Our Founder: Craig Whittaker
(1959-2014)
Craig Whittaker was the founder and President of Environmental Solutions Group. His experience included 16 years in the environmental health and safety field. He performed over 1400 property assessments, developed several hundred remedial plans for medical, commercial and residential buildings, participated in research projects for HUD and the EPA, and provided expert witness testimony. Dr. Whittaker authored numerous articles and technical papers and has presented these at national conferences. He was a member of the ASTM committee that developed standard protocols for arsenic sample collection and was a member of the committee that is developing fungal sampling protocols for residential properties.
Dr. Whittaker earned undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees, and studied environmental law at UNC-Chapel Hill. He served as a professor at three universities prior to founding ESG.
Dr. Whittaker had a strong interest in educating property owners about controlling moisture, prevention of environmental contamination, the health effects of indoor contaminants, and becoming climate neutral. He was committed to assisting those who suffer from indoor environmental illness related to poor indoor air quality. Dr. Whittaker was a Council-certified Indoor Environmentalist (#0608030), certified Healthy Homes Specialist (#9004391) and Certified Mycometer-test user and interpreter.
In 2014, Craig was one of six people to receive a Healthy Homes Hero Award from the Advancing Safe and Healthy Homes for Children and Families Initiative (ASHHI), a national program sponsored by the Kresge Foundation. Read more about the award here.
In addition to education and indoor air quality, Craig was passionate about music. He performed with some of the greatest jazz entertainers of our time, including Tony Bennett, Joe Williams, and Louie Bellson. He served as professor of saxophone and coordinator of jazz studies at UNCG for fifteen years, where he founded the Miles Davis Program in Jazz Studies. For many years, Craig was musical director of the USAir Jazz Orchestra, guiding the big band through over 100 performances in the U.S. and Europe. Craig made several recordings in both jazz and classical styles, composed numerous works for small jazz ensembles, and co-authored a woodwind text that is widely used in university music programs.