Author

Kami McBride’s 30 years of teaching herbal medicine is steeped in her calling to activate a deep connection with the earth in our culture and to inspire the next generation to love and care for plants. Kami has taught herbal medicine at UCSF School of Nursing and has helped thousands of families learn to use herbs for self-care. She is the author of The Herbal Kitchen.

Founder | Flourish.ink

Christiana Musk, whose background spans environmental and social entrepreneurship (including as a founding partner of Green Mountain Energy) and non-profit and foundation leadership, currently curates the Flourish content for the Near Future Summit and advises several food initiatives. An operating partner at Satori Capital, a sustainable investment firm, she was formerly Executive Director of Food Choice Taskforce and led the food system program for Avatar Alliance Foundation. (flourish.ink)

CEO and Founder | Bioneers

Kenny Ausubel, CEO and founder (in 1990) of Bioneers, is an award-winning social entrepreneur, journalist, author and filmmaker. Co-founder and first CEO of the organic seed company, Seeds of Change, his film (and companion book) Hoxsey: When Healing Becomes a Crime helped influence national alternative medicine policy. He has edited several books and written four, including, most recently, Dreaming the Future: Reimagining Civilization in the Age of Nature.

Founder | 350.org

Bill McKibben, our nation’s most significant environmental activist, is also a leading journalist, author and academic. A Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College, Bill’s The End of Nature (1989) was the first book for a general audience about climate change. A founder of 350.org, the first planet-wide, grassroots climate change movement, he has won slews of prestigious awards, including the Right Livelihood Award and the Gandhi Prize and Thomas Merton prizes.

CEO and Founder | Bioneers

Kenny Ausubel, CEO and founder (in 1990) of Bioneers, is an award-winning social entrepreneur, journalist, author and filmmaker. Co-founder and first CEO of the organic seed company, Seeds of Change, his film (and companion book) Hoxsey: When Healing Becomes a Crime helped influence national alternative medicine policy. He has edited several books and written four, including, most recently, Dreaming the Future: Reimagining Civilization in the Age of Nature.

Founder | Project Drawdown

Paul Hawken, one of the most important environmental authors, activists, thinkers and entrepreneurs of our era, has dedicated his life to sustainability and changing the relationship between business and the environment. His many bestselling books include such massively influential texts as: The Next Economy; The Ecology of Commerce; Blessed Unrest; and most recently, Drawdown, The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming.

Founder | Project Drawdown

Paul Hawken, one of the most important environmental authors, activists, thinkers and entrepreneurs of our era, has dedicated his life to sustainability and changing the relationship between business and the environment. His many bestselling books include such massively influential texts as: The Next Economy; The Ecology of Commerce; Blessed Unrest; and most recently, Drawdown, The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming.

Co-Author & Strategic Advisor | The Global Deal for Nature

Carly Vynne, Ph.D, is an ecologist and conservation strategist who seeks out creative solutions for how we can leave more room for nature in a rapidly changing world. She recently co-authored The Global Deal for Nature, which calls for an ambitious, time-bound set of nature-based targets that must be achieved if we are to solve the climate and extinction crises. Vynne is also the founder and principal consultant at Osprey Insights.

Director of Global Strategy | Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative

Atossa Soltani is the founder and board president of Amazon Watch and served as the organization's first Executive Director for 18 years. Currently Atossa is the director of global strategy for the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative, working to protect one of the most biodiverse rainforests on Earth in an alliance with Amazonian indigenous nations of Ecuador and Peru.

Director, Research & Development | Environmental Defense Fund

Rod Fujita, a marine ecologist and highly effective ocean conservationist, has studied ocean ecosystems all over the world and worked to protect them for 30+ years. He has helped protect over 10,000 square miles of ocean habitat, created a novel financing system for sustainability, and developed innovative analytical and conservation tools for improving the wellbeing of the ocean and the humans that depend on it.

Indigenous Climate Action | Executive Director and Co-Founder

Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, a Denesuline Indigenous activist, member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN) of Alberta, Canada, is Executive Director and co-founder of Indigenous Climate Action (ICA), Canada’s premier Indigenous-led climate justice organization. Deranger, who previously spent 6 years building-up the highly successful international Indigenous Tar Sands campaign, has become widely known as one of the world’s most effective organizers and coalition builders to defend Indigenous people’s rights locally, nationally and globally.

Executive Director | Amazon Watch

Leila Salazar-López, the Executive Director of Amazon Watch, has worked for 20+ years to defend the world’s rainforests, human rights, and the climate through grassroots organizing and international advocacy campaigns at Amazon Watch, Rainforest Action Network, Global Exchange, and Green Corps. She is also a Greenpeace Voting Member and a Global Fund for Women Advisor for Latin America.

Executive Director | Amazon Watch

Leila Salazar-López, the Executive Director of Amazon Watch, has worked for 20+ years to defend the world’s rainforests, human rights, and the climate through grassroots organizing and international advocacy campaigns at Amazon Watch, Rainforest Action Network, Global Exchange, and Green Corps. She is also a Greenpeace Voting Member and a Global Fund for Women Advisor for Latin America.

