Vision & Initiatives Partner
Taproot Earth

Colette Pichon Battle, a generational native of Bayou Liberty, Louisiana, is an award-winning lawyer and prominent climate justice organizer. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when Black and Indigenous communities were largely left out of federal recovery systems, Colette led the Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy (GCCLP) to provide relief and legal assistance to Gulf South communities of color. After 17 years at GCCLP’s helm, as frontline communities from the Gulf South to the Global South face ever more devastating storms, droughts, wildfires, heat, and land loss, she co-founded Taproot Earth to create connections and power across issues, movements, and geographies.

Keynote Address:

Colette Pichon Battle – Expanding Our Movements for Climate Justice

March 28th | 11:41 am to 12:04 pm

Panel Presentations:

The Challenge of Democracy in a Climate Emergency

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Author & Activist
Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land

Taylor Brorby is the author of: Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land; Crude: Poems; Coming Alive: Action; and Civil Disobedience; and is co-editor of: Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in America. Taylor's work has appeared in many leading publications, including The NY Times, LitHub and Orion, and he has been supported by several prestigious fellowships, including from the MacDowell Colony and the National Book Critics Circle. He also serves on the editorial boards of Hub City Press and Terrain.org, is a contributing editor at North American Review, and teaches nonfiction writing at the University of Alabama.

Keynote Address:

Taylor Brorby – Raising Hell: Censorship, Carbon Capture, and Being Gay on the Great Plains

March 28th | 12:14 pm to 12:37 pm

Panel Presentations:

Writing for Our Lives: Storytelling, Resilience and the Power of Imagination 

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Book Signings with Pegasus Books

March 29th | 6:15 pm to 7:15 pm

Executive Director
Electronic Frontier Foundation

Cindy Cohn, the Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation since 2015, served as EFF’s Legal Director as well as its General Counsel from 2000 to 2015. In 1993, she served as lead attorney in Bernstein v. Dept. of Justice, the successful First Amendment challenge to the U.S. export restrictions on cryptography. Among other honors, Ms. Cohn was named to The Non-Profit Times 2020 Power & Influence TOP 50 list, and in 2018, Forbes included Ms. Cohn as one of America's Top 50 Women in Tech. In 2013, The National Law Journal named Ms. Cohn one of 100 most influential lawyers in America, noting: "If Big Brother is watching, he better look out for Cindy Cohn."

Keynote Address:

Cindy Cohn – The Climate Fight is Digital

March 28th | 10:28 am to 10:50 am

Panel Presentations:

How to Fight for a Fair and Free Digital Landscape

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

President and Founder
Dolores Huerta Foundation

Dolores Huerta is a world-renowned civil rights activist and community organizer who has worked for labor rights and social justice for 50+ years. In 1962 she and Cesar Chavez founded the United Farm Workers union, in which she served as Vice President and played a critical role in many of the union’s accomplishments for four decades. In 2002 she received the Puffin/Nation $100,000 prize for Creative Citizenship that she used to establish the Dolores Huerta Foundation (DHF), which connects groundbreaking community-based organizing to state and national movements to register and educate voters; advocate for education reform; bring about infrastructure improvements in low-income communities; advocate for greater equality for LGBT people; and create strong leadership development. She has received numerous awards including The Eleanor Roosevelt Humans Rights Award and The Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.

Keynote Address:

Dolores Huerta – Organizing for Justice

March 28th | 10:05 am to 10:27 am

Co-Founder and Chief Relationship Strategist
Bioneers

Nina Simons, co-founder of Bioneers and its Chief Relationship Strategist is also co-founder of Women Bridging Worlds and Connecting Women Leading Change. She co-edited the anthology book, Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading from the Heart, and most recently wrote Nature, Culture & The Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership. An award-winning social entrepreneur, Nina teaches and speaks internationally, and previously served as President of Seeds of Change and Director of Strategic Marketing for Odwalla.

Keynote Address:

Nina Simons – Opening Remarks

March 28th | 9:46 am to 10:05 am

Panel Presentations:

Book Signings with Pegasus Books

March 28th | 6:15 pm to 7:15 pm

Rebalancing Yin and Yang to Reclaim our Human Wholeness

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Drawing from Indigenous Ecological Knowledge to Restore the Earth

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Introducing:

Colette Pichon Battle – Expanding Our Movements for Climate Justice

March 28th | 11:41 am to 12:04 pm

Founding Director
Ancestral Guard

Sammy Gensaw III is a leader in environmental and cultural preservation in his Yurok community. Director of the Ancestral Guard, a nonprofit focused on teaching traditional fishing and farming methods to Indigenous youth, his approach is deeply rooted in food sovereignty, cultural preservation, community resilience, and self-sufficiency. Gensaw's activist journey began in his early teens with the Klamath Justice Coalition, the largest dam removal and river restoration project in history, and his contributions to restoring Native American foodways are featured in the documentary film, Gather.

Keynote Address:

Sammy Gensaw, III – The Restorative Revolution and a River of Reciprocity

March 28th | 11:25 am to 11:41 am

Panel Presentations:

Drawing from Indigenous Ecological Knowledge to Restore the Earth

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Co-Founder and Lead Organizer
Sogorea Te’ Land Trust

Corrina Gould, born and raised in the village of Huichin (now known as Oakland CA), is the Tribal Chair for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan Nation and co-founded and is the Lead Organizer for Indian People Organizing for Change, a small Native-run organization; as well as of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, an urban Indigenous women-led organization within her ancestral territory. Through the practices of “rematriation,” cultural revitalization and land restoration, the Land Trust calls on Native and non-Native peoples to heal and transform legacies of colonization and genocide and to do the work our ancestors and future generations are calling us to do.

Keynote Address:

Corrina Gould – Rematriation: Indigenous Women’s Work to Recover, Remember and Heal

March 28th | 9:24 am to 9:46 am

Indigenous Forum – Rematriation: Indigenous Women’s Leadership

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Founder and Executive Director
Sustainable & Just Future

Sage Lenier is an activist working to build an education system that enables the next generation to become climate solutionists. She got her start teaching her own program at UC Berkeley, which broke records for largest-ever student-led class. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The World Economic Forum, and Teen Vogue, and has brought her to speak at public forums around the world. TIME Magazine named her a 2023 Next Generation Leader for her work with Sustainable & Just Future.

Keynote Address:

Sage Lenier – Towards a Just Transition: Blueprint for a Green Economy

March 29th | 10:30 am to 10:41 am

Panel Presentations:

Youth Leadership Program: Community of Mentors with Sage Lenier

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Member Chief
Onondaga Council of Chiefs and the Grand Council of the Iroquois Confederacy

Oren Lyons, a Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan who serves as a Member Chief of the Onondaga Council of Chiefs and the Grand Council of the Iroquois Confederacy (i.e. the Haudenosaunee peoples), is an accomplished artist, social and environmental activist, and author; a Professor Emeritus at SUNY Buffalo; a leading voice at the UN Permanent Forum on Human Rights for Indigenous Peoples; and the recipient of many prestigious national and international prizes including The UN NGO World Peace Prize. Oren also serves on the boards of several major nonprofit organizations and social enterprises; is founder and Principal of One Bowl Productions, a purpose driven film and TV production company; and is an All-American Lacrosse Hall of Famer and Honorary Chairman of the Iroquois Nationals Lacrosse Team.

Keynote Address:

Oren Lyons – To Survive, We Must Transform Our Values

March 29th | 9:43 am to 10:08 am

Panel Presentations:

The Challenge of Democracy in a Climate Emergency

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Indigenous Forum – Listening to Wisdom Keepers

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Co-Executive Director
Institute for Local Self-Reliance

Stacy Mitchell, a Maine-based writer, strategist, and policy advocate whose work focuses on dismantling concentrated corporate power and building thriving communities and a healthy democracy, has played a leading role in today’s growing anti-monopoly movement. She is Co-Executive Director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), a research and advocacy organization that for five decades has challenged the wisdom of neoliberalism and championed local, community-oriented models, from municipal broadband to distributed solar power, community banks, family farms, and local businesses. Stacy has written for The NY Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Washington Post, and many other outlets, and is the author of Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses, and co-author of the influential report: Amazon’s Stranglehold. She has helped build a number of coalitions and win campaigns for policies that dismantle corporate power, level the playing field for independent businesses, and strengthen communities.

Keynote Address:

Stacy Mitchell – Democracy vs. Big Tech: How We Can Win the Fight Against Monopoly Power

March 29th | 10:08 am to 10:30 am

Panel Presentations:

The Grassroots Anti-Monopoly Movement Challenging Corporate Power From the Ground Up

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Co-Director
For Freedoms & Center for Justice at UCLA

Claudia Peña, Executive Director of For Freedoms, an artist collective that centers art and creativity as a catalyst for transformative connection and collective liberation, serves on the faculty at UCLA School of Law and in that school’s Gender Studies Department. She is also the founding Co-Director of the Center for Justice at UCLA, home of the Prison Education Program, which creates innovative courses that enable faculty and students to learn from and alongside currently incarcerated participants. Claudia has devoted her life to justice work through community organizing, transformative and restorative justice, consciousness-raising across silos, coalition-building, teaching, advocacy through law and policy, and the arts.

Keynote Address:

Claudia Peña – Abolition as Amends to Mother

March 29th | 11:20 am to 11:42 am

Panel Presentations:

Learning How to “Be” Again

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Professor of Forest Ecology
University of British Columbia

Suzanne Simard, Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia and author of the bestselling, Finding the Mother Tree, is a highly influential, researcher on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence, globally renowned for her work on how trees interact and communicate using below-ground fungal networks. Her work on forest resiliency, adaptability and recovery has far-reaching implications for how to manage and heal forests from human impacts, including climate change. Suzanne has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles, presented around the world and communicated her work to a wide audience through interviews, documentary films and online talks.

Keynote Address:

Suzanne Simard – Dealing with Backlash Against Nature-Based Solutions to Climate Change

March 29th | 12:02 pm to 12:24 pm

Panel Presentations:

Healing the Land, Healing the People: Responding to Current Crises with Reconnection and Regeneration

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Working with Nature to Boost Climate Adaptation and Resilience

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Book Signings with Pegasus Books

March 29th | 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm

CEO and Co-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.

Keynote Address:

Kenny Ausubel – It’s the Corporations, Stupid

March 29th | 9:24 am to 9:43 am

Introducing:

Stacy Mitchell – Democracy vs. Big Tech: How We Can Win the Fight Against Monopoly Power

March 29th | 10:08 am to 10:30 am

Environmental Ambassador, Elder and Hereditary Drumkeeper
Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma

Casey Camp-Horinek, a member of the Ponca Nation of Oklahoma, is a longtime activist, environmentalist, actress, and author. Her work has led to the Ponca Nation being the first tribe in Oklahoma to adopt a Rights of Nature statute and to pass a moratorium on fracking on its territory. Casey, who was instrumental in the drafting of the first International Indigenous Women’s Treaty protecting the Rights of Nature, works with Indigenous and other leaders and organizations globally and sits on the boards of WECAN, Movement Rights, and the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature.

Keynote Address:

Casey Camp-Horinek – Walking the Red Road—It’s Elemental

March 30th | 9:17 am to 9:39 am

Panel Presentations:

Indigenous Forum – Listening to Wisdom Keepers

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Author & Journalist
Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge

Erica Gies is an independent journalist, National Geographic Explorer, and the author of Water Always Wins: Thriving in an age of drought and deluge, published in the U.S., U.K., and China. She covers water, climate change, plants and wildlife for Scientific American, The New York Times, bioGraphic, Nature, and other publications. The honors she has received include the Sierra Club’s Rachel Carson Award, Friends of the River’s California River Award, the Renewable Natural Resources Foundation’s Excellence in Journalism Award, and the Harvey Southam Lectureship at the University of Victoria.

