Mr.  Kauffmann is founder CEO of Original Beans, a chocolate and conservation company described by Business Week as ‘making the world better through chocolate’. Philipp follows the motto of his forefather, Georg Ludwig Hartig, who helped to coin the term ‘sustainability’ when in 1791 he wrote that “any wise forest management must use the forest in such a way that generations thereafter can draw at least as much advantage from it as the presently living generation has".   

  In the 1990ties, Philipp founded one of the first independent telecom companies in the Benelux and Nabuur.com, an Internet portal for volunteers in development. As conservationist, he has worked for WWF on eco-regional conservation and has managed an investment portfolio of biodiversity companies at UNDP in New York. He has concrete reforestation experience as initiator of the world's first saltwater forest in the deserted delta of the Colorado River.