Artist

Brus Rubio, of Huitoto and Bora ancestry, is a self-taught painter from the Peruvian Amazon, whose encounter with the anthropologist Jürg Gasché, who was conducting cultural studies in Brus’ community, led to exposure to a wider world and his evolution as an artist whose stunning work always draws from his cultural traditions but has now been able to reach a broader international audience beyond the Amazon.

Director of Global Strategy | Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative

Atossa Soltani is the founder and board president of Amazon Watch and served as the organization's first Executive Director for 18 years. Currently Atossa is the director of global strategy for the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative, working to protect one of the most biodiverse rainforests on Earth in an alliance with Amazonian indigenous nations of Ecuador and Peru.

Co-Founder | Brasil Solidarity Network

Wildlife Field Biologist

Anne Laudisoit is a Belgian explorer, wildlife field biologist and disease ecologist specializing in tracking emerging and neglected vector-borne zoonotic diseases in a wide range of ecological and social contexts from Tanzania, Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to Kazakhstan. Since 2015, in partnership with local researchers and villagers, she has been exploring and helping develop conservation plans for previously unstudied, remote, often war-torn regions of DRC’s Ituri province.

Program Director | Coral Reef Alliance

Madhavi Colton, Ph.D., a marine ecologist who has worked around the world, is Program Director of the Coral Reef Alliance, where she oversees an international portfolio of community-driven conservation programs to address threats to reefs and spearheads new scientific research into how ecosystems adapt to climate change. Her main current focus is to build partnerships between academic researchers, non-profit organizations, governments, and local communities to implement durable conservation solutions.

Co-Author & Strategic Advisor | The Global Deal for Nature

Carly Vynne, Ph.D, is an ecologist and conservation strategist who seeks out creative solutions for how we can leave more room for nature in a rapidly changing world. She recently co-authored The Global Deal for Nature, which calls for an ambitious, time-bound set of nature-based targets that must be achieved if we are to solve the climate and extinction crises. Vynne is also the founder and principal consultant at Osprey Insights.

Spokesperson | Confederated Villages of Lisjan/Ohlone

Corrina Gould, born and raised in Oakland, CA (territory of Huichuin), is the spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan/Ohlone. An activist who has worked to preserve and protect the ancient burial sites of her ancestors in the Bay Area for decades, she also co-founded Indian People Organizing for Change and the Sogorea Te Land Trust, an urban Indigenous women’s community organization.

Renowned Teacher

Pandora Thomas, a leading figure in the application of ecological principles to social design with 25+ years’ experience, currently combines being a caregiver for her mother with her work as a renowned teacher, writer, designer, speaker, and facilitator at several permaculture and ecological design schools and programs nationally and internationally.

Xicana Storyteller

Niria Alicia, born in Oregon to a migrant farm-worker family, is a multi-lingual Xicana storyteller, author, educator, poet, and community organizer. With an academic background in environmental and Latin American studies and non-profit administration, Nira has traveled, studied and worked on social justice projects throughout the Americas and beyond, including with Earthjustice, Our Children’s Trust, the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, Honor the Earth, and Greenaction.

Director | Occidental Arts & Ecology Center’s Permaculture Program

Kendall Dunnigan, Director of the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center’s Permaculture Program (whose purpose is to resist the destructive extractive, enclosure economy so communities can retain collective sovereignty, biological and cultural diversity, and regenerative livelihoods), facilitates multi-generational eco-cultural design processes with economically and environmentally marginalized communities in the U.S., Latin America, and Africa.

Co-Director | Women's Earth Alliance’s

Amira Diamond, Co-Director (with Melinda Kramer) of Women's Earth Alliance’s since 2007, has worked to expand WEA’s programs, build the WEA team and create a community of support for its work. Active within the NGO community for over 25 years, she has worked for community health, environmental and food justice, LGBTQ and women’s rights, directing organizations such as Julia Butterfly Hill’s Circle of Life and Democracy Matters.

Founder and Executive Director | Women’s Earth Alliance

Melinda Kramer, founder/Executive Director of the Women’s Earth Alliance, which has equipped thousands of women with technical, entrepreneurial, and leadership skills to work on safe water, energy access, regenerative farming, land rights, and climate protection initiatives around the world, is a passionate advocate for social, environmental and gender justice who has lived and worked around the world.

Head of Curriculum & Director of Indonesia Programs | Women’s Earth Alliance

Sarita Pockell, Head of Curriculum & Director of Indonesia Programs at the Women’s Earth Alliance, is an education-for-sustainability specialist (as well as a musician, playwright, theater director, backyard farmer, mother, diversity/inclusion facilitator with the ADL, garden educator with West County Digs, and on the advisory board of the Urban REAL School). Previously at the Green School in Bali, Sarita has also worked in Mexico, Peru, Argentina, and Croatia.

Program Director | Women’s Earth Alliance

Arielle Moinester, Program Director of Women’s Earth Alliance, is an international agricultural development professional and entrepreneur who has worked extensively in Africa and Asia with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and is currently CRS’ Regional Technical Advisor for Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia. Arielle also co-founded Hands of Mothers, an NGO building women’s micro-enterprises globally and is co-owner of the raw juice company Earthjuice.