Keynote Address:

Erica Gies – The Slow Water Movement: How to Thrive in an Age of Drought and Deluge

March 30th | 11:19 am to 11:41 am

Panel Presentations:

Working with Nature to Boost Climate Adaptation and Resilience

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Book Signings with Pegasus Books

March 30th | 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm

Engineer, Scientist and Linguistics Researcher
Acnestis By Wind

Charlotte Lenore Michaluk, 17, is a brilliant young, award-winning, multi-disciplinary engineer, scientist and linguistics researcher, passionate about engineering sustainable solutions. Her development of technology for a hybrid wind and fossil fuel powered cargo ship has been widely recognized. Charlotte, who has been certified in freshwater bioassessment for over a decade (!), has been collecting and analyzing field data working with her state’s EPA to preserve ecologically critical wetlands and wildlife corridors in Central New Jersey. Through her organization, Acnestis By Wind, she has been researching using wind power to clean remote shorelines, developing curricula, and protecting wetlands.

Keynote Address:

Charlotte Michaluk – Sailing into the Future: Weaving Tradition and Modernity

March 30th | 10:09 am to 10:20 am

Panel Presentations:

Collaboration, Conflict, and Community: A Cross-Generational Conversation

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Women in Clean/Green Tech Shattering the Glass Ceiling

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Biologist and Writer
Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures

Merlin Sheldrake, Ph.D., a biologist and writer with a background in plant sciences, microbiology, ecology, and the history and philosophy of science, received his doctorate in tropical ecology from Cambridge for his work on underground fungal networks in tropical forests in Panama, where he was a predoctoral research fellow of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. He is currently a research associate of the Vrije University Amsterdam, works with the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN), and sits on the advisory board of the Fungi Foundation. Merlin’s research ranges from fungal biology, to the history of Amazonian ethnobotany, to the relationship between sound and form in resonant systems. He is also a keen brewer and fermenter fascinated by the relationships that arise between humans and more-than-human organisms, and a musician.

Keynote Address:

Merlin Sheldrake – How Fungi Make our Worlds

March 30th | 11:41 am to 12:04 pm

Panel Presentations:

Mapping, Protecting and Harnessing the Mycorrhizal Networks that Sustain Life on Earth

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Book Signings with Pegasus Books

March 30th | 6:15 pm to 7:15 pm

Wildlife Ecologist and Conservation Biologist
University of California at Santa Barbara + Host of Wild Kingdom

Rae Wynn-Grant, Ph.D., a wildlife ecologist and conservation biologist who researches how human activity influences carnivore behavior and ecology and is passionate about science communication, is the creator of the award-winning podcast "Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant" (produced by PBS’ Nature) and has recently become the co-host of the just resuscitated revered TV show, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. Currently a Research Faculty member at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, she maintains a Research Fellow position with the National Geographic Society in partnership with the American Prairie Reserve and a Visiting Scientist position at the American Museum of Natural History. Dr. Grant, who also serves on the Board of Directors for NatureBridge, is a leading advocate for women and people of color in the sciences and is the author of many scientific papers, as well as her upcoming memoir, Wild Life.

Keynote Address:

Rae Wynn-Grant – Wild Life: How Personal Journeys are Essential to Sustainable Leadership in Environmental Science

March 30th | 9:47 am to 10:09 am

Panel Presentations:

Coexistence with Wild Animals: New Frontiers in Wildlife Conservation

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Book Signings with Pegasus Books

March 30th | 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm

Principal
ASO Communications

Anat Shenker-Osorio, host of the Words to Win By podcast and Principal of ASO Communications, examines why certain messages falter where others deliver.  She has led research for new messaging on issues ranging from freedom to join together in union to clean energy and from immigrant rights to reforming criminal justice.  Anat's original approach through priming experiments, task-based testing and online dial surveys has led to progressive electoral and policy victories across the globe. Anat delivers her findings packed in snark at venues such as the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Centre for Australian Progress, Irish Migrant Centre, Open Society Foundations, Ford Foundation and LUSH International. Her writing and research is profiled in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Boston Globe, Salon, The Guardian and Grist among others.  She is the author of "Don't Buy It: The Trouble with Talking Nonsense About the Economy".

Panel Presentations:

What the Hell Should We Be Doing About Rising Fascism?

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Producer
Weaving Spirits Festival of Two-Spirit Performance

Javier Stell-Frésquez (Piru & Tigua Pueblo ancestry, Mixed Chican@) serves Indigenous communities of the San Francisco (Yelamu) Bay. Many years volunteering on the BAAITS Two-Spirits Powwow Committee have lead to her producing Weaving Spirits Festival of Two-Spirit Performance. She has life-long dance and performance experience and a B.S. in Environmental Studies. Recent multimedia performance work includes the touring show and short film Mother / Forgotten Blaze, and Chaac & Yum, a short two-spirit art film currently showing in film festivals internationally.

Panel Presentations:

Youth Leadership Program: LGBTQ2SIA+ Talking Circle – In the Twilight In Between

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Conservation Program Manager
Civicorps

Steven J. Addison, who has 25+ years’ experience in the conservation field, is currently the Manager of Civicorps’ Conservation Program where he facilitates transformational job training and outdoor experiences for young adults. Steven previously worked for the California Conservation Corps (CCC) in many capacities; for the National Park and U.S. Forest services; and for California State Parks.

Panel Presentations:

Stewardship For All

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Climate Justice Organizer
Youth Vs. Apocalypse (YVA) CalSTRS Divest Campaign

Zara Ahsan, a 17-year-old climate justice organizer based in Oakland, CA, is one of the leaders of the Youth Vs. Apocalypse (YVA) CalSTRS Divest campaign. She is working across communities and generations to advocate that CalSTRS, the pension system for all California public teachers, pull the billions of dollars it currently invests in fossil fuel companies. Zara is very involved in legislative work, specifically working on SB252, a CA Senate Bill designed to ensure that divestment.

Panel Presentations:

Youth Leadership Program – A Youth Activist Toolkit Workshop

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Executive Director
Resource Generation and RG Action

Yahya Alazrak, Executive Director of Resource Generation (“a multiracial membership community of young people (18-35) with wealth and/or class privilege committed to the equitable distribution of wealth, land, and power”) since 2021, was a young activist in the post 9/11 anti-war, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter movements and joined Resource Generation as a National Organizer and Coordinator of POC Programs in 2015, then became Campaign Director in 2020 before being appointed Executive Director. Yahya also sits on the board of Philadelphia’s social justice foundation, Bread and Roses Community Fund.

Panel Presentations:

Murmurations: The Future of Philanthropy

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Co-Creator & Stewardship Lead
The Shelterwood Collective

Nikola Alexandre, Co-Creator & Stewardship Lead of the Shelterwood Collective, is a Black queer forester with MA degrees in both Forestry and Business Administration from Yale who founded Conservation International’s Ecosystem Restoration Program. After attending a nature-based healing gathering following the Pulse massacre, Nikola committed his life to tending the earth and reclaiming land stewardship as a way of nurturing a future for the communities he belongs to, which led to his co-founding the Shelterwood Collective in Sonoma County.

Panel Presentations:

Drawing from Indigenous Ecological Knowledge to Restore the Earth

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Youth Leadership Program – Community of Mentors with Nikola Alexandre 

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Introducing:

Taylor Brorby – Raising Hell: Censorship, Carbon Capture, and Being Gay on the Great Plains

March 28th | 12:14 pm to 12:37 pm

Community Organizer
Hummingbird Farm Collective

Alondra Aragon, a community organizer since she was 15, has dedicated more than a decade working with environmental and youth justice movements. As a member of the Hummingbird Farm collective, she seeks to: create a space for the community to reconnect with the land and traditional local ecological knowledge; move toward a just transition by growing healthy food, restoring local ecosystems, practicing herbal healing, and providing job training; and build alternative community governance structures.

Panel Presentations:

Youth Leadership Program – Youth of Color Caucus

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Activist and Entrepreneur

Azita Ardakani is a serial entrepreneur, social activist and human centered communication expert. Azita created Lovesocial in 2010, an award winning creative agency which developed human driven campaigns and strategies mapping organizational community behavior. In 2016 she launched Honeycomb Portfolio, an experimental investment vehicle. Honeycomb is driven by nature's intelligence and is looking to bridge our entrepreneurial, social and emotional economic frame by deferring to nature.

Panel Presentations:

How, Then, Might We Live? On Being—An Intimate Interview with Krista Tippett

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Introducing:

Claudia Peña – Abolition as Amends to Mother

March 29th | 11:20 am to 11:42 am

Co-Founder
Enowkin Centre

Jeannette Armstrong, Ph.D. (lax̌lax̌tkʷ) from the Penticton Indian Band, a fluent speaker and knowledge keeper of Syilx Okanagan and its oral histories, is an Associate Professor and the Coordinator of Interior Salishan Languages programs at the University of British Columbia Okanagan. She collaborates with other Salish-speaking groups to re-establish Indigenous languages and historical relationships through food harvesting ceremonies, gatherings, and the protection of water and land practices. A recipient of the Eco Trust USA Buffett Award in Indigenous Leadership, Jeannette serves on the Aboriginal Traditional Knowledge Subcommittee of Canada’s Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife and is a lifetime Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and an officer of the Order of Canada.

Panel Presentations:

Indigenous Forum – Listening to Wisdom Keepers

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Drawing from Indigenous Ecological Knowledge to Restore the Earth

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Co-Executive Producer of the Wild Hope series
Tangled Bank Studios

Sarah Arnoff, a former zookeeper and widely traveled wildlife conservationist who has 12 years of experience producing, directing and shooting award-winning wildlife television series and specials, is currently the Co-Executive Producer of the Wild Hope series for Tangled Bank Studios. Previously a show-runner and Co-Executive Producer for several Emmy Award-Winning series with Jeff Corwin, she has produced wildlife documentaries with National Geographic TV, including a series on great apes with Jane Goodall.

Panel Presentations:

Film Screening and Discussion: 2 Episodes in the Wild Hope Series

March 28th | 6:40 pm to 8:10 pm

Author and Professor

Ramona Ausubel, a professor in the MFA program at Colorado State University, is the author of 3 novels and 2 story collections, including, most recently, The Last Animal, chosen by NPR, Kirkus and O, the Oprah Quarterly as a best book of 2023. Her other books are: Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty, No One is Here Except All of Us, Awayland and A Guide to Being Born. Her work was chosen multiple times as a NY Times Book Review Editors’ Choice selection, and she has won a number of prestigious awards, including the PEN/USA Fiction Award and the Cabell First Novelist Award. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Tin House, One Story, Ploughshares and many other journals.

Panel Presentations:

Writing for Our Lives: Storytelling, Resilience and the Power of Imagination 

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Book Signings with Pegasus Books

March 29th | 6:15 pm to 7:15 pm

Founder
El Tímpano

Madeleine Bair is the founder of El Tímpano, an award-winning civic media organization designed with and for the Bay Area’s Latino and Mayan immigrant communities. Madeleine, who has been carrying a microphone in her backpack since she belonged to the Oakland bureau of Children’s Express, has taught radio production to young adults, worked on a morning show at Chicago Public Radio, produced multimedia for Human Rights Watch, and collaborated with media activists from around the world. Her stories have appeared in the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, Colorlines, and Orion, and broadcast on PRI’s The World and Independent Lens.

Panel Presentations:

The Struggle to Save and Revivify Local Media 

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Member
Mashpee NEA

Amaya Balbuena, 15, a sophomore at Falmouth High School in Massachusetts, is a member of an activist group of her tribe’s youth, Mashpee NEA (Mashpee Wampanoag Native Environmental Ambassadors) dedicated to pursuing "rights of nature for all natural beings.” The group has been successful in its first major initiative to protect herring by having the tribal council confer rights on the species, a key one in the tribe’s history and economy. Amaya is also a basketball player.

