’s first protocol to define sustainable services within the service industry. Later, NSF used Marstel-Day’s experience to create a case study to guide other service providers seeking to understand the value of sustainability certification. Marstel-Day has published its Corporate Social Responsibility Report and its Climate Change Adaptation Plan to outline everything from the company’s land conservation and water demand forecasting to its Earth Day commitment.

Awards