• Columnists

Dave Feldman, Executive Director Bethesda Green

COLUMN = GO GREEN

Dave Feldman is the founding director of Bethesda Green, a dynamic 501c3 that serves as a catalyst and trusted resource for building a healthy economy and sustainable community. This model initiative has set up the first green business incubator and education center in the DC/Maryland region.

Feldman is also the CEO of the Livability Project LLC, an organization that provides structure and tools to help communities develop sustainability initiatives. Through Livability, Feldman leverages his entrepreneurial experience, international economic development expertise, and passion for sustainability to implement socially responsible, “green” community development projects that can be replicated worldwide.

Prior founding the organization, Feldman was Consul, Trade and Investment at the British Embassy. His role as head of the largest economic development agency in the world was to help US companies operate successfully in the United Kingdom and to support UK companies exporting to the United States. He was directly responsible for a portfolio that included information technology and renewable energy.

Feldman holds an MBA from the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland in International Management and Finance. He is a graduate of Leadership Montgomery (’06) and is currently on the Board of Sustainable Business Network of Washington (SB NOW).

For more information about Bethesda Green, visit www.bethesdagreen.org. For details about Feldman’s Livability Project, visit www.livabilityproject.com.

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.”

– Abraham Lincoln

‎No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another.”

– Charles Dickens

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”

– Robert Frost

Your own words are the bricks and mortar
of the dreams you want to realize.
 The words you choose and their use establish the life you experience.”

– Sonia Croquette

Remember that it’s okay to ask for help when you’re stumped, because sometimes you really can’t be expected to handle everything alone.”

– Martha Beck

You take your life in your own hands, and what happens?
 A terrible thing: no one to blame.”

– Erica Jong

The best reason to start an organization is to create a product or service to make the world a better place.”

– Guy Kawasaki

Anything not worth doing well is not worth doing.”

– Warren Buffett

Whatever you do may seem insignificant, but it is most important that you do it.”

– Gandi

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”

– Henry Miller

Many people prefer to play it safe when it comes to business matters. Are you willing to take risks in the pursuit of entrepreneurial success?”

– Steven Schussler

Don’t follow your dreams. Chase them.”

– Richard Dumb

Whosoever knows how to fight well is not angry. Whosoever knows how to conquer enemies does not fight them.”

– Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

The fixity of a habit is generally in direct proportion to its absurdity.”

– Marcel Proust

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another.”

– Charles Dickens

If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more.
 If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough.”

– Oprah Winfrey

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”

– Mark Twain

If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.”

– Joseph Addison

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Challenge is a dragon with a gift in its mouth. Tame the dragon and the gift is yours.”

– Noela Evans

We are perfectionists. We are hungry to work all the time. We are entertained by every aspect of business and we never want to stop working.”

– Suzy Welch

If it really was a no-brainer to make it on your own in business there’d be millions of no-brained, harebrained individuals quitting their day jobs.”

– Bill Rancic, "The Apprentice"

There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.”

– J. Robert Oppenheimer

Let us seize the day and the opportunity and strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by its disappointments but by its possibilities.”

– W.E.B. Du Bois

Passion makes perfect.”

– Eugene Biro

That which grows fast withers as rapidly; that which grows slowly endures.”

– J.G. Holland, novelist

I always maintained that the greatest obstacle in life isn’t danger, it’s boredom. The battle against it is responsible for most of the events in the world — good or ill.”

– Dr. Evelyn Vogel, Dexter

‎The biggest flaw in our existing theory of capitalism lies in its misrepresentation of human nature.”

– Muhammad Yunus

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

– Charles Darwin

I will pay more for the ability to deal with people than any other ability under the sun.”

– John D. Rockefeller

We are not meant to resolve all contradictions, but to live with them and rise above them.”

– William Blake

Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.”

– E.B. White

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

– T.S. Eliot

Are you willing to help other people succeed even when it’s not a requirement of your job to be of assistance?”

– Steven Schussler

You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing.”

– Maya Angelou

Ripeness is all.”

– William Shakespeare

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.”

– Thomas Carlyle

Sometimes the dreams that come true are the dreams you never even knew you had.”

– Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

I’ve come to confirm that one’s title, even that of president, says little about how well one’s life has been led. No matter how much you’ve done, or how successful you’ve been, there’s always more to do, to learn, and to achieve.”

– Barack Obama

Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!”

– Andrew Carnegie

Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.”

– Albert Einstein

Nobody talks about entrepreneurship as survival, but that’s exactly what nurtures creative thinking.”

– Anita Roddick, founder, The Body Shop

We need to learn to set our course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.”

– General Omar Bradley

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.”

– Marcel Proust

When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.”

– Henry David Thoreau

My goal was to tell the life side of the story. We have become a nation of voyeurs that expect sensationalism, and that offends me.”

– Kathleen Jo Ryan

Entrepreneurs need to search purposefully for the sources of innovation that indicate opportunities for success.”

– Peter F. Drucker

How do you stay resilient? It’s about momentum. Like riding a bicycle. If you stop you fall over. So I keep pedaling.”

– Diane Lane

A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.”

– Bob Dylan

Entrepreneurs willingly assume responsibility for the success or failure of a venture and are answerable for all its facets.”

– Victor Kiam