Panel Presentations:

Indigenous Forum – Native Youth Organizing for the Rights of Nature

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Restorative Justice Facilitator

sujatha baliga, JD, a Berkeley-based, prominent attorney, former Director of the Restorative Justice Project at Impact Justice and a 2019 MacArthur Fellow, has been a leading figure in the Restorative Justice Movement with an equal dedication to crime survivors and to people who’ve caused harm. She has helped communities across the nation implement alternatives to juvenile detention and zero-tolerance school discipline policies and also works to end child sexual abuse and intimate partner violence. A long-time Buddhist practitioner, she’s a lay member of the Gyuto Foundation Tibetan Buddhist Monastery in Richmond, CA.

Panel Presentations:

Collaboration, Conflict, and Community: A Cross-Generational Conversation

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Garden Lead
People’s Programs

ab banks, Garden Lead for People’s Programs in West Oakland, CA, works to grow food, advance food autonomy for Oakland’s Black population, and ensure that healthy produce gets into the hands of under-resourced community members, including the unhoused. ab also started the (Free) Community Health Clinic, which opened in 2021 to address needs identified during weekly food deliveries, and is the Agroecology and Wellness Coordinator at the Berkeley Food Institute (BFI), which supports outreach, events and academic opportunities at more than 10 urban gardens. Previously, ab was a Just Leader Fellow with the Cooperative Food Empowerment Collective, which seeks to build a cooperative food economy powered by the visionary leadership of Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color.

Panel Presentations:

Combining Traditions and Radical Visions to Revision Food Systems: Two Extraordinary Young Agrarians Share their Strategies

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

President & CEO
Women Donors Network

Leena Barakat, a Los Angeles-based activist, strategist and Palestinian-American leader, is the President & CEO of Women Donors Network and its 501c4 affiliate, WDN Action. She began her career as a grassroots activist and cross-movement organizer and has since spanned the nonprofit, tech, and philanthropic sectors with the goal of creating a more just, joyful, and liberated future for all. Leena also serves on the board of Donors of Color Network.

Panel Presentations:

Murmurations: The Future of Philanthropy

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

President
International Bateson Institute

Nora Bateson, President of the International Bateson Institute, is the creator of “Warm Data” theory and practices, an approach to information science that studies the “interrelationships that integrate elements of a whole system.” Shewrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary, An Ecology of Mind, a portrait of her late father, the immensely influential, revered and renowned thinker, Gregory Bateson. A recipient of the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity (in 2019), Nora Bateson is also the author of a new book, Combining.

Panel Presentations:

Interactive Session –The Warm Data Lab

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Book Signings with Pegasus Books

March 30th | 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm

Campaign Director
UltraViolet

Elisa Batista, the Content Director and a Campaign Director with UltraViolet (an organization dedicated to ending violence against women, increasing their and their families’ economic security and ensuring they all have access to full, affordable healthcare), was previously Campaign Director for MomsRising.org, a million-volunteer grassroots organization, helping spearhead the organization’s immigration campaign and launching MamásConPoder.org, a community of civically engaged Spanish-speaking and bilingual mothers. Elisa is also a bilingual journalist and award-winning digital influencer who co-founded the popular parenting community, MotherTalkers.

Panel Presentations:

Advancing Reproductive Justice: Defending Abortion, Bodily Autonomy & Democracy

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Artistic Director
Kearny Street Workshop

Jason Bayani, MFA, a theater performer and author, is Artistic Director of the Kearny Street Workshop, the oldest multi-disciplinary Asian Pacific-American arts organization in the country. A Kundiman Fellow, his published works include: Locus (a 2019 Norcal Book Award finalist) and Amulet. He has written for World Literature Today, Muzzle Magazine, Lantern Review, and other publications and performs regularly around the country. His first solo theater show was 2016’s Locus of Control.

Panel Presentations:

Community Conversations: Electoral Justice as Climate Justice in 2024

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Community Conversations – The Five Elements: An East Asian Approach to Achieving Balance in our Communities

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Community Conversations: Trust in Elections

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Community Conversations: Conflict Is A Gift

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Community Conversations: The Value of Your Body’s Wisdom – How Being Embodied Helps the Healing Process

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Community Conversations: Becoming Change Agents by Fostering Skillful Transformation

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Programs and Operations Manager
Debt Collective

Frederick Bell is the Programs and Operations Manager for The Debt Collective, a membership-based union for debtors and their allies seeking to radically transform our economic system. With an academic background in Political Science, Frederick has been an activist for a decade, organizing with, among others, No New Youth Jail Seattle from 2014-2016, then in 2020 co-founding Black Praxis Project (a curriculum-based political education platform created to discuss black radical texts and apply that knowledge to present-day movements). He has organized several campaigns with The Debt Collective since 2021, including influential initiatives aimed at the cancellation of much student debt.

Panel Presentations:

Freedom Dreams and Debtors Unions: Introducing the Work of the Debt Collective

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Founder
Art and Climate Action

Devon Bella, MFA, a San Francisco-based independent curator and arts advocate, is co-founder and Director of Art + Climate Action (A+CA), whose bold mission is to decarbonize the Bay Area art world by empowering artists and cultural producers to adopt sustainable practices and by fostering a thriving network of climate conscious arts organizations. Bella, who is also the Cultural Strategist for the City of San José Office of Cultural Affairs Climate Art Program, has had extensive experience in the international art world and with mission-driven organizations, including serving as Director of KADIST in San Francisco, Senior Curator and art advisor for Vital Voices Global Partnership in Washington, D.C., and co-curating the 2019 Honolulu Biennial.

Panel Presentations:

Artivism in the Age of Climate Chaos and Societal Instability 

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Executive Director
Solidaire Network

Rajasvini Bhansali, Executive Director of Solidaire Network and Solidaire Action, a community of donor organizers mobilizing critical resources to the frontlines of social justice, is a passionate advocate for participatory grassroots-led power building. Her wide-ranging career devoted to racial, economic and climate justice has included work in Asia, Africa and the Americas in such domains as youth development, addressing the digital divide, community organizing, research, policy analysis and strategic planning. She is co-author of Leading with Joy: Practices for Uncertain Times, and is also a poet, essayist, educator, yoga instructor and leadership coach.

Panel Presentations:

Murmurations: The Future of Philanthropy

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Book Signings with Pegasus Books

March 30th | 6:15 pm to 7:15 pm

Co-Founder
Living Room Conversations

Joan Blades, with a background as an attorney and mediator, is a co-founder of LivingRoomConversations.org, an open-source effort to build respectful connections across ideological, cultural and party lines while embracing our core-shared values. Joan previously co-founded MomsRising.org and MoveOn.org and is co-author of The Custom-Fit Workplace and The Motherhood Manifesto. (livingroomconversations.org)

Panel Presentations:

Interactive Session – The Art of Ethical, Effective Persuasion

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Community Conversations: Trust in Elections

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Urban Tilth
Deputy Director

Adam Boisvert has spent the past 13 years growing community and school garden and food production programs with the food justice organization Urban Tilth in Richmond, California. Currently, Adam serves as Urban Tilth’s Deputy Director and as a teacher-of-record for the Urban Agriculture Academy at Richmond High School, a year-round elective course rooted in hands-on, experiential learning.

Panel Presentations:

Richmond CA’s Groundbreaking Progress on Access, Resiliency, Mobility, and Policy

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Executive Director
Ecology Center

Martin Bourque, the Executive Director of the Ecology Center in Berkeley since 2000, has led that cutting-edge non-profit to become a high-impact engine for change locally, regionally and nationally, helping move progressive agendas in such domains as transparency in plastic recycling, pollution reduction, food and farming, access and equity, consumerism, and zero waste.

Panel Presentations:

Seed to System: Food Equity Leaders Creating Systemic Change

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Film Producer, Writer and Director

Peter Bratt is a Rockefeller Fellow, Peabody Award winner and Emmy-nominated film producer, writer and director (including of the award-winning documentary, Dolores, about the legendary activist Dolores Huerta). Peter, raised by an Indigenous single mother from Peru, has a decades-long history of highlighting and participating in Indigenous and civil rights struggles, including working with the International Indian Treaty Council, Amazon Watch, Friendship House Association of American Indians, H.O.M.I.E.S., Instituto Familiar De La Raza, and the San Francisco American Indian Cultural District.

Introducing:

Dolores Huerta – Organizing for Justice

March 28th | 10:05 am to 10:27 am

Co-Director
Ekvn-Yefolecv

Marcus Briggs-Cloud (Maskoke), Ph.D., is a language revitalizer, scholar, musician and co-director of Ekvn-Yefolecv: an off-grid, climate-positive, income-sharing ecovillage comprised of Maskoke People who, after 180 years of displacement, returned to their homelands for language and cultural revitalization and ecological stewardship. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School who also has a doctorate in ecology, Marcus’ research intersects ecology, genetics, linguistics, liberation theology, and ecofeminism.

Panel Presentations:

Indigenous Forum – Natural Law and Food Sovereignty

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

One Fair Wage Leader and Barista

Hoss Brown, a seasoned barista based in El Cerrito, California with over a decade of diverse experience in the food service industry, is a labor activist/One Fair Wage leader passionate about advocating for higher wages in the industry and improving working conditions, workplace culture, and quality of life for all food service professionals.

Panel Presentations:

One Fair Wage 2024: Raising Wages, Mobilizing Voters, Saving Democracy

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Professor of Writing and Media Arts
Bard College/Simon’s Rock

Jennifer Browdy Ph.D. is a professor of writing and media arts at Bard College/Simon’s Rock and the global Bard Open Society University Network. She is the publisher of Green Fire Press and co-host of the online writers’ community, Birth Your Truest Story. Her award-winning books include: Purposeful Memoir as a Quest for a Thriving Future, The Elemental Journey of Purposeful Memoir, and What I Forgot ...And Why I Remembered. She publishes two Substack newsletters: Writing to Right the World and The Spirit of Education.

Panel Presentations:

Interactive Session – Purposeful Memoir as a Quest for a Thriving Future

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Indigeneity Program Manager
Bioneers

Nazshonnii Brown-Almaweri, Intercultural Conversations Program Manager for Bioneers’ Indigeneity Program, is a West Oakland-based STEAM educator who advocates for exposure and opportunities for historically excluded people, especially Black and Native youth. She has provided many middle and high school students with the space to learn about STEAM at the intersection of ancestral knowledge and their lived experiences and has worked to help Oakland youth thrive in disciplines such as engineering. Nazshonnii is also a farmer connected to the Gill Tract Community Farm in Albany and was previously a STEM tutor, media educator, and youth program assistant for the American Indian Child Resource Center.

Panel Presentations:

Indigenous Forum – Sustainable Practices with Native Professionals

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Director
Larsen Lam Climate Change Foundation

Michael Brune, a leading national environmentalist for 25+ years (including as Executive Director of the Sierra Club for 12 years and of the Rainforest Action Network before that), has led some of the most effective environmental advocacy initiatives in U.S. history, including the Sierra Club’s massively successful Beyond Coal campaign, which resulted in the retirement of more than two-thirds of U.S. coal-fired power plants. Brune currently directs the Larsen Lam Climate Change Foundation and advises several other NGOs and early-stage clean energy companies, and he also serves on the boards of SOLARCYCLE and Outdoor Afro.

Panel Presentations:

Closing the Gates to Hell: A Global Plan to Phase Out Fossil Fuels and Accelerate a Just Transition

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Co-Director, Indigeneity Program
Bioneers

Alexis Bunten, Ph.D., (Aleut/Yup’ik), Co-Director of Bioneers’ Indigeneity Program, has been a researcher, media-maker, manager, consultant, and curriculum developer for organizations including the Sealaska Heritage Institute, Alaska Native Heritage Center, and the FrameWorks Institute. She has published widely about Indigenous and environmental issues, and is the author of So, how long have you been Native?: Life as an Alaska Native Tour Guide.

