Just using the power of media and this platform to shed light on issues that I think we all care about, and there’s something that we could all do to just think differently about issues like poverty and hunger and environmental decay. There are solutions and so we hope to showcase and to highlight the solutions and inspire people to go out and be the change, to be the solution. There’s plenty that each and every one of us could do; it’s just do something.

Hallo, warm-hearted viewers, and welcome to today’s Good People, Good Works featuring Bianca and Michael Alexander of the United States, co-founders of Conscious Planet Media, a socially aware media company which produces Conscious Living TV and Soul of Green TV.

These web-based television programs encourage viewers to pursue mindful, eco-friendly lifestyles. Now in its fifth season, Conscious Living TV features upbeat shows on green travel, eco-fashion, spirituality and other topics. Soul of Green TV highlights the urban sustainability movement including issues such as social justice, economic empowerment, and reducing one’s carbon footprint.

In addition to these shows, Conscious Planet Media provides media coverage of green lifestyle events and does marketing for eco-friendly companies. Let's now visit Bianca and Michael in Chicago, Illinois, USA to learn how these enterprises evolved.

We’re a media company so we produce original television programming, original documentaries, business documentaries and events for social change. So, specifically, we look at the areas of sustainability, we look at economic empowerment and social justice. We look at the area of health and then peace and non-violence. So that’s essentially what we’re here to do, is to raise the consciousness of the planet and do so through media.

Bianca Alexander hosts shows, conducts interviews and narrates documentaries. However, she was not always involved in television. In fact, she began her career as a lawyer.

Well one of the reasons that I became a lawyer was to help people, to really make the world a better place. My legal training really gave me the framework that I needed to be an advocate for things that I’m passionate about.

And I realized many years ago when I got on this green path that I’m a very educated person. I graduated from Princeton University (USA), the University of Virginia Law School (USA). I spent all this time and money becoming a learned person but I didn’t know much about the environment.

I didn’t know much about how to take care of my body. I didn’t know much about how my diet can impact people living on the other side of the world, and so I felt it was a great opportunity to use my legal background, to use my skills as a communicator, as an advocate and as a leader to hope to inspire people to live more conscious, more healthy lives.

I was basically an entertainment attorney at a big movie studio in Hollywood (USA). I met some amazing people who had opportunities to get me in front of the camera and so I was able to develop as an entertainment reporter interviewing celebrities like Halle Berry and Samuel Jackson and all the A-list names that you could think of, which was fun. It was exciting.

It gave me a sense of how to find my presence on camera, how to hold the microphone, how to interview people, and how to interact. And so from there I went on to host shows; everything from TV One to Lifetime, to USA, to FOX.

Although Bianca's career as a TV host was exciting, she gradually began to feel that the work was inconsistent with her personal values.

And I did a lot of makeover shows back in the early 2000’s when the makeover genre was a huge hit. They were very inspirational, the gigs I had but unfortunately many of the shows were underwritten by big companies that basically manufacture all these products that are polluting our planet, and I got to the point where I felt like my talents could be better used in helping to inspire people.

Michael plays many roles in the couple’s media enterprises, doing everything from marketing, to filming, to video editing. He now shares how his work has evolved.

My background is business development. I’ve been an entrepreneur my whole life for the last sixteen years, and so I was running a consulting company. And when we were in Sedona, Arizona, I was wondering what I was going to do with my life and one of the things that we talked about was I could use my skills as a salesperson, as a sales trainer, to really support Bianca in getting on-air as a conscious living-expert and as an advocate.

So that’s how I got into it. So I began getting her on various networks, various ABC, NBC affiliates across the country as a conscious living expert and next thing I knew we were filming stuff and next thing I knew I was learning editing.

When we return, we’ll learn more about the Alexanders and how they’re seeking to use their media company to uplift and transform the world. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back to Good People, Good Works, as we continue our interview with Bianca and Michael Alexander, founders of the informative online shows Conscious Living TV and Soul of Green TV, which are inspiring viewers to pursue eco-friendly lifestyles. Bianca and Michael now describe how they came up with the idea for the programs.

