About Cruz Foam

SOUNDWaves is a climate-focused investment vehicle that partners with leading brands and corporations to pilot and invest in early-stage solutions greening supply chains. SOUNDWaves is dedicated to supporting the next generation of clean, circular, and sustainable businesses and works closely with founders to scale for enterprise contracts. SOUNDWaves is an extension of SOUND Ventures, a venture capital company founded by Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary, and is headquartered in Los Angeles, California.

Leonardo DiCaprio is an Academy Award® award-winning actor (and six-time nominee), who has been recognized for his work as an actor, producer, and activist. DiCaprio has been a longtime champion of global environmental issues including climate change, wildlife conservation, access to clean water, protecting biodiversity, marine conservation, and supporting Indigenous communities. To date, through his philanthropic efforts, DiCaprio has provided more than $100 million in grants to a variety of programs and projects.

In July 2019, in response to a growing climate crisis, DiCaprio, along with businesswoman and philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, co-founded Earth Alliance, an organization created to activate and mobilize a global response to the urgent threats that our planet is facing. Earth Alliance builds upon DiCaprio’s lifelong commitment to environmental causes, coordinating the power and commitments of organizations and people around the planet to galvanize action. Earth Alliance has launched critical funding initiatives including the Amazon Forest Fund to help aid the fires in the Brazilian rainforest, the Australia Wildfire Fund in response to catastrophic fires burning in the region, as well as the Virunga Fund in support of Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, DiCaprio helped launch America’s Food Fund alongside Laurene Powell Jobs, Apple, Ford Foundation and Oprah Winfrey, which has since raised nearly $45 million for hunger-relief organizations including Feeding America and World Central Kitchen.

In September 2014, DiCaprio was designated as a United Nations Messenger of Peace for his longstanding commitment to environmental activism. That same month, DiCaprio was honored with the Clinton Global Citizen Award, participated in history’s largest climate march in New York City, and addressed the UN Summit. DiCaprio also serves on the boards of Natural Resources Defense Council, and International Fund for Animal Welfare.
In January 2016, DiCaprio was awarded a Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum for his work bringing global attention to the urgent need to address climate change.

DiCaprio was seen most recently in Adam Mckay's DON'T LOOK UP. He was also in Quentin Tarantino’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Prior to that he starred in The Revenant, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, he received the Academy Award (2016) for Best Actor in a Leading Role, as well as the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role, and the Critics’ Choice Awards for Best Actor.

Scientist, entrepreneur, specializing in the earliest stages of ideation to commercialization of hard technologies. I am passionate about the health of the planet, people, and ecosystems. My mission is to yield a positive impact on society and the environment.

Chuck created the award winning Ray Ban "Never Hide" global campaign, propelling the brand to #1 in the world. He helped lead the Jeep "Have fun out there" campaign that tied seven vehicles together under one purpose, FUN. Other notable cutwaters include "Speak Visual" for Nvidia and "Gone Google" for Google apps.

Before leading Cutwater, Chuck McBride was the Creative Director of North America for TBWA Chiat/Day. He worked with Lee Clow to winning new business pitches on Sprint, Mars, and Adidas; securing talent for NY, SF, TO, VC, and LA offices; headed the San Francisco's office with Adidas and the Levi's Account. TBWA Chiat/Day San Francisco became one of the Top Ten most Awarded Agencies. TBWA Chiat/Day took Global Agency of the Year honors.

Adidas landed Client of the year at Cannes. He also worked on award winning campaigns for Levi's, Fox Sports, Game Show Network, Sony PlayStation, Taylormade, Uncle Ben's, Leica, Ask.com, +.

Prior to C/D, Chuck was at W&K where he was co-creative director on Nike, Jordan and Golf. Chuck's work on Tiger Woods, Cross Training, Brand Jordan, and the Relaunch of Just Do It, helped re-secure all of Nikes' business at W&K in 2000. Nike received Client of the Year at Cannes.

Prior to that, Chuck worked as a creative director at FCB on Levi's, winning AdAge Agency of the Year. He was a lead writer at GS&P on the Got Milk? campaign and Isuzu trucks. At Team One, he worked on Lexus

An ex-pro surfer and 40-year veteran of the action sports industry, Mark held various C-Suite positions over the course of his career, including VP of Marketing and International at Gotcha Sportswear in the 1980's, as well as executive positions at RipCurl and Reef before co-founding Firewire in 2006.

Working alongside a passionate team around the world, Price helped guide Firewire to its present-day market position as one of the premier, high-performance surfboard brands, operating a vertical supply chain and doing business in over 35 countries around the world.

Having recently passed over the CEO reins at Firewire, Mark now resides back in South Africa, and consults with a small group of likeminded companies and individuals

Michelle has over 25 years of experience in government relations, public policy, advocacy, and project management. Her career as Director of Advocacy and Institutional Relations, in the Office of Government Relations at UC Berkeley, is at the nexus of advancing scientific research, new technologies, and public policies that improve society. She joined Cruz Foam as Government Relations Advisor in 2019.

At UC Berkeley Michelle facilitates engagement among world-renowned scientists, subject-matter experts, state and federal policy-makers, and industry leaders, in areas including green chemistry, synthetic biology, advanced biofuels, energy efficient buildings, and unmanned aerial systems. Michelle has successfully garnered support for societal-scale scientific solutions and introduced them to government officials and third party advocates.

Michelle’s professional networks span California, the United States and the world. Her successful outcomes are based upon her strategic relationships and building coalitions with business, national labs, higher education associations, and government entities. She now also brings her expertise to the area of sustainable packaging and the compostable polystyrene replacement, developed by Cruz Foam. Michelle is passionate about fostering new public policy pathways to advance the circular economy, particularly related to protective packaging, waste management, and sustainability. She is interested in facilitating a transition to green manufacturing jobs, and re-imagining waste management systems to enable the disposal of sustainable packaging, with a post-consumer-life market value.

Dan Hutchins is a Lawyer at Cooley LLP who practices general corporate and securities law, with an emphasis on the representation of emerging companies, public companies and venture capital funds.

Prior to joining the corporate practice group at Cooley, Dan worked as a patent attorney at a boutique IP law firm where he drafted and prosecuted patents in the electrical, software, mechanical, chemical, and medical device spaces. Dan also counseled clients on patent portfolio development and management; prepared invalidity, non-infringement, and infringement opinion letters; and evaluated patent portfolios for acquisition.

​Versatile executive with more than 20 years strategic business experience developing and implementing HR and Operations organizations from small, start up stage companies and large, high-growth public companies. Demonstrated ability to optimize alignment with key organizational goals with Human Resources talent. Strong track record of building collaborative relationships with executive peers, clients, business partners, employees, shareholders and board members. Skilled in identifying opportunities to enhance bottom lines by implementing systems, programs and processes to create efficiencies that have resulted in $1M+ cost savings including architecting an award winning internet based HRIS. I am a hands-on manager who works hard and works smart and is fun, energetic and well respected. Proven track record of achieving results on time, on budget and with team collaboration by communicating openly and honestly.