Panel Presentations:

Indigenous Forum – Listening to Wisdom Keepers

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Indigenous Forum – Natural Law and Food Sovereignty

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Introducing:

Casey Camp-Horinek – Walking the Red Road—It’s Elemental

March 30th | 9:17 am to 9:39 am

Executive Director
TOGETHER Bay Area

Annie Burke is the Executive Director of TOGETHER Bay Area, a regional coalition of organizations working for climate resilience and social equity, and also serves as the co-chair of California's 30x30 Partnership Coordination Committee.

Panel Presentations:

Stewardship For All

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Activist, Writer and Strategist

Linda Burnham has been an activist, writer and strategist focused on women’s rights and racial justice since the 1960s. She is a co-editor and contributor to the 2022 book Power Concedes Nothing: How Grassroots Organizing Wins Elections and is the author of Project2050, an inquiry into long-term strategic thinking on the left. She recently worked with a team to produce the online curriculum, Fascism101.

Panel Presentations:

What the Hell Should We Be Doing About Rising Fascism?

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Book Signings with Pegasus Books

March 30th | 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm

Lead Circle Member
Youth Vs. Apocalypse (YVA)

Aniya Butler, 16, an Oakland-based spoken word poet and performer, is a Climate and Social Justice activist who is a Lead Circle member of Youth Vs. Apocalypse (YVA), where she coordinates its Hip Hop & Climate Justice initiative and serves on the group’s management team.

Panel Presentations:

Youth Leadership Program – A Youth Activist Toolkit Workshop

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Owner/Operator
Shepherdess Land and Livestock Co.

Brittany Cole Bush (aka “Cole”), an entrepreneur, educator, and consultant in the fields of climate-smart agriculture, land stewardship, and prescribed grazing with sheep and goats, is the owner/operator of Shepherdess Land and Livestock Co. With over a decade of experience, Cole has developed and managed the treatment of thousands of acres on private and public lands, (including the East Bay Regional Parks District) using carefully managed grazing as an ecosystem service for ecological enhancement and fire hazard reduction throughout California. She is also dedicated to training new entrepreneurs and practitioners in the field of land and livestock through a vocational training and workforce development program, the Grazing School of the West.

Panel Presentations:

How Can Livestock Create Climate Resilience?

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Action Lead Program Manager
Narrative Initiative

Orion Camero, a Filipinx queer visual storytelling educator and cultural organizer, is the Action Lead Program Manager for Narrative Initiative, a story-based social change organization focused on maximizing opportunities to nourish and grow narrative power, equip narrative changemakers, and bond communities to pursue long-term progress for social justice. Orion additionally stewards the California Allegory, an epic collaborative image that acts as a centerpiece for intersectional justice education and cross-movement pollination.

Panel Presentations:

Youth Leadership Program: LGBTQ2SIA+ Talking Circle – In the Twilight In Between

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Youth Leadership Program: Queer Mixer – Gathering the Flowers

March 28th | 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm

Artivism in the Age of Climate Chaos and Societal Instability 

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Writer and Community Activist

Anneke Campbell, a writer and community activist who has worked as a midwife, nurse, English professor, yoga teacher and death educator; is the co-author (with Thomas Linzey) of: We The People: Stories from the Community Rights Movement in the U.S.; and editor of Nina Simons' book: Nature, Culture and the Sacred: One Woman Listens for Leadership. Anneke also co-produces and scripts videos for non-profit organizations, and writes essays and articles while completing a memoir on the intersection of history and politics in family life.

Panel Presentations:

Tending our Grief: A Conversation and Ritual

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Tending our Grief: A Conversation and Ritual

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Tending our Grief: A Conversation and Ritual

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Activist Grief Circle

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Activist Grief Circle

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Professor of Transformative Studies
California Institute of Integral Studies

Jeanine M. Canty, Ph.D., a professor of Transformative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies whose teaching intersects issues of social and ecological justice, ecopsychology, and the process of worldview expansion and change, is the editor of and a contributor to the books: Ecological and Social Healing: Multicultural Women’s Voices; and Globalism and Localization: Emergent Approaches to Ecological and Social Crises. Her most recent book is: Returning the Self to Nature: Undoing our Collective Narcissism and Healing our Planet.

Panel Presentations:

Community Conversations: Becoming Change Agents by Fostering Skillful Transformation

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Project Lead
RIVER

Erin Matariki Carr, of Ngāi Tūhoe and Ngāti Awa descent, lives in her traditional homelands in Aotearoa/New Zealand and works in law and policy, with a focus on the interface between Indigenous and Western legal systems and methodologies. She previously worked as Manager of Planning & Design to create and implement policies under the world-first legislation conferring legal personhood to the Te Urewera rainforest. Matariki is currently a project lead at RIVER, where she focuses on the constitutional transformation movement in Aotearoa with a number of other teams, including Tūmanako Consultants and Te Kuaka NZA.

Panel Presentations:

Learning How to “Be” Again

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Co-Executive Director
Smokehouse Collective

Deenaalee Chase-Hodgdon, a queer Deg Xit’an Dene and Sugpiaq person from the villages of Gitr’ingithchagg (Anvik) and Qinuyang (South Naknek) in Alaska, works on the sustainable management of salmon fisheries; building just economies in Bristol Bay, along the Yukon, and in the larger Arctic region; and contributing to the nutritional and cultural sustenance of Alaskan Native communities while planning for a thriving Indigenous future. Deenaalee is also the founder and Executive Director of On The Land Media and works with a number of organizations, including the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center and the Smokehouse Collective.

Panel Presentations:

Combining Traditions and Radical Visions to Revision Food Systems: Two Extraordinary Young Agrarians Share their Strategies

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Director of Education and Programming
Indigenous Climate Action

Jayce Chiblow, an Anishinaabe from Garden River First Nation, Ontario, with backgrounds in Biology and Environmental Studies, is currently Director of Education and Programming with Indigenous Climate Action (ICA), an Indigenous-led organization guided by a diverse group of Indigenous knowledge keepers, water protectors and land defenders from across Canada. She previously worked at ICA in a variety of other roles that supported the creation, dissemination and implementation of its Toolkit and Climate Leadership Program.

Panel Presentations:

Indigenous Forum – From the Bottom Up: How Indigenous Action is Affecting Climate Change

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Creative Media Strategist
Debt Collective

Maddy Clifford is an Oakland-based artist and creative media strategist with Debt Collective, the nation’s first union of debtors. Maddy’s creative work focuses on using words, sound and ceremony to disrupt hierarchal paradigms in order to illuminate the power of our interconnected desires for liberation. Her writings, digital media and music cover such topics as prison abolition, Black feminism and economic disobedience in late capitalism.

Panel Presentations:

Freedom Dreams and Debtors Unions: Introducing the Work of the Debt Collective

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Southeast Regional Administrator
United States Department of Housing and Urban Development

Jennifer Riley Collins, a retired US Army Colonel whose last assignment was Military Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs at the Pentagon, is the Southeast Regional Administrator for the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, representing a large portfolio of programs and services and over 900 employees. She works throughout the Southeast with congressional delegations, state and local officials, stakeholders, and HUD employees, seeking to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all. Previously, Jennifer served as Chief Administrative Officer and Senior Advisor to the Federal Co-Chair of the Delta Regional Authority (DRA) and founded her own consulting firm, J. Riley Collins Consulting, LLC.

Panel Presentations:

The Challenge of Democracy in a Climate Emergency

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Founding Director
Awi’nakola Foundation

Makwala Rande Cook (Kwa’kwa’ka’wakw), born in ‘Yalis (Alert Bay) on the west coast of Canada, holds chieftainships from his maternal and paternal lineages. He is the founding Director and Director of Arts for the Indigenous-led Awi’nakola Foundation, a registered Canadian charity charting a pathway for the conservation of biological diversity through decolonization, art and progressive Western science. The foundation’s land-based work in service to Indigenous communities began in support of the Ma’amtagila’s legal challenge to halt the illegal treaty negotiations over their territories and to bolster Ma’amtagila’s jurisdictional assertion according to Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw Potlatch Law.

Panel Presentations:

Healing the Land, Healing the People: Responding to Current Crises with Reconnection and Regeneration

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Indigenous Forum – From the Bottom Up: How Indigenous Action is Affecting Climate Change

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Abundant Beginnings
Founder

Shayna Cureton is the co-founder of Abundant Beginnings, a project that centers Black children and families and seeks to create liberated learning and activist communities as direct antidotes to the “school-to-prison pipeline.” Shayna, who has led the creation of hundreds of radical child-centered spaces as Director of Abundant Beginnings’ Forest Freedom School and camp programs, is a recipient of the Community Partner Award from Our Family Coalition, and a YBCA 100 honoree.

Panel Presentations:

Rebalancing Yin and Yang to Reclaim our Human Wholeness

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Author, Professor, Climate Psychology Consultant

Leslie Davenport, Program Lead and on the core faculty of the Climate Psychology Certification at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), is a climate psychology consultant who works internationally to spearhead the intersectionality of climate, mental health, education, policy, and social justice to leverage the full range of human capacities to address the deep challenges of our time. Leslie’s work has appeared in the NY Times, Washington Post, Scientific American and other leading publications, and she has authored five books, including Emotional Resiliency in the Era of Climate Change. She is also an advisor to the Post Carbon Institute, Climate Mental Health Network, and One Resilient Earth.

Panel Presentations:

Exploring the Psychological Dimensions of Climate Change 

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Interactive Session – The Ecology of Our Inner Landscapes

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Book Signings with Pegasus Books

March 29th | 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm

Executive Director
ILLUMINATE Film Festival

Téana David, MFA, Executive Director of the Santa Barbara, CA-based ILLUMINATE Film Festival, now in its 10th year, previously served as Director of Deepak HomeBase in New York City. Through her production company, Wise Planet Media, Téana has produced many short films on the topics of consciousness, ecology, and social impact. She is also a founding member of Artists for Amazonia, Board Vice President of the Tribal Trust Foundation, and a member of The Evolutionary Leader’s Circle.

Panel Presentations:

The Holomovement: Exploring the cosmological and sociological underpinnings of a “movement of movements”

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Founder
Civic (Re)Solve

Ben Davis founded and leads Civic (Re)Solve, a ten-year program of the Wend Collective designed to foster enduring civic capacity in service of a thriving and representative democracy across the U.S. Ben joined the Wend Collective after co-founding OnSight Public Affairs and working for 15 years in public-policy, political consulting and campaign management in the Mountain West. He currently specializes in strategy development, communications, and leadership driven by collaboration and trust.

Panel Presentations:

The Challenge of Democracy in a Climate Emergency

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Author and Activist

Aya de León, Berkeley’s current Poet Laureate, who has published ten novels and teaches creative writing UC Berkeley, co-founded Fighting Chance Books to provide a forum for writers who want to tell the story of how we can still save our planet. Aya and her work have been featured in a wide range of prominent publications, including The NY Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Ebony, and Def Poetry. Her social justice activism has spanned four decades, including working on climate, race, gender, harm reduction, and anti-nuclear issues. In 2022, she organized a groundbreaking online conference: “Black Literature vs. the Climate Emergency.”.

Panel Presentations:

Community Conversations: Electoral Justice as Climate Justice in 2024

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Rebalancing Yin and Yang to Reclaim our Human Wholeness

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

The Black Hive: Black Futures in the Era of Climate Change

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Book Signings with Pegasus Books

March 30th | 6:15 pm to 7:15 pm

Indigenous Climate Action
Co-Founder and Executive Director

Eriel Tchekwie Deranger (Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation), a leading global figure in Indigenous Rights and Climate Justice activism, is the co-founder and Executive Director of Indigenous Climate Action and is a member of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change. She also sits on a number of boards of notable non-profit organizations (including Bioneers) and activist groups. She has organized divest movements, lobbied government officials, led mass mobilizations against the fossil fuel industry, written extensively for a range of publications and been featured in documentary films (including Elemental).

