Maria Rodale is Chairman of the Board of Rodale Inc., the world's leading publisher of information on healthy, active lifestyles. After beginning her career in a Washington, D.C public relations firm, she joined her family's business in 1987. Since joining the board in 1991, she has helped build an international multimedia company from the small publishing business that her late grandfather J. I. Rodale founded in 1930.

Today, with a mission to inspire and enable people to improve their lives and the world around them, Rodale Inc. reaches tens of millions of people worldwide every month through its well-known magazines including Prevention, Men's Health, Women's Health, and a wide range of books in the categories of health, fitness, gardening, environmental issues, sports, narrative nonfiction, biography, memoir, parenting, inspiration, and home arts.

Ms. Rodale is also the author of four books: It's My Pleasure, co-written with her daughter, Maya Rodale, Maria Rodale's Organic Gardening, Maria Rodale's Organic Gardening Companion, Betty's Book of Laundry Secrets. Co-recipient of the prestigious Women in Periodical Publishing's "Exceptional Woman in Publishing" award in 2004, Ms. Rodale was also honored with Audubon's Rachel Carson Award. The following year in 2005, she received the "Special Citizen" award from Arts for Healing and the Children's Health Environmental Coalition (CHEC) at its annual One World, One Child. Ms. Rodale is also a board member of the New York Restoration Project.

For more information:

• National Geographic Article
• The Rodale Institute
• Rodale Publishing Chair Biography