PBN Leaders & Achievers 2024 Awards
Peter Carson | Earth House | Founder, impact investor and strategic brander
FOR MUCH OF HIS ADULT LIFE, Peter Carson, the founder of Jamestown-based strategic branding company Earth House, has taken the path less chosen. He didn’t graduate college, and never took the traditional 9-5 job.
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Instead, Carson has created a life built around the environment, art, entrepreneurship and helping others.
Carson’s work at Earth House builds on the work he did in south San Francisco all those years ago when he was trained as a community organizer in one of the city’s poorest sections. After working in that role, Carson moved back East, joining a national environmental organization focusing on local and statewide coalition campaigns on clean water protections and toxic chemicals. Carson has also created a strategic branding training program for startups that he’s offering for free.
Carson also started a small company on the side doing medical billing for friends that were social workers. He eventually turned CompuClaim into a valuable business that he sold to private equity group Lock 8 Partners.
“I always felt like I let my parents down by not being an artist. But I found much later that I actually did step into being an artist. I was a different kind of artist,” Carson said. “I see business as an art form.”
Carson said he completed a circle of sorts when he started a painting practice. He says he does it because it connects him back to his parents and “the upbringing I received from them.”
After selling CompuClaim in 2021 and studying strategic branding, Carson began mentoring and investing in impact startups through green and blue ocean incubators and impact investment groups, including Sea Ahead in Boston and E8 in Seattle, and founding Earth House.
Now, Carson oversees a company he founded two years ago that, according to Earth House’s website, combines Carson’s career trajectory as an environmental advocate and angel investor reflecting his dedication to environmental sustainability and entrepreneurship.
One career lesson that Carson said he learned is the need to be willing to act, even if there’s some risk.
“Risk and failure are where creation happens,” he said. “I also realized from the experience of running a business that business is just another art form.”