Panel Presentations:

Closing the Gates to Hell: A Global Plan to Phase Out Fossil Fuels and Accelerate a Just Transition

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Indigenous Forum – From the Bottom Up: How Indigenous Action is Affecting Climate Change

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Bio coming soon.

The Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company (DAYPC) is a diverse group of teens that collaborates with professional artists to create dynamic, original productions. Combining hip hop, modern and aerial dance, theater, song, and rap, company members take the stage to tell stories that stem from their lived experiences and express their visions for a world transformed. Since 1993, DAYPC has performed original work for up to 25,000 audience members annually, garnering critical acclaim and widespread community support for both their technical prowess and their commitment to advancing inclusivity, equity, and justice.

Keynote Address:

Performance by Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company

March 30th | 10:46 am to 11:58 am

Founder and Executive Director
MediaJustice

Malkia Devich-Cyril, a veteran, multiple prestigious awards-winning leader in the digital rights and freedoms and Black Lives movements, was the founding Executive Director of Media Justice, a national hub advancing racial justice, rights and dignity in a digital age. She is currently a Senior Fellow at Media Justice and is a contributing writer to The Atlantic, Wired, TechCrunch, The Washington Post, Truthout and other prominent publications. Devich-Cyril is regularly a featured speaker on issues of media, technology and race, and has appeared in three documentary films including the Oscar nominated 13th, directed by Ava DuVernay. And, as the newly widowed spouse of comedian and editor Alana Devich-Cyril, who died following an intense battle with cancer, Malkia Devich-Cyril now works to transform the public narrative on grief and equity in America.

Creator
Grieve and Breathe

Amber Deylon, a council facilitator, is the creator of Grieve and Breathe, a sacred ceremony that combines ritual, council and breathwork to help participants release grief and trauma stored in their bodies. She completed her Death Midwifery training with Bridging Transitions founders, Birgitta Kastenbaum and Cheserae Scala, and currently assists them in supporting families and educational retreats. Amber, who is also a board member of The New Normal Charity, came to her calling after her own journey with grief transformed her life and permitted her to move from surviving to thriving.

Panel Presentations:

Tending our Grief: A Conversation and Ritual

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Tending our Grief: A Conversation and Ritual

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Tending our Grief: A Conversation and Ritual

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Activist Grief Circle

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Activist Grief Circle

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Manager of Disruptive Technologies Series and EngageNow National Youth Voting project
JETTIX.net

Ricky Diaz, whose parents are from El Salvador and who is the first in his family to attend college, is a UC Berkeley Senior graduating with a degree in Computer Science. He is currently managing the Disruptive Technologies Series and EngageNow National Youth Voting project at JETTIX.net, a Berkeley technology company developing products for the Multicultural GenZ Tech youth.

Panel Presentations:

Interactive Session – The Art of Ethical, Effective Persuasion

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Documentary Filmmaker

Owen Dubeck is a Santa Monica, CA-based avid surfer and documentary filmmaker whose films have raised $1 million+ for social causes, influenced legislation and been screened to audiences across the country. His films include: Free to Care (Audience Award at Austin Film Festival), Paperboy Love Prince Runs for Mayor and, most recently, Abundance. In the early days of the pandemic, Owen helped found and lead an initiative called The Farmlink Project that scaled from a tiny non-profit of college students into a nationally recognized movement that has delivered over 80 million meals.

Panel Presentations:

Film Screening: Abundance 

March 28th | 8:15 pm to 9:15 pm

Digital Media Specialist
HHMI Tangled Bank Studios

Alex Duckles, a digital media specialist at HHMI Tangled Bank Studios, has backgrounds in ecology, filmmaking and communication, including narrative models of science storytelling. He previously produced an award-winning documentary on destructive algae blooms and worked for PBS Education and PBS Digital Studios. Alex is currently focused on producing short-form video content that brings emotionally-driven science storytelling to platforms such as YouTube and Facebook, including the original YouTube series “I Contain Multitudes” about the human microbiome starring best-selling author Ed Yong.

Panel Presentations:

Film Screening and Discussion: 2 Episodes in the Wild Hope Series

March 28th | 6:40 pm to 8:10 pm

Civil Rights Attorney and Thurgood Marshall Fellow
The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights

Maddie Flood is a civil rights attorney and Thurgood Marshall Fellow at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the SF Bay Area (LCCRSF). Prior to joining LCCRSF, Maddie was a Supervising Attorney at UnCommon Law where she represented people in California's discretionary parole process. During law school Maddie served as a law student liaison to the Washington Supreme Court’s Minority and Justice Commission. Prior to law school, Maddie worked at Rockwood Leadership Institute and for Nancy Skinner in the California State Assembly. (lccrsf.org)

Panel Presentations:

Collaboration, Conflict, and Community: A Cross-Generational Conversation

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Senior Associate
Devoted Health

Odessa Flores-Vasquez, of Maya/Ojibwa ancestry, is a Native energy healer, dancer, singer, elder advocate and mental health practitioner who has spent her life “re-Indigenizing” rituals, ceremonies, and traditions to restore societal balance and promote collective and individual health. Currently, Odessa leads a movement of Elders in building and sustaining communities to reclaim their innate power as wisdom keepers and seven generation changemakers. Odessa is a key spiritual leader and Senior Associate at Devoted Health.

Panel Presentations:

Nurturing Connected Consciousness for Personal, Collective, and Planetary Health and Wellbeing

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Director of Farm and Gardens
Urban Tilth

Marcos “Chito” Floriano, who first worked the land in the corn fields in Pajacuarán, Michoacán, where his father is from, is the Director of Farm and Gardens at Richmond, CA’s renowned grassroots community organization, Urban Tilth. Driven by a desire to feed his community, encourage healthy lifestyles and end generational disease, Chito began his activist trajectory at Richmond’s RYSE Youth Center and also has a background in teaching photo and video production and as a touring musician.

Panel Presentations:

Richmond CA’s Groundbreaking Progress on Access, Resiliency, Mobility, and Policy

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Founder
Kahakulei Institute

Kevin Kahakula’akea John Fong, the founder, in 2021, of the Kahakulei Institute (“a team of bold leaders who work to weave people and possibilities into communities of belonging, healing and reconciliation”), is a cultural translator, facilitator and transformative justice advocate who previously founded and directed the Clinical HIV Program and Teen Clinic in Oakland and the organizational design firm, Elemental Partners. Kevin, who served on numerous boards, including for Within Our Lifetime, a national network to eliminate racism; is a featured host on the CNBC News series, Changing the Narrative, and is the author of: The Five Elements: An East Asian Approach to Achieve Organizational Health, Professional Growth, and Personal Well-Being.

Panel Presentations:

Community Conversations – The Five Elements: An East Asian Approach to Achieving Balance in our Communities

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Book Signings with Pegasus Books

March 29th | 6:15 pm to 7:15 pm

Food and Farming Program Director
Ecology Center

Minni Forman, MBA, who leads efforts to support small farm-direct retail channels in California as the Food and Farming Program Director for Berkeley’s Ecology Center, was born in a subsistence farming family in Belize and went on to dedicate her career to the development and growth of resilient and equitable food systems. Minni previously co-founded an urban farm Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program in Detroit and implemented a trade model that directly connects smallholder Indigenous cacao farmers in Belize to fine chocolate markets across the globe.

Panel Presentations:

Seed to System: Food Equity Leaders Creating Systemic Change

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Chairwoman
Women in Cleantech and Sustainability

Sara Eve Fuentes, Chairwoman of Women in Clean Tech and Sustainability, is the founder and President of SmartWaste, a minority women-owned and operated start-up with a focus on Waste Technologies, Waste Systems and Vendor Management for Zero Waste programs with core values of “transparency, circularity, and people." With 10 years of experience in the waste and recycling industry, Sara has become a dynamic leader in abating commercial waste as well as a passionate advocate for women.

Panel Presentations:

Women in Clean/Green Tech Shattering the Glass Ceiling

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Member
SPOKES

Rose America Garcia, a 17-year-old Nicaraguan-American poet from San Leandro, California, was one of the founders of her school’s poetry club and was recognized as a 2023 Alameda County Youth Poet Laureate Finalist. Rose is a member of SPOKES, a Bay Area cohort of youth leaders and creators affiliated with the San Francisco-based organization, Youth Speaks.

Panel Presentations:

Youth Leadership Program – Youth Speaks/Spoken Word Poetry 

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Author

Hilary Giovale, descended from Celtic, Germanic, Nordic, and Indigenous peoples of ancient Europe, describes herself as a “ninth-generation settler” and “reparationist” who seeks to “divest from whiteness” and follow Indigenous and Black leadership in support of human rights, environmental justice and equitable futures. She is the author of Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers Toward Truth, Healing, and Repair.

Panel Presentations:

Youth Leadership Program – Building Our Capacity for Unity: Who Are We Beyond Whiteness and How Do We Journey There?

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Percussionist and Drummer

Michaelle Goerlitz, a San Francisco Bay Area-based highly versatile percussionist and drummer, has played with a wide range of artists, including: VNote Ensemble, ‘Chelle & Friends, Mark Levine, Tammy Hall, Rhiannon, Yair Dalal, Barbara Higbie, Jami Sieber, Roger Glenn, Mimi Fox and Samba Rio. She also co-founded two long-lived Bay Area groups, the Blazing Redheads and Wild Mango, and she teaches extensively, both privately and at music camps and schools.

Digital Editor
Bay Nature

Kate Golden is digital editor of Bay Nature, a nonprofit that connects Bay Area residents with nature through environmental journalism. She leads BN's Wild Billions reporting project, exploring the local impact of transformational federal money for nature. She has a background in investigative environmental and data reporting. Her work has appeared in Sierra, The Atlantic, Hakai, the Washington Post and on KQED. She's also a sailor, swimmer, angler, and artist: obsessed with all things water-related.

Panel Presentations:

Stewardship For All

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Filmmaker

Rick Goldsmith is a San Francisco Bay Area filmmaker who has been making documentaries for four decades. Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink is the third of his trilogy of films focusing on journalism, following Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press and The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (co-produced/co-directed with Judith Ehrlich), both Academy Award nominees for Best Documentary Feature and numerous other awards. Among Goldsmith’s other films are Mind/Game: The Unquiet Journey of Chamique Holdsclaw, the intimate story of a super-star athlete’s struggle with mental illness, and Everyday Heroes, a behind-the-headlines look at race, youth and national service through a eyes of a group of Americorps volunteers.

Panel Presentations:

Film Screening: Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink

March 29th | 8:40 pm to 10:35 pm

Community Organizer, Author

Britt Gondolfi, born and raised in Southeast Louisiana, is a children's book author, community organizer, and mother. Since 2017, Britt has worked with the Bioneers Intercultural Conversation Program, facilitating programming for students from Atlanta, Bogalusa, and Houma. While in law school, Britt supported the Bioneers Rights of Nature initiative by researching the intersection of tribal sovereignty and Federal Indian law facilitating workshops on the Rights of Nature at the Ho-Chunk and Mashpee Wampanoag nations. She recently took a stand for women's rights, running a fierce campaign for State Senate in Louisiana. Her first Children's book, "Look Up! Fontaine the Pigeon Starts a Revolution," is a hilarious social commentary on digital distraction and Nature's fight to save us from ourselves.

Panel Presentations:

Indigenous Forum – Native Youth Organizing for the Rights of Nature

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

President
Bioneers

Teo Grossman, President of Bioneers, previously worked on a range of projects from federal range management to state-level assessments of long-range planning to applied research on topics including climate change adaptation, ecosystem services, biodiversity, and ecological networks. A Doris Duke Conservation Fellow during graduate school, Teo holds an MS in Environmental Science & Management from UC-Santa Barbara.