I grew up in San Francisco so I’ve been an environmentalist since maybe I was eight years old. When I was sixteen years old I saw “Medicine Man,” which is a movie with Sean Connery and ended up buying some rainforest. And when I graduated from college my first business was distributing eco-friendly products and so I’ve always had a passion for it. And when we first connected she did not.

I didn’t have a clue (about environmentalism).

She’s brilliant and once she really got it and understood it, we really felt that there was a major piece of the world and a major piece certainly in the US of mainstream people that weren’t really connected to it.

It was really missing a good piece of the population so we really felt like Bianca’s story and her experience in going from not really understanding it to being an advocate for it was a great way to go out and talk to mainstream people and really make a difference in the mainstream environment.

For Bianca, her journey to a greener lifestyle began with doing the laundry. She was very surprised when Michael informed her that the detergent she was using was destroying the aquatic environment.

I hadn’t made the connection to the role that I can play to make the world a better place and so that was really for me the bridge articulating the importance of just the tiniest little thing that you can do, that each one of us can do.

Some of Bianca and Michael’s shows inform viewers about how to select eco-friendly products when shopping.

The first segment that I did, was “Healthy Alternatives to Your Favorite Personal Care Products.” So just meeting people where they’re at. Guess what? We’re all human beings. We’re all going to eat, get up, brush our teeth, take a shower, comb our hair, use shampoo, basic things.

You’re going to put clothes on and rather than speaking to people in these big, theoretical concepts we meet them where they’re at and so I think because of, my own journey in just really being someone that knew nothing about this and didn’t care about it to a person who can say, “Okay, this is something that can actually make me a healthier person. This is something that can actually make me feel like I’m doing something positive just by making a more conscious choice with the product that I put on my body, by making a more conscious choice about the product I put in my washing machine.”

And so I think people really resonated with those and that’s really where it started. The episodes that we produce on our shows came from there and really just meeting people where they’re at and the choices that they make in their everyday lives.

One of the recent events produced by Conscious Planet Media was Verte Couture, Chicago's first ever all eco-fashion show and green lifestyle event. The gala evening, which included an organic vegan buffet, featured delightful and colorful fashion designs made from eco-friendly or recycled materials, all of which were free from animal products. One of the featured designers was Leanne Hilgart, who has created a vegan line of clothing called “Vaute Couture.”

Well, I have two sections of pieces that will be shown tonight. The main line is the outer wear line, some beautiful dress coats for Chicago winter that are also vegan and eco-conscious. To know that you can live conscientiously without sacrifice, being vegan in particular is not about what you can’t have but it’s about empowering yourself in all the everyday choices you make, and making a difference in those little choices and how they add up, that’s what I want people to think about.

What’s the key to the amazing success of the Conscious Living and Soul of Green shows?

The whole format of our shows and our approach and how we present is really about inspiring, making it fun, making it accessible and entertaining and easy. Because nobody wants to think of one other depressing piece of news including the danger our planet’s in.

It’s kind of a scary thing. I know myself personally, I tend to feel a little paralyzed like, “Oh God, what can I do?” But I need to find a way to make it fun and make it interesting and entertaining and that’s really what I think people resonate the most with.

What’s the single most eco-friendly change Bianca and Michael Alexander have made in their own lives? Find out next Sunday on Good People, Good Works featuring the concluding episode of our interview with the enthusiastic co-founders of Conscious Planet Media.

For more details on Conscious Planet Media and its television programs, please visit:
www.ConsciousPlanetMedia.com
www.ConsciousLivingTV.com
www.SoulOfGreen.com

Blessed viewers, thank you for watching today’s program. The World Around Us is next after Noteworthy News. May Providence bless your life with health, wisdom and abundance.

In his thoughtful book, “In Defense of Dolphins: The New Moral Frontier,” Dr. Thomas White, director of the Center for Ethics and Business at Loyola Marymount University, USA calls for regarding dolphins as “non-human persons.”

Among philosophers, to be a person, no matter what the species, is to have traits that we’ve always said are unique to humans alone: self awareness, a sense of time, a sense of personality, emotions, individuality, uniqueness, higher order intellectual abilities and the like.

Find out more about Dr. White’s philosophical perspective, Thursday, April 15 on Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants.