Van Jones is the co-founder of Rebuild the Dream, a platform for bottom-up, people-powered innovations to help fix the U.S. economy. Under his leadership, Rebuild the Dream has built an active network in all 435 Congressional Districts, signed up over 600,000 members, and crowd-sourced a “Contract for the American Dream.”

As an advisor to the Obama White House, he helped run the inter-agency process that oversaw $80 billion in green energy recovery spending. A Yale Law School graduate, he has a 20-year track record as a successful, innovative and award-winning social entrepreneur. He is a co-founder of three other thriving nonprofit organizations: the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Color of Change, and Green For All.

Van’s new book, Rebuild the Dream, is the first to come from a former Obama official, and in it he explores seven major missteps made by the White House and its supporters after Obama’s 2008 victory. He also lays out a game plan for turning anger into action, protest into power and suffering into solutions—so that our economy can respect the 99% and work for the 100%, not just the top 1%.

He is a globally recognized, award-winning pioneer in human rights and the clean energy economy. He was a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and American Progress Action Fund, and held a joint appointment at Princeton University as a distinguished visiting fellow in both the Center for African American Studies and in the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Van is on the board of Demos and the Natural Resources Defense Council. He is currently a Visiting Fellow in Collaborative Economics at Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco.

TIME magazine called him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2009. In 2011, Rolling Stone magazine named him one of the “12 Leaders Who Get Things Done.” He is also the best-selling author of the definitive book on green jobs, The Green Collar Economy.