Panel Presentations:

Healing the Land, Healing the People: Responding to Current Crises with Reconnection and Regeneration

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Introducing:

Erica Gies – The Slow Water Movement: How to Thrive in an Age of Drought and Deluge

March 30th | 11:19 am to 11:41 am

Living Pantry Coordinator
The Butterfly Movement

Lauren Gucik, a holistic educator and event coordinator currently coordinating The Living Pantry with the Butterfly Movement, is passionate about growing food sovereignty and restoring cultural and ancestral food ways. Lauren says that she “is dedicated to the personal and collective work white people must do to dismantle and unlearn whiteness and birth better relationships with the Earth and all People.”

Panel Presentations:

Youth Leadership Program – Building Our Capacity for Unity: Who Are We Beyond Whiteness and How Do We Journey There?

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Program Manager
UCSF's Hub of Positive Reproductive and Sexual Health (HIVE)

Cynthia Gutierrez, an Oakland-based, award winning first-generation Indigenous Nicaraguan/Salvadoran reproductive justice organizer, full spectrum doula, cultural strategist and writer is currently Program Manager for the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Hub of Positive Reproductive and Sexual Health (HIVE) and Team Lily programs, as well as an abortion storyteller with We Testify. Cynthia also serves on the boards for ACCESS Reproductive Justice, SisterSong, and Ineedana; and her work at the intersection of reproductive, disability and environmental justice has been featured in many leading media, including: The New York Times, The Lily, Elle Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Rewire News Group, etc.

Panel Presentations:

Advancing Reproductive Justice: Defending Abortion, Bodily Autonomy & Democracy

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Restorative Justice Circle Trainer

Michelle Gutierrez, a restorative justice circle trainer and certified facilitative conflict resolution mediator, works with individuals and organizations ready to embrace leadership and center issues of racial and economic equity and harm reduction. A contributor to the upcoming book: Colorizing Restorative Justice II, Michelle created the program, "The Art of Fighting Well" to help people navigate conflict, and previously co-founded Hidden Water, which sought to address the epidemic of child sexual abuse.

Panel Presentations:

Hope is a Discipline: Sharing & Listening Circle around Palestine/Israel

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Hope is a Discipline: Sharing & Listening Circle around Palestine/Israel

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Hope is a Discipline: Sharing & Listening Circle around Palestine/Israel

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Co-Founder
Weaving Earth Center for Relational Education

David Hage is co-founder of the Weaving Earth Center for Relational Education and a member of the Teaching Team for Weaving Earth’s adult programs. He has been facilitating circles for youth and adults since 2006 and is passionate about serving others in deepening their own relationship to self, to others, and to place.

Panel Presentations:

Youth Leadership Program: Community of Mentors with Sage Lenier

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Youth Leadership Program – Community of Mentors with Marlowe Sam 

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Youth Leadership Program – Community of Mentors with Nikola Alexandre 

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Senior Producer
Bioneers

J.P. Harpignies, Bioneers Senior Producer, affiliated with Bioneers since 1990, is a Brooklyn, NYC-based consultant, conference producer, copy-editor and writer. A former Program Director at the New York Open Center and a senior review team member for the Buckminster Fuller Challenge from 2010 to 2017, he has authored or edited several books, including Political Ecosystems, Delusions of Normality, Visionary Plant Consciousness, and, most recently, Animal Encounters.

Panel Presentations:

Mapping, Protecting and Harnessing the Mycorrhizal Networks that Sustain Life on Earth

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

The Rojava Revolution: Women’s Liberation, Democracy and Ecology in North-East Syria

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Introducing:

Suzanne Simard – Dealing with Backlash Against Nature-Based Solutions to Climate Change

March 29th | 12:02 pm to 12:24 pm

Rae Wynn-Grant – Wild Life: How Personal Journeys are Essential to Sustainable Leadership in Environmental Science

March 30th | 9:47 am to 10:09 am

Executive Director
Children of the Setting Sun Productions

Darrell Hillaire, a member of Lummi Nation and former Lummi Nation Council Member for 15 years, founded and directed the Lummi Youth Academy for 15 years and is the Executive Director of Children of the Setting Sun Productions for whom he has written and produced many multi-media storytelling projects, including theatrical works, videos and The Friends and Relatives podcast series. He currently leads the Salmon People Project, a multi-faceted strategy to help save salmon and restore rivers.

Panel Presentations:

Film Screening and Q+A with the Directors – Scha’nexw Elhtal’nexw Salmon People: Preserving a Way of Life 

March 30th | 7:00 pm to 8:40 pm

Founding Trustee
Papawhakaritorito Charitable Trust

Jessica Hutchings, Ph.D., (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Huirapa, Gujarati) is nationally (in New Zealand) and internationally recognised as a leader and researcher in Indigenous food systems and Māori food and soil sovereignty. A founding trustee of the Papawhakaritorito Charitable Trust that works to uplift Māori food and soil sovereignty, she is herself a food grower and has been a member of Te Waka Kai Ora (the Māori Organics Authority) for 20+ years. A widely published author on food sovereignty issues, Jessica has been working at the crossroads of Indigenous knowledge, environmental wellbeing, and Indigenous social justice, organic farming and self-determination for 30+ years.

Keynote Address:

Indigenous Forum – Rematriation: Indigenous Women’s Leadership

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Facilitator
Spiral Journey International Facilitation Development Program

Mutima Imani is a social justice activist, life coach, and a Master Trainer and Facilitator of the transformational process, the “Work That Reconnects,” which was co-originated by Joanna Macy in the late 1970s. She is also a Facilitator with the Spiral Journey International Facilitation Development Program, which has trained over 250 practitioners from all over the world. Mutima, who holds a Masters’ Degree in Public Administration, has over three decades of experience working to motivate employees to increase their creativity and productivity and in healing conflicts that divide communities and teams.

Panel Presentations:

Interactive Session – Moving through Despair and Grief to Connection, Action and Passion

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Bio coming soon.

Panel Presentations:

Youth Leadership Program – Open Mic

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Chair, Department of Humanistic Clinical Psychology
Saybrook University

Theopia Jackson, Ph.D., a licensed clinical psychologist and past President of The Association of Black Psychologists, Inc., contributed to the Adaptive Mind Project and The International Transformational Resilience Coalition Climate Change Mental Wellness and Resiliency Policy. She has held a number of leadership roles in higher education and is currently Chair of the Department of Humanistic Clinical Psychology degree program at Saybrook University in Pasadena. Dr. Jackson, whose practice is rooted in culturally grounded psychospiritual healing, liberation, and activism, has a long history of providing child, adolescent, and family therapy services, specializing in serving populations coping with chronic illness and complex trauma and is a key collaborator in establishing the Therapist-in-Residency Program, a clinical training program grounded in Black psychology.

Panel Presentations:

Exploring the Psychological Dimensions of Climate Change 

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Co-Founder
Climate Emotional Resilience Institute

Eva Jahn, LPC, a licensed psychotherapist working at the intersection of trauma, gender-based violence and climate distress is the co-founder of the Climate Emotional Resilience Institute and is an international experiential educator influenced by studies and work in climate psychology, experiential cross-cultural education, neuroscience, nature-based and contemplative mindfulness practices, group dynamics, and her dedication to Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects. As a faculty of the International Center for Mental Health & Human Rights she co-facilitates contemplative based trauma and resiliency training locally and internationally to communities on the frontlines.

Panel Presentations:

Exploring the Psychological Dimensions of Climate Change 

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

YES!

Shilpa Jain, who served as the Executive Director of YES! for 11+ years, working with social changemakers at the meeting point of internal, interpersonal and systemic change, also spent ten years as a learning activist with Shikshantar: The Peoples’ Institute for Rethinking Education and Development in Udaipur, India. Shilpa is committed to using simple human technologies to support people to free themselves from soul-crushing institutions and to live in greater alignment with their hearts, their local communities, and with nature.

Panel Presentations:

Community Conversations: Conflict Is A Gift

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Full Spectrum Labs
Co-Founder and Curator

Taj James, co-founder and Curator at Full Spectrum Labs, a Principal with Full Spectrum Capital Partners, and co-founder and a Senior Advisor at Movement Strategy Center, is a father, poet, strategist, designer, and philanthropic and capital advisor. Taj seeks in his work to connect community stewards with capital stewards in order to bring financial value into alignment with sacred values in ways that build community wealth.

Panel Presentations:

Advancing Reproductive Justice: Defending Abortion, Bodily Autonomy & Democracy

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Rebalancing Yin and Yang to Reclaim our Human Wholeness

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

President
One Fair Wage

Saru Jayaraman, President of One Fair Wage and Director of the Food Labor Research Center at UC Berkeley, co-founded (after 9/11) the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC), which grew into a national movement of restaurant workers, employers and consumers. She then launched One Fair Wage as a national campaign to end all sub-minimum wages in the United States. Saru has won many prestigious awards for her advocacy, is frequently interviewed on major media and is the author of four books including: One Fair Wage: Ending All Subminimum Pay in America and Bite Back: People Taking on Corporate Food and Winning.

Panel Presentations:

The #Next250 Initiative: Using the 250th Anniversary of the U.S. to Co-Author a Declaration of Interdependence

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

One Fair Wage 2024: Raising Wages, Mobilizing Voters, Saving Democracy

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Book Signings with Pegasus Books

March 28th | 6:15 pm to 7:15 pm

Editor and Producer
SNAG (Seventh Native American Generation) Magazine

Ras K'dee, a Native California Pomo/African musician, community educator, and lyricist, producer, and lead vocalist/keyboardist for the renowned and widely traveled Bay Area-based live world hip- hop ensemble, Audiopharmacy, is also the founder of The NEST Community Arts Center, (Forestville CA), an Indigenous Led, sustainably-built hub for all artists; and the editor/producer of SNAG (Seventh Native American Generation) Magazine, a Native owned arts and culture magazine.

Panel Presentations:

Indigenous Forum – Sustainable Practices with Native Professionals

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Executive Director
Warehouse Workers Resource Center

Sheheryar Kaoosji, Executive Director of the Warehouse Worker Resource Center (WWRC), has spent 20 years developing research, policy and campaign strategies to support sustained organizing among the most marginalized communities in California, including families facing displacement in San Francisco, farm workers in the state's agricultural valleys, misclassified truck drivers at the Port of Los Angeles, and workers and communities affected by the massive warehousing and logistics sector of Inland Southern California. He was behind the WWRC's innovative campaign model to organize workers in supply chains of  some of the largest companies in the world to demand a sustainable and just goods movement sector in Southern California.

Panel Presentations:

The Grassroots Anti-Monopoly Movement Challenging Corporate Power From the Ground Up

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Co-Founder
Bridging Transitions

Birgitta Kastenbaum, co-founder of Bridging Transitions, offers conscious living and conscious dying education (including end-of-life doula/midwife training) and provides end-of-life support centering emotional, spiritual, and collective wellness. A community gatherer, she uses story and ritual to reconnect us to ourselves, each other, the natural world, and the sacred. Her work invites us to embrace new paradigms for dying, death, and grief that are rich in wonder and love. Bridging Transitions hosts a variety of community events, including End of Life Midwives In Conversation a free, virtual monthly offering.

Panel Presentations:

Tending our Grief: A Conversation and Ritual

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Tending our Grief: A Conversation and Ritual

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Tending our Grief: A Conversation and Ritual

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Activist Grief Circle

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Activist Grief Circle

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Transdisciplinary Artist

Ruby Kaur, a South Asian/Panjabi transdisciplinary artist, land-tender/defender and healer works at the intersections of ecology, community and wellness, exploring how somatic (re)connection to nature is essential to personal and collective well-being. Ruby is rooted in a practice of seva (selfless service) to community, ancestors, and land.

