About Laura

I inherited my passion for taking care of the planet from my dad, Ted Turner, the original Captain Planet. When my siblings and I were children, my father instilled environmental stewardship into us every chance he got.

Today, I work with organizations that address urgent challenges affecting our life support system: our air, water, land, food, biodiversity and climate.

As chair of the Captain Planet Foundation, I help guide the organization in empowering and engaging youth to become the next generation of environmental stewards through hands-on experiential learning projects. I also serve on the board of the Children & Nature Network, which has the mission of helping all children to grow up realizing the many benefits that exposure to nature provides.

I am co-founder and serve as chair of Mothers and Others for Clean Air, which works to improve air quality for at-risk populations, especially children in the Southeast.

I serve on the board of Project Drawdown, which focuses on measuring the top scalable solutions to address global warming. And as a Patron of Nature for the International Union of the Conservation of Nature, I work to address the extinction crisis.

With my husband, Rutherford, I co-founded the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, which strives to protect Georgia’s drinking water. Along with that, I serve on the board for the Waterkeeper Alliance, which is a consortium of over 300 local Waterkeeper groups worldwide.

Due to the waste and recycling crisis in the US and globally, I co-founded Atlanta Recycles in 2005. I currently serve as a director of Recycle Across America, which works to reduce and refuse one-use plastics and to institute standardized labeling for recycling bins.

To leverage and protect important environmental policies that protect the air, water, land and especially climate, I serve as vice chair of the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund.

Additional organizations I work with include the Turner Foundation, United Nations Foundation, Nuclear Threat Initiative, JST Foundation and the Turner Endangered Species Fund. I am a member of Atlanta Rotary and serve on the Carter Center Board of Councilors and on the advisory board for the Ray C. Anderson Foundation.

I live with my husband, Rutherford, in Atlanta. We have three children and live in the first LEED-certified gold residence in the United States.