Quinton Zondervan is the Policy Director at Run On Climate, co-owner of RadiQal Farms, and served three terms as a City Councillor in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He currently lives in Princeton, New Jersey. Quinton came to the United States as an immigrant from Suriname, in South America, as a teenager in 1985. While a freshman at Eckerd College, he learned about the climate crisis, and became a lifelong environmentalist and climate activist. After completing his bachelors in Mathematics and Computer Science at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to further his studies in Computer Science at MIT. In 2017 he was elected to the Cambridge City Council as a Democratic Socialist, and served until the end of 2023. Quinton and Radhika are parents to two adult children and one grandson.

Climate Activist

Quinton served on the Climate Protection Action Committee (now Climate Committee) in Cambridge from 2008 through 2017, including as Chair from 2012 through 2014. The Climate Committee is a City Manager appointed advisory committee of stakeholders advising the city on climate change action, including mitigation and adaptation responses.

Quinton co-founded the Climate Action Business Association, Inc. (CABA) in 2013, a 501(c)6 non-profit association of local businesses, based in Boston, and served as President and board chair for the first 5 years. CABA helps its member businesses be more sustainable, be more effective policy advocates to combat climate change, and be more active community members in our collective response to climate change. In 2018 CABA merged with Climate XChange, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization supporting climate policy activists at the state level. Quinton currently serves as President and board chair of Climate XChange again since January 2024.

After reviving the organization in 2011, Quinton served as President and board chair of Green Cambridge, Inc. a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation dedicated to improving the environment and enhancing Cambridge's sustainability, through 2017, and continued serving as a fiduciary board member until 2024. He was one of the leaders behind the Net Zero buildings emissions zoning petition in Cambridge in 2013, and served on the subsequent City Manager appointed year-long Getting to Net Zero Task Force (2014-2015) which produced a 25 year action plan, unanimously adopted by the City Council in 2015, for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from buildings in the city to zero as quickly as possible.

Quinton served for 5 years (2014-2019) as board member of Better Future Project, Inc. a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation dedicated to a future free of fossil fuels and climate change, and the sponsor organization for the volunteer lead 350 Massachusetts network. He also served as an active volunteer and founding member of the 350 Mass Cambridge-Somerville Node.

Quinton is an active board member and co-founder of MIT Alumni for Climate Action (MACA), an organization of MIT alumni concerned about climate change, urging MIT and the world to take more action and to demonstrate leadership on the issue.

Entrepreneur

Quinton is a Software Engineer and entrepreneur, and has worked at AT&T Bell Labs and IBM (Lotus), was the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at internet start-up company Clickmarks, Inc. and was the founding CEO at therapeutics focused biotech Excelimmune, Inc. for 7 years (2006 – 2012 inclusive). He has worked as a software consultant and technical advisor at big companies like eBay, and at smaller AI startups Nivi and Jaxon. He served as the founding CTO at eCare Vault, Inc., a secure medical information sharing and care coordination software startup he helped found in 2015.

In 2015 Quinton helped found and started serving on the board of Potluck Energy, now Gridline.ai, a Delaware benefit corporation and pioneering greentech startup that created the first community solar project serving Cambridge and Somerville in 2017.

Education

Quinton holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT (1995) and two bachelor’s degrees in the fields of mathematics and computer science from Eckerd College (1992) in St. Petersburg, Florida, and serves on the board of trustees at Eckerd since 2013.

Ethnicity

Quinton is originally from Suriname, and identifies as Afro-Caribbean, with genetically diverse ancestry from South America, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. He grew up experiencing the abundant Amazonian rainforest that covers the country, informing his environmental ethos.