Panel Presentations:

Youth Leadership Program: Queer Mixer – Gathering the Flowers

March 28th | 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm

Co-Founder
Gender Equity and Reconciliation International (GERI)

William Keepin, Ph.D., co-founder of Gender Equity and Reconciliation International (GERI), a one-time a whistleblower in nuclear science policy, is a mathematical physicist whose research on efficient renewable energy strategies for abating global warming influenced international environmental policy. He has published widely on scientific and spiritual topics and co-convened seven international conferences to foster collaboration between religions and science. Will is also the author of five books, including: Song of the Earth: A Synthesis of Scientific and Spiritual Worldviews, and co-author, most recently of the collection: Gender Equity and Reconciliation: Thirty Years of Healing the Most Ancient Wound in the Human Family.

Panel Presentations:

The Holomovement: Exploring the cosmological and sociological underpinnings of a “movement of movements”

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Novelist and Filmmaker

Laleh Khadivi, a northern CA-based writer and filmmaker born in Esfahan, Iran, received the Whiting Award for Fiction, the Barnes and Nobles Discover New Writers Award and an Emory Fiction Fellowship for her debut novel, The Age of Orphans. She has worked as a director, producer and cinematographer of documentary films since 1999, and her debut documentary, 900 WOMEN, aired on A&E and premiered at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. She has written pieces for The Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, VQR, and other publications, and is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant and a Pushcart Prize for her story Wanderlust.

Panel Presentations:

Writing for Our Lives: Storytelling, Resilience and the Power of Imagination 

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Program Manager
Chapter 510

Jahan Khalighi, a spoken word poet, youth educator and community arts organizer, leads creative writing workshops for personal and collective transformation in a wide range of settings, from juvenile detention centers to classrooms, from community centers to boardrooms. He currently manages programs at Chapter 510, a youth creative writing and publishing program in Oakland, CA. Jahan has performed widely, including at: TEDxSonoma, YBCA, Mission Cultural Center, Bioneers and Esalen; and some of his work has been published in Whoa Nelly Press.

Executive Director and Chief Scientist
Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN)

Toby Kiers, Ph.D., is the Executive Director and Chief Scientist of SPUN (the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks) and a Professor of Evolutionary Biology at VU, Amsterdam, where she runs a lab studying flows and structures in plant-fungal networks. Globally-recognized for her scientific work and named by the UN as one of the 22 scientists making a difference in biodiversity research and an ‘Innovator to Watch’ by Smithsonian Magazine, Toby has won numerous prestigious awards, including a SPINOZA prize (known as the ‘Dutch Nobel’) and an E.O. Wilson Award for Natural History.

Panel Presentations:

Mapping, Protecting and Harnessing the Mycorrhizal Networks that Sustain Life on Earth

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Introducing:

Merlin Sheldrake – How Fungi Make our Worlds

March 30th | 11:41 am to 12:04 pm

Executive Director
Mother Tree Network

Jana Kotaska, Ph.D., of mixed European ancestry and currently living on Qu’wutsun lands in British Columbia, has, since 1998, devoted her career to supporting Indigenous governance of lands and waters, i.e., land back. She is the Executive Director of the Mother Tree Network (MTN), which is working to protect and restore the critical rainforests of the Pacific Northwest. Led by renowned forest ecologist Suzanne Simard, MTN brings together scientists, First Nations of coastal and interior British Columbia and a circle of collaborators from a range of non-profit and educational institutions.

Panel Presentations:

Healing the Land, Healing the People: Responding to Current Crises with Reconnection and Regeneration

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Co-Founder and President
Fundación por el Futuro

Emanuel Kuntzelman, an entrepreneur, writer, philanthropist and activist for social transformation who has founded and/or managed numerous organizations in Spain, the U.S. and the UK, is the co-founder and President of Fundación por el Futuro in Madrid, Spain, and a co-creator of the Global Purpose Movement and Purpose Earth. He is co-editor of the anthologies Purpose Rising (2017) and The Holomovement:  Embracing our Collective Purpose to Unite Humanity (2023).

Panel Presentations:

The Holomovement: Exploring the cosmological and sociological underpinnings of a “movement of movements”

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Book Signings with Pegasus Books

March 28th | 6:15 pm to 7:15 pm

Founder and Executive Director
Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) International

Osprey Orielle Lake, the founder and Executive Director of the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN), works internationally with grassroots, BIPOC and Indigenous leaders, policymakers, and diverse coalitions to build climate justice, resilient communities, and a just transition to a decentralized, democratized clean-energy future. Osprey, who sits on the executive committee for the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and on the steering committee for the Fossil Free Non-Proliferation Treaty, is the author of The Story is in Our Bones: How Worldviews and Climate Justice Can Remake a World in Crisis.

Panel Presentations:

Closing the Gates to Hell: A Global Plan to Phase Out Fossil Fuels and Accelerate a Just Transition

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Book Signings with Pegasus Books

March 30th | 6:15 pm to 7:15 pm

Grants Manager
Mashpee Wampanoag Education Department

Talia Landry, a Mashpee Wampanoag tribal citizen, is a culture/history educator and independent videographer who holds several positions in her community. She is: Grants Manager in the Mashpee Wampanoag Education Department (implementing cultural and academic programs for tribal youth); the Youth Advisor for the newly-formed rights-of-nature youth group, Mashpee NEA; and President of the Wampanoag Community Development Corporation, working on issues including: preserving homelands, land-back initiatives, cultural revitalization, and tribal sovereignty.

Panel Presentations:

Indigenous Forum – Native Youth Organizing for the Rights of Nature

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Drummer

Deb Lane has been playing the drums for most of her life. Formerly a member of the Santa Cruz World Beat Band, Pele Juju, she performs with artists throughout the Bay Area and beyond. In addition to her musical endeavors, Deb is a leader in water-use efficiency and works as a Water Resources Analyst.

Co-Founder
Seed the Vote

Emily Ja-Ming Lee, a leader in electoral organizing with particular expertise in multiracial alliance-building, community-labor partnerships, volunteer engagement, multilingual field operations and ethnic media, is a co-founder of both Bay Resistance and Seed the Vote and is currently the Director of Seed the Vote, which mobilizes thousands of volunteers and activists across the country to support grassroots efforts in critical states that decide the outcome of federal elections.

Panel Presentations:

What the Hell Should We Be Doing About Rising Fascism?

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Senior Legal Counsel
Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights

Thomas Linzey, Senior Legal Counsel for the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights, widely recognized as the founder of the contemporary community rights movement, drafted the very first “rights of nature” law in the world (in Pennsylvania in 2006), and consulted on the very first rights of nature constitutional provisions (in Ecuador). Linzey co-founded the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, sits on the Board of Advisors of the New Earth Foundation and is the author of several books, including: Be The Change: How to Get What You Want in Your Community and On Community Civil Disobedience in the Name of Sustainability. Linzey’s work has been featured widely, including in leading publications including the NY Times, Mother Jones and the Nation magazine.

Panel Presentations:

The Rights of Nature Movement: Scaling Up

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Investigative Researcher
Electronic Frontier Foundation

Beryl Lipton, an Investigative Researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), focuses her work on government transparency, law enforcement surveillance technology, and other uses of technology by government actors. She has extensive experience using Freedom of Information laws and large-scale public records campaigns in her research. At EFF, Beryl supports the Atlas of Surveillance, The Foilies, and The Catalog of Carceral Surveillance, among other projects. She enjoys teaching others about the strengths and limitations of public records laws and discussing the potential and real harms of the surveillance state.

Panel Presentations:

How to Fight for a Fair and Free Digital Landscape

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Counselor
Concordia Language Village in Minnesota

Fernanda Lugo, a transdisciplinary scholar/activist with backgrounds in bio-behavioral health and environmental sciences, serves on the board of Eco El Paso and works with Citizens Climate Lobby, Move to Amend, and The Alliance for Just Money. Fernanda’s activism includes working on ecological health, land restoration, soil remediation, livable wages, healthcare, and dignified work for all. She also serves as a counselor for Concordia Language Village in Minnesota and is currently training to be Singing Tree Mural Facilitator, working on “The Singing Tree of a Just and Democratic Economy.”

Panel Presentations:

Youth Leadership Program – Singing Tree: Hands on Mural-Making 

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Youth Leadership Program – Singing Tree Mural Completion

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Rex Lyons (Deho Wih Da Dih: “He Gets the Message Through”), Onondaga Nation Citizen, Eel Clan, a former world-class lacrosse player and coach with the Haudenosaunee Nationals and Rochester Knighthawks, currently sits on the board of the Haudenosaunee Nationals. A business consultant and retired tradesman, Rex is also an accomplished vocalist and guitarist and current President of the New York State Blues Festival. His most recent endeavor is co-creating a 501(c)(3) for the Haudenosaunee Nationals Lacrosse Organization.

Introducing:

Oren Lyons – To Survive, We Must Transform Our Values

March 29th | 9:43 am to 10:08 am

Co-National Director
The Butterfly Movement

Brandi Mack, Director of Community Engagement with Designing Justice+Designing Spaces (an Oakland-based architecture and real estate development non-profit working to end mass incarceration), Co-National Director for The Butterfly Movement (dedicated to providing personal/professional development for black women and girls), and on the faculty of Biomimicry for Social Innovation’s “Living Systems Leadership” retreat for women, is also a holistic health educator, therapeutic massage therapist, permaculture designer, living systems thought leader, and mother of three daughters.

Panel Presentations:

Youth Leadership Program – Youth of Color Caucus

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Executive Vice President of Compliance & Risk
Radian Generation

Kellie Macpherson is the Executive Vice President of Compliance & Risk at Radian Generation (a firm offering professional asset management services to the renewable energy industry) overseeing Radian’s NERC (North American Electric Reliability Corporation) compliance and managed security services. For over 15 years, she has been a leader in the renewable asset space and has implemented 200+ compliance programs and completed 40+ NERC audits.

Panel Presentations:

Women in Clean/Green Tech Shattering the Glass Ceiling

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Musical Duo

MaMuse, a long-lived musical duo composed of the highly accomplished multi-instrumentalists (including upright bass, guitar, mandolins, and flutes), powerful vocalists, and brilliant songwriters, Sorah Nutting and Karisha Longaker, is dedicated to playing uplifting, heart-opening music rooted in the folk and gospel traditions that embodies a love of all life, a cultivation of emotional intelligence, and a desire for a world in which all can thrive.

Keynote Address:

Closing Performance by MaMuse

March 30th | 12:11 pm to 12:21 pm

Executive Director
Alabama Interfaith Power and Light

The Reverend Michael Malcom, M.Div., MBA, Executive Director of Alabama Interfaith Power and Light and an ordained United Church of Christ Minister, is: the former Senior Pastor of Rush Memorial Congregational UCC in Atlanta, GA; founder of the Environmental Justice non-profit, The People’s Justice Council; Environmental Justice Minister for the Southeast Conference of the United Church of Christ; and a board member for the Southeast Climate and Energy Network.

Panel Presentations:

The Black Hive: Black Futures in the Era of Climate Change

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Landreth Visiting Fellow
Stanford University’s Water in the West Program

Felicia Marcus, a major figure in California water policy, is currently the Landreth Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Water in the West Program working on issues including nature-based solutions, protecting and restoring instream flows, water rights, and water justice. Felicia was formerly: Chair of the California State Water Resources Control Board; Regional Administrator of the U.S. EPA Region IX; head of the City of Los Angeles’ Department of Public Works; Western Director at NRDC; EVP/COO of the Trust for Public Land; and a public interest and private sector attorney.

