Bryan and Carolyn Thomlison founded Our Community Works, Inc., a New Jersey  based not-for-profit community-development organization that has been active since 1996.  Rather than retire after a successful corporate career, they decided to pursue their dream of creating a replicable business model that addresses complex social issues through community-based enterprise and entrepreneurship.

Our Community Works creates partnerships between large, globally oriented corporations and local, community development stakeholders.  By creating partnerships that benefit all the participants, OCW is helping to redirect corporate resources to America’s underserved communities and organizations involved with the sustainability movement.  Initiatives have included dozens of corporations, hundreds of diverse community and sustainability stakeholders and even the White House Science Office.

Bryan’s corporate training in sales and marketing comes from Procter & Gamble, Lever Brothers, Carnation Company (now Nestle) and Church & Dwight (Arm & Hammer® products) where he managed brands in Canada and the USA. From 1990 through 1995 he reported to the Chairman/CEO of C&D as head of worldwide public relations, including public affairs, environmental management, and employee communications. 

In 1992, a case writer from the Harvard Business School asked to write a case study on Bryan’s “Stakeholder Partnering” business model. Subsequent research by that case writer showed that Church & Dwight was reaping a 10:1 return on its investment in stakeholder partnerships. The research data showed a quantifiable, favorable impact on every line of the company's P&L. 

Bryan’s partnerships are tied strategically to a company's core competencies, and designed to add measurable, long-term value for all participants. They are co-created with socially responsible corporations and a multitude of strategically aligned stakeholders. The objective is to bring much-needed resources to community & sustainability stakeholders while building brand equity and/or generating new, profitable revenue streams for the corporate partners.  His pioneering work in this field has been referenced in a dozen books including a full chapter in Reputation: Realizing Value from Corporate Image (Fombrun, Charles; Harvard Business School Press, 1996). (See references to Bryan Thomlison in this book.)

Bryan volunteers considerable time to the sustainability movement. From 1998 through 2003 Bryan was the Chairman of Green Seal, a non-profit, third-party environmental certification organization dealing with eco-labeling and green procurement.  During his tenure in this volunteer post, Green Seal moved from relying on grantmakers for 90% of its funding to being self-reliant by generating 90% of its revenue from consulting and certification.  He has been on numerous national and local not-for-profit boards of directors and advisory boards, including sustainability initiatives for the business schools at U/Michigan and UNC/Chapel Hill.

Bryan has supervised teams that have won more than a dozen major awards including a Daytime Emmy (television production), a CLIO (advertising) and a United Earth award (environment).  He has a BSc (Alberta, 1968) and an MBA (York University, Toronto, 1974). Carolyn has a BSN (British Columbia, 1971).

Bryan, Carolyn, Gregory and David live near Philadelphia.
(Click here to contact Bryan Thomlison.)