Author and NY Times Magazine Writer

Ferris Jabr, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, is the author of the bestselling Becoming Earth, which reviewers have described as an “infectiously poetic” “masterwork” that “earns its place alongside the best of today’s essential popular science books.” Ferris has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and Scientific American and has received fellowships and grants from Yale, MIT, UC Berkeley, the Pulitzer Center, and the Whiting Foundation. His work has been anthologized in four editions of The Best American Science and Nature Writing series.

Renowned First-Nations Actor and Musician

Gary Farmer, an actor and musician born on Six Nations land along the Grand River, Ohsweken, Ontario, is widely recognized as a groundbreaking figure in the development of Indigenous media in Canada. The founding Director of Aboriginal Voices Radio Network, he was also the Publisher of Aboriginal Voices Magazine from 1993 to 2003. As an actor Gary has been nominated for three Independent Spirit Awards for Best Supporting Male Actor in: Powwow Highway, Dead Man, and Smoke Signals, and, most recently, he is a regular on two popular television series—Resident Alien and Reservation Dogs.

Professor of Constitutional Law and Global Health Policy
Georgetown University

Michele Bratcher Goodwin, an acclaimed bioethicist, constitutional law scholar, and prolific author, is credited with helping to establish and shape the field of health law. Currently the Linda D. & Timothy J. O’Neill Professor of Constitutional Law and Global Health Policy and the Co-Faculty Director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown, Goodwin’s previous positions include: Chancellor’s Professor at the University of California, Irvine and founding Director of the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy as well as teaching at Harvard’s Law and Medical schools. Dr. Goodwin, who directed the first ABA accredited health law program in the nation and established the first law center focused on race and bioethics, has won slews of prestigious awards for her scholarship, and her writing has appeared in many of the country’s leading academic law reviews. She is the author/editor of six books, including: Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood.

Award-Winning Author and Naturalist

Terry Tempest Williams, one of the most beloved writers to emerge from the red rock country of the Southwestern desert as well as a crucial voice for ecological consciousness and social change, has, in her very full life, testified before Congress on women’s health issues and been a guest at the White House but has also been arrested in civil disobedience actions, camped in the remote regions of Utah and Alaska wildernesses and worked as "a barefoot artist" in Rwanda. Her books include: Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place; An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field;  Desert Quartet; Leap;  Red: Patience and Passion in the Desert; The Open Space of Democracy; Finding Beauty in a Broken World; The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks; and Erosion: Essays of Undoing. Currently writer-in-residence at the Harvard Divinity School, her essays have also appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Orion Magazine and numerous anthologies, and she has received a wide array of prestigious prizes and awards for her writing, environmental and conservation activism, and human rights advocacy.

Farmer, Food Sovereignty Activist and Educator

Leah Penniman, a Black Kreyol farmer, author, mother, and food justice activist who has been tending the soil and organizing for an anti-racist food system for 25 years, currently serves as founding Co-Executive Director of Farm Operations at Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, New York, a Black & Brown-led project that works toward food and land justice. She is the author of: Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land (2018) and Black Earth Wisdom: Soulful Conversations with Black Environmentalists (2023).

Co-Founder
United We Dream

Cristina Jiménez Moreta, who, when she was a teenager, moved to the United States from Ecuador with her family as undocumented immigrants, has become an award-winning community organizer, political strategist, and leading social justice advocate. A co-founder and former Executive Director of United We Dream (UWD), the largest immigrant youth-led network in the country, she is currently a Distinguished Lecturer with the City College of New York’s Colin Powell School and a co-instructor with Leadership for Democracy and Social Justice. A recipient in 2017 of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, as well as of a Four Freedoms Award and a spot on the 2018 TIME 100 Most Influential People List, Cristina has appeared in hundreds of national and local media outlets, and her writing has been published in The New York Times, CNN, USA Today, Huffington Post, and El Diario.

Technology Journalist and Science Fiction Author

Cory Doctorow, a renowned, award-winning science fiction author, activist, and journalist, is the author of dozens of books, most recently, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, (nonfiction); and the novels Picks and Shovels and The Bezzle. His other notable books include the “solar-punk” novels Walkaway and The Lost Cause, and the tech policy books The Internet Con and Chokepoint Capitalism. Cory also: maintains a daily blog at Pluralistic.net; works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation; and is: an AD White Professor at Cornell University; an MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate; a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at Open University; a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science; and a co-founder of the UK Open Rights Group.

Inventor and Co-Founder of the Field of Green Chemistry

John Warner, Ph.D., one of the founders of the field of Green Chemistry who co-authored its defining text “Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice” (with Paul Anastas), is a chemistry inventor and entrepreneur who works to create commercial technologies inspired by nature consistent with the principles of green chemistry. He holds over 350 industrial chemistry patents, and his inventions have served as the basis for several new companies in photovoltaics, neurochemistry, construction materials, water harvesting, and cosmetics. John, who has received many prestigious awards from within the chemistry industry, government, academia and civil society organizations, has had a distinguished academic career, including as a tenured full-professor at UMASS Boston and Lowell. In 2007 he co-founded (with Amy Cannon) Beyond Benign, a non-profit dedicated to sustainability and green chemistry education. He holds academic appointments at Monash University in Australia, Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, Somaiya University in India, University of Birmingham in the UK, Rochester Institute of Technology in the US, and Technical University of Berlin in Germany where they have named the “John Warner Center for Start Ups in Green Chemistry.” John also currently serves as CEO and CTO of Technology Greenhouse.

Activist, Journalist, and Filmmaker

Raj Patel, an award-winning author, film-maker and academic, is a Research Professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin who has worked for the World Bank and WTO but also protested against them around the world and testified about the causes of the global food crisis to the US, UK and EU governments. A member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems and of the council of Progressive International, he has written extensively for a range of scholarly journals in economics, philosophy, politics and public health and also contributes frequently to a range of other publications, including The Guardian, Financial Times, New York Times, and Scientific American. He is the author of: Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System and The Value of Nothing, and co-author of: A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things and (with Rupa Marya) of: Inflamed: Deep Medicine and The Anatomy of Injustice. His first film, co-directed with Zak Piper, is the award-winning documentary The Ants & The Grasshopper. He also co-hosted the food politics podcast The Secret Ingredient.

Leading Indigenous Rights Advocate and Attorney

Samantha Skenandore, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation who previously served as a Tribal Attorney for the Ho-Chunk Nation’s Department of Justice and clerked for the United States Department of Justice, Indian Resources Section, is a founding partner of Skenandore Wilson LLP with 20+ years’ multi-jurisdictional legal experience working with tribal governments and enterprises to build governmental and economic infrastructures across Indian Country. She works in a wide range of legal domains, including: tribal and corporate governance, business transactions, economic development, real estate, cultural resources, water rights, labor issues, and representing clients before members of Congress, congressional committees and federal agencies. Samantha has also been integral to the Bioneers’ Indigeneity Program, helping develop a toolkit to help frame legal considerations for tribal nations to consider adoption of “Rights of Nature" laws.

Bestselling Author and Journalist

Michael Pollan is a writer, teacher and activist. His most recent book, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness, was published earlier this year. He is the author of nine previous books, including: This is Your Mind on Plants, How to Change Your Mind, Cooked, Food Rules, In Defense of Food, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and The Botany of Desire, all bestsellers. Pollan has taught writing at Harvard and UC Berkeley and has been a Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellow. In 2010 Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.