Panel Presentations:

Working with Nature to Boost Climate Adaptation and Resilience

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Executive Director
Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights

Mari Margil, Executive Director of the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights, works with civil society, governments and Indigenous communities in the U.S., Ecuador, Ireland, and elsewhere, to advance Rights of Nature frameworks. She consulted with Ecuador’s Constituent Assembly to help draft the world’s first Rights of Nature constitutional provisions. Co-author of: The Bottom Line or Public Health; Exploring Wild Law: The Philosophy of Earth Jurisprudence; and Bearing Witness: The Human Rights Case Against Fracking and Climate Change; her writing has also been featured in many leading publications including The Guardian, NY Times and New Yorker. (centerforenvironmentalrights.org)

Panel Presentations:

The Rights of Nature Movement: Scaling Up

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Founder
Unity Through Creativity Foundation

Laurie Marshall is an author, artist and innovator with 40+ years’ experience empowering youth and adults through creative collaboration with her “Peace Building through Art inspired by Nature” approach. A visionary educator, she has served mostly low-income children, families and their schools as an Arts Integration and Project Based Learning specialist. Founder of Unity Through Creativity Foundation and the Singing Tree Project, Laurie is a certified K-12 Art and Social Studies Teacher with training in the Waldorf Curriculum, Conversational Intelligence, Peace Literacy and Outward Bound. Her many clients have included NASA, FEMA, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of Interior, the U.S. Botanical Gardens, and many public schools, hospitals and prisons around the country, and, every year for much of the last two decades, Laurie has facilitated and exhibited Singing Tree murals at Bioneers.

Panel Presentations:

Youth Leadership Program – Singing Tree: Hands on Mural-Making 

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Youth Leadership Program – Singing Tree Mural Completion

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Woman Stands Shining

Pat McCabe, (aka “Woman Stands Shining”), of Diné ancestry, was adopted into the Lakota spiritual way of life. She is currently beginning the stewardship of a piece of land at one of the four sacred mountains of her people, as part of the “Rematriation Movement.” McCabe, a proud grandmother, has long spoken and taught widely, nationally and internationally, sharing cultural and spiritual insights.

Panel Presentations:

Rebalancing Yin and Yang to Reclaim our Human Wholeness

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Founder
Arts.Co.Lab

Arturo Méndez-Reyes is a cultural producer, curator, visual artist, musician, and community organizer advancing cultural equity in San Francisco. Founder of community empowering projects, including Arts.Co.Lab, La Diáspora Festival, and Urban Prophets Illustrated, as well as producer for the Mission Arts and Performance Project (MAPP) since 2016, Arturo has curated shows for the Exploratorium, Harvard and Cornell universities, and the United Nations. The recipient of many grants and awards, his work strives to create generative narratives to empower people through arts and culture for collective joy and liberation and to advocate for institutional policies and practices that center the voices of people from the most vulnerable communities.

Panel Presentations:

Artivism in the Age of Climate Chaos and Societal Instability 

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Interim Executive Director
If/When/How

Mariko Miki, an attorney, is the Interim Executive Director at If/When/How, a legal services and advocacy organization that seeks to help people in crisis, reshape the law, and build a national network of legal professionals working for reproductive justice. Mariko, who has been with If/When/How for 14 years, launched that organization’s Reproductive Justice Fellowship Program and established its Repro Legal Defense Fund.

Panel Presentations:

Advancing Reproductive Justice: Defending Abortion, Bodily Autonomy & Democracy

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Executive Director
The Praxis Project

Xavier Morales, Ph.D., MRP, with academic backgrounds in Regional and Urban Planning, Community Development, and Environmental Sciences, is Executive Director of The Praxis Project, a national non-profit dedicated to accompanying base-building community organizations to transform systems, structures, policies, and practices toward improved health, equity, and racial justice.

Panel Presentations:

Seed to System: Food Equity Leaders Creating Systemic Change

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Organizer
Debt Collective

René Christian Moya is: an organizer with the Debt Collective; the coordinator of the Tenant Power Toolkit; and a member of the Los Angeles Tenants Union. Former Campaign Director for the Proposition 21 campaign — a ballot initiative in 2020 to strengthen rent control in California — he has worked extensively on tenant rights, pandemic-era emergency protections, and social housing.

Panel Presentations:

Freedom Dreams and Debtors Unions: Introducing the Work of the Debt Collective

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Mayor Emeritus
Pinole, CA

Devin T. Murphy, a collaborative leader who dedicates his efforts to constructing a regenerative economy fostering prosperity while preserving natural systems and promoting a just, inclusive democracy, has 10+ years’ experience in environmental and civic advocacy. He has worked with Sol Community Village, Communities for a Better Environment, and The Black Hive@Movement, and currently serves on the City Council and as Mayor Emeritus in Pinole, CA, as well as on the boards for MCE Clean Energy, the Association of Bay Area Governments, and the West Contra Costa Transit Authority (WestCAT).

Panel Presentations:

The Black Hive: Black Futures in the Era of Climate Change

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Senior Programs Manager
Wildlife Conservation Network

Zoliswa Nhleko, Ph.D., a wildlife ecologist and Senior Programs Manager at the Wildlife Conservation Network (WCN), with 10+ years’ experience working with threatened and endangered species, particularly rhinos in South Africa, focuses at WCN on conservation prioritization and providing support services for conservation start-ups around the world. Previously Dr. Nhleko worked for the South African National Parks as a junior scientist in world-renowned Kruger National Park.

Panel Presentations:

Coexistence with Wild Animals: New Frontiers in Wildlife Conservation

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Carpenter and Indigenous Environmental Activist

Ciara Oakley-Robbins, a Mashpee Wampanoag tribal citizen, is a carpenter by day and an Indigenous environmental activist by night. Drawing on her backgrounds in business management, construction and cabinet making and sharp entrepreneurial skills, Ciara, who grew up in the coastal area of Cape Cod and learned about the land and all its creatures from local elders, has become a youth advisor for the Mashpee Wampanoag Native Environmental Ambassadors, sharing traditional ecological knowledge with young people to help save her people’s ancestral lands.

Panel Presentations:

Indigenous Forum – Native Youth Organizing for the Rights of Nature

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

California Campaign Director
Economic Security Project Action

Teri Olle is the Director of Economic Security California, an affiliate of Economic Security Project, which works to build an economy where everyone has the freedom and stability to thrive. Teri drives Economic Security California's campaigns to expand direct cash payments, such as guaranteed income and tax credits, and to address the roots of the affordability crisis due to anticompetitive markets and corporate concentration, with a current focus on artificial intelligence.

Panel Presentations:

The Grassroots Anti-Monopoly Movement Challenging Corporate Power From the Ground Up

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics Emeritus
Oberlin College

Bio coming soon.

Director of Western Programs
National Grazing Lands Coalition

Bre Owens, a Los Molinos, CA-based rancher with an academic background in rangeland ecology and livestock production, is the Director of Western Programs with the National Grazing Lands Coalition, where she works with livestock producers and working lands conservation partners in all the western states. Bre also serves as board chair of both the CA Rangeland Conservation Coalition and Holistic Management International, and as the President of the Cal-Pac Section of the Society for Range Management.

Panel Presentations:

How Can Livestock Create Climate Resilience?

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Student
Las Positas Community College

Vivian Owens, 18, in her first year at Las Positas Community College, is a young aspiring artist, actor, fiction writer and poet.

Panel Presentations:

Youth Leadership Program – Youth Speaks/Spoken Word Poetry 

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Co-Pilot
X, the moonshot factory

Kirthika Padmanabhan has had a diverse work experience spanning various roles and industries (finance, healthcare, technology) on three continents. She currently works at X, the moonshot factory (an Alphabet company) as a Co-pilot for an Early Pipeline Project focused on climate tech. Prior positions include (to name only a few): Lead for Customer Success at Tidal, Program Lead for Adwords Sales Strategy & Support at Google, Analytics Manager for Trust & Safety Operation at YouTube, Chief of Staff for India Operations at Google, etc. Her most recent projects have included an early-stage climate startup focused on circular economy principles, and prior to that on ocean supply chain sustainability. Kirthika is also part of several women@ groups and is involved in philanthropic work in her community.

Panel Presentations:

Women in Clean/Green Tech Shattering the Glass Ceiling

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Impact and Communications Producer
HHMI Tangled Bank Studios

Alexandra Pearson leads impact-driven campaigns at HHMI Tangled Bank Studios, overseeing strategy development, key events and partnerships. An expert in social impact strategy and creative film distribution, she brings 10+ years’ experience in media and grassroots organizing. Previously, Pearson worked at Vulcan Productions, where she developed and managed impact campaigns for more than 15 films, TV shows and multimedia content, including the "Ghost Fleet" campaign, which supported the passage of congressional legislation improving the regulation of unsustainable and unethical fishing practices. Prior to Vulcan, she was an impact campaigns director at Picture Motion, where she contributed to more than 40 film and TV campaigns.

Panel Presentations:

Film Screening and Discussion: 2 Episodes in the Wild Hope Series

March 28th | 6:40 pm to 8:10 pm

Founder
Good Film Works

Beth Pielert, a producer/director/writer of television and documentary films, founded Good Film Works in 2001 and has been with Children of the Setting Sun Productions since 2018, co-directing and co-writing Scha'nexw Elhtal'nexw Salmon People: Preserving a Way of Life. Pielert’s many other documentaries include: Out of the Poison Tree, a PBS documentary about survivors of the Cambodian Genocide; and the award-winning films, The Corporation, and Claiming the Title: Gay Olympics on Trial. Under the Good Film Works umbrella, Pielert has produced, directed, and edited documentary films for multiple Bay Area nonprofits and arts organizations helping to raise over 1 million dollars to improve public schools in underserved communities and help eradicate homelessness.

Panel Presentations:

Film Screening and Q+A with the Directors – Scha’nexw Elhtal’nexw Salmon People: Preserving a Way of Life 

March 30th | 7:00 pm to 8:40 pm

Singer, Songwriter, Musician

Chris Pierce, a highly acclaimed, socially-conscious singer/songwriter/musician, has been described as “one of America’s most talented, gifted, and affecting artists.” He has toured or played nationally and internationally with such luminaries as Neil Young, B.B. King, Seal, Al Green, Steve Earle, Allison Russell, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Rodrigo y Gabriella, Jill Scott, Keb’Mo, Blind Boys of Alabama, Aaron Neville, Allison Russell, Sara Bareilles, and others. He has performed at many prestigious venues from The Kennedy Center to NPR’s World Café to the Newport Folk Festival. His most recent albums are 2021’s American Silence, widely viewed as one of the best folk albums of that year, and 2023’s Let All Who Will. In addition to his solo career, Chris Pierce performs/records with Sunny War as “War and Pierce,” with the Americana/roots band Leon Creek, and occasionally with the Black Opry Revue.

Keynote Address:

Performance by Chris Pierce

March 29th | 11:07 am to 11:19 am

Panel Presentations:

Chris Pierce & The Local Honeys: Double-Bill Concert at Freight & Salvage 

March 29th | 8:30 pm to 10:30 pm

Founder and Executive Director
Climate Access

Cara Pike, the founder and Executive Director of Climate Access, is a leading thinker in climate communications with 20+ years’ experience. Her expertise has been sought by nonprofits, academic institutions and government agencies including the City of Boston, the State of Vermont, EPA, FEMA, Urban Sustainability Directors Network, the Union of Concerned Scientists and others. Her studies and toolkits on environmental engagement translate complex issues into actionable strategies that are helping thousands of climate advocates more effectively frame sustainability issues and promote behavior change. Cara is also co-founder and Senior Communication Advisor to Climate Access’s partner organization, Re.Climate.

Panel Presentations:

Closing the Gates to Hell: A Global Plan to Phase Out Fossil Fuels and Accelerate a Just Transition

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Introducing:

Cindy Cohn – The Climate Fight is Digital

March 28th | 10:28 am to 10:50 am

Core Synergist
The Holomovement

Mariko Pitts had 20+ years’ experience in PR and marketing, including for one of the foremost agencies in Los Angeles, where she designