Founding Team

Our founding team and advisors…

Scott James: Chief Executive Officer (scott at teamcora dot com)

Scott is an entrepreneur, instructor, advisor, and investor in the world of sustainability.

BusinessWeek named Scott as one of “America’s Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs” in 2009 and Forbes profiled him as a “Game Changer” in 2010. The products from his most recent company (sold 2011) were featured in publications as diverse as Oprah’s O Magazine, National Geographic, Parents Magazine, the Washington Post, Outside Magazine, and US News & World Report.

Scott also teaches the Marketing course at the green MBA program, Bainbridge Graduate Institute, and the Sustainability Interterm course at University of Notre Dame, where he serves on the Advisory Council. Scott previously worked in the high tech sector, including Visio and Microsoft.

Scott completed a BBA in Marketing at Baylor University and an MBA at University of Notre Dame. He lives on an island near Seattle with his wife and children. More.

Teri Bellamy: Chief Financial Officer (teri at teamcora dot com)

Teri is an experienced finance executive with a broad foundation in small for profit and not for profit organizations. She has a strong background in federal and state income tax, accounting/financial management and systems development. She has substantial experience in small business leadership, development of new business strategies, growth strategies and project implementations.

In her most recent role as CFO of Carena, Inc., Teri established and oversaw the maintenance of the financial infrastructure for the company and its contract entities. Prior to her time at Carena, she was Finance Director for The Center for Courage and Renewal, an educational not for profit dedicated to providing high quality professional development for public school educators and other professionals. She also worked as business manager for SeaShare, a not for profit that distributes seafood for hunger relief nationwide.

Teri has served on the boards of Hospice of Kitsap County and Bainbridge Graduate Institute. Her previous public accounting experience includes positions with both a Big Four firm and a large regional firm. Teri is a CPA and holds a bachelor’s degree from Linfield College. 

Liesl Clark: Chief Operations Officer (liesl at teamcora dot com)

Since 1990, Liesl has traveled the globe writing, producing and directing many of the world’s most extreme filming expeditions, including filming elephant behavior deep inside bat-infested caves on the Kenya-Uganda border, exploring the effects of high altitude on humans on Mount Everest, documenting the unearthing of a 500-year-old frozen Inca mummy on an 18,000 foot Andean peak, and discovering the body of George Leigh Mallory high on the North Face of Everest.

In 2001, she and a team of world-class climbers, including Jon Krakauer and Conrad Anker, pioneered a new route to the highest point on the southernmost continent to study the rates of snow accumulation in Antarctica’s highest mountains. Her NOVA film about the expedition, which took her to a hostile land no humans have trod, won a Prime Time Emmy Award for Cinematography.

Liesl was producer, series producer, director, writer, and cinematographer at NOVA for 7 years. Her films, which include footage she shoots at high altitude, have won the Columbia Dupont Gold Baton and awards in several film festivals around the world. She is now an independent filmmaker, working curr

ently with National Geographic Television, directing and shooting a 5-year project uncovering 3000-year-old human mortuary populations found inside cliff caves in the remote Himalayan Kingdom of Mustang.

Rebecca Rockefeller: Chief Research Officer (rebecca at teamcora dot com)

Rebecca Rockefeller is a freelance writer, educator, speaker, and community activist who works to build resilient local gift economies that make life with less plastic possible for people of any economic situation.

As part of the citizen scientist and artist group Plastic is Forever, Rebecca works with students and the public to collect and catalog plastic debris from watersheds and beaches in the Puget Sound. This work adds to the growing awareness of the inadequacies of our current waste disposal and recycling systems and where plastic waste ultimately ends up.

Rebecca graduated with a bachelor’s degree from The Evergreen State College, where her primary fields of study were natural history, political economy, and social change. In addition to her current work, she founded 5 Dogs & A Hammer Jewelry in 1995 and has worked full time as a craftsperson for over 10 years.

Cherian “Zach” Zachariah: Database Advisor
Zach has already packed four careers into one lifetime. He started out as an electronics engineer who developed a number of computer peripherals used for mapping, data acquisition and factory automation.

Next, Zach became a software engineer who worked on developing operating systems and programming languages. When the time was right, he then moved on to developing the software behind the first generation of internet media applications.

Most recently, Zach has been working for a number of start-up technology companies developing web and mobile applications, a few of which have been successful. Zach also serves on our Advisory Board.

Paul Ingram: Creative Advisor
With more than 20 years of brand and interactive design experience, Paul is responsible for driving product invention, as well as the visual expression of the corporate brand, for all of Cora’s offerings.

Previously, Paul founded Ingram Labs, an award-winning interactive solutions company. Ingram Labs’ clients included Microsoft Xbox, MSNBC, Experience Music Project, AT&T Wireless, Nintendo and AOL. In the mid-1990s, Paul created the inaugural Web site for AtomFilms.com (now owned by MTV), which presents comic films and programming on the Web. Paul has been featured in the leading international publication, I.D. Magazine, as well as the book Web Design Studio Secrets.