Co-Founder
The Biomimicry Institute

Janine Benyus, a winner of countless prestigious awards, world-renowned biologist, thought leader, innovation consultant and author of six books, including 1997’s foundational text, Innovation Inspired by Nature, is widely considered the “godmother of Biomimicry.” In 1998, she co-founded the Biomimicry Guild, which morphed into Biomimicry 3.8, a B-Corp social enterprise providing biomimicry consulting services to a slew of major firms and institutions. In 2006, Janine co-founded The Biomimicry Institute, a non-profit institute to embed biomimicry in formal education, and over 11,000 members are now part of the Biomimicry Global Network. Among various other roles, Janine serves on the board of the U.S. Green Building Council, the advisory board for the Ray C. Anderson Foundation, the advisory board for Project Drawdown and as an affiliate faculty member at The Biomimicry Center at Arizona State University.

Author and Filmmaker

Julian Brave NoiseCat, a member of the Canim Lake Band Tsq'escen, a multi-faceted thought leader who has been an award-winning journalist and political and cultural strategist and organizer, is a writer and filmmaker whose first documentary, Sugarcane, directed alongside Emily Kassie, premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and won the Directing Award in the U.S. Documentary Competition (and will be screened at Bioneers). NoiseCat is currently finishing his first book, We Survived the Night, due out in 2025.

Executive Producer
America Outdoors

Baratunde Thurston, a writer, communicator and Emmy-nominated host and Executive Producer of the PBS TV series America Outdoors, and creator and host of the How To Citizen podcast, is also a founding partner and writer at Puck. His newest creation is Life With Machines, a YouTube podcast focusing on the human side of the A.I. revolution. Author of the bestselling comedic memoir, How To Be Black, Baratunde also serves on the boards of Civics Unplugged and the Brooklyn Public Library and lives in Southern California. (baratunde.com)

U.S. Poet Laureate

Joy Harjo, the 23rd U.S. Poet Laureate and member of the Muscogee Nation, is the author of ten books of poetry, several plays, children’s books, two memoirs, and seven music albums. Her honors include Yale’s 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the Ruth Lily Prize from the Poetry Foundation, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Tulsa Artist Fellowship. She is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and Chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, and is the inaugural Artist-in-Residence for the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she lives.

Executive Director
Urban Tilth

Doria Robinson, a 3rd generation resident of Richmond, California, current member of the Richmond City Council (District 3), and one of the most effective, exemplary community organizers in the nation, has been, since 2007, the Executive Director of Urban Tilth, a widely renowned community-based organization dedicated to cultivating a more sustainable, healthy, and just food system. Also co-founder of the Richmond Food Policy Council, former co-chair of the US Food Sovereignty Alliance Western Region, and member of the Climate Justice Alliance, Food Sovereignty Working Group, Doria (a Certified Permaculture Designer, Bay Friendly Gardener, Nutrition Educator and Yoga Instructor) has a strong background in farming, from working on the 350-acre Apostolic Temple of Truth Ranch on weekends in her youth to working on organic farms in Massachusetts while in college, and later at the legendary Veritable Vegetable women-owned organic produce distribution company.

More Than Human Rights (MOTH) Project
Founding Director

César Rodríguez-Garavito, a Professor of Clinical Law, Chair of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, and founding Director of the More Than Human Rights (MOTH) Project and the Earth Rights Advocacy Program (all based at NYU School of Law), is a human rights and environmental justice scholar and practitioner whose work and publications focus on climate change, Indigenous peoples’ rights, and the human rights movement. Editor-in-Chief of Open Global Rights, César has been an expert witness of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, an Adjunct Judge of the Constitutional Court of Colombia, a member of the Science Panel for the Amazon, and a lead litigator in climate change, socio-economic and Indigenous rights cases. He has conducted field research and environmental and human rights investigations around the world.

Co-Directors
Women’s Earth Alliance

Women’s Earth Alliance Co-Directors Amira Diamond, Kahea Pacheco, and Melinda Kramer co-lead Women’s Earth Alliance (WEA), a global initiative dedicated to empowering women’s leadership in environmental justice and resilience. Under their guidance, WEA has equipped over 50,000 women with technical, entrepreneurial, and leadership skills, impacting over 24 million people in 31 countries. Their collaborative leadership fosters networks that enhance climate resilience and address critical issues from clean water access to regenerative agriculture.

Author and Talk Show Host

Thom Hartmann, a best-selling author of over 30 books in print and host of the #1 progressive talk show host in America for more than a decade, has co-written and been featured in 6 documentaries with Leonardo DiCaprio about climate change. A former psychotherapist, entrepreneur and refugee worker helping the worldwide Salem group start homes for abandoned and abused children all over the world, Thom and his wife Louise live in Portland, Oregon with a small menagerie of cats, dogs, ducks & geese.

Founder and CEO
IllumiNative

Crystal Echo Hawk (Pawnee) is the founder and CEO of IllumiNative, the first and only national Native-led organization focused on changing the narrative about Native peoples on a mass scale. IllumiNative has been instrumental in changing the representation of contemporary Native peoples in key sectors of entertainment, pop culture, media, and politics. Known nationally as a thought leader, innovator, acclaimed speaker, and skilled executive who builds meaningful collaborations, Crystal has led partnership-building with such industry leaders as Nielsen, Netflix, NBC Universal, Amazon, Disney, Marvel, and others. Crystal also serves as a member of Nielsen’s External Advisory Council and the Comcast Diversity Council.

Executive Director
Sierra Club

Ben Jealous, named the seventh Executive Director of the Sierra Club in 2022, has served in roles from organizer to investigative journalist to president of two of the nation’s most influential groups pursuing equity and justice and protecting democracy and the environment. From 2008 to 2013, he led the NAACP as the youngest-ever president and CEO of the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization and launched the NAACP’s Climate Justice Program. More recently Ben was President of People for the American Way (PFAW). Ben began his professional trajectory as a reporter and managing editor at the black-owned community newspaper, the Jackson Advocate, exposing “cancer clusters” in Mississippi’s rural communities caused by industrial pollution. He has also been a partner at one of the nation’s premier ESG venture capital firms, has won many awards, served on the boards of the Environmental Defense Fund, the Trust for Public Lands and the Wilderness Society, taught at Princeton (and currently at the University of Pennsylvania), and is a best-selling author, including most recently of: Never Forget Our People Were Always Free: A Parable of American Healing. 

Co-Founder
Third Act

Bill McKibben, a contributing writer to The New Yorker and a co-founder of Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 to work on climate and racial justice, founded the first global grassroots climate campaign, 350.org, and serves as the Schumann Distinguished Professor in Residence at Middlebury College in Vermont. In 2014 he was awarded the Right Livelihood Prize, sometimes called the ‘alternative Nobel,’ in the Swedish Parliament and also won the Gandhi Peace Award as well as receiving honorary degrees from 19 colleges and universities. He has written 12+ books about the environment, including his first, one of the most prescient and important books of the last 100 years, 1989’s The End of Nature. His latest book is: The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at his Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened.