Ted Nace (born 1956) is an American writer, publisher, and environmentalist, known for his criticisms of corporate personhood and his support of a fossil fuel phase out. In 2009, he was described as "one of the amazing brains and strategists behind the anti-coal movement." He is the founder and Executive Director of Global Energy Monitor. Early life Ted Nace was born in California and grew up in Dickinson, North Dakota. In 1974, he graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. He received his B.A. from Stanford University, and attended graduate school at University of California Berkeley. Early career In the 1970s, Nace worked for the Environmental Defense Fund and analyzed how to replace coal–fired power plants with alternative energy programs through computer simulations. He spent several years working in North Dakota at the Dakota Resource Council, a citizens' group concerned about the impacts of energy development on agriculture and rural communities. Computer publishing In the 1980s, Nace began working as an editor for the computer magazine PC World and as a columnist for Publish! and Computer Currents magazine. In 1985, he founded Peachpit Press with Michael Gardner, initially working out of his apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area. He wrote numerous how–to books on computer–related subjects. At the time, Elaine Weinmann, the computer writer, described his publishing approach as user-friendly and innovative. As the company grew in size and sales, it published books about Mac computers and became a leader in books about digital graphics, with a MacBible series, Real World series, and Visual QuickStart (VQS) series. Peachpit published most of the popular manuals of style by writer Robin Williams, such as The Mac is Not a Typewriter and the Little Mac Book. In 1994, Nace sold Peachpit to Pearson plc and he left the company in 1996. Writing In the 1980s, Nace began writing freelance essays, including regular contributions to Orion Magazine. After he left Peachpit, his work increasingly focused on the relation between corporations and democracy in America. He reflected on his own career as a business owner: Gangs of America His book Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy (2003) argued that corporations have deleterious effects on society and the economy. According to Nace, the specious character of corporation's quasi-legal enablements undermine American democracy. He used about his own experiences watching a coal mine develop in North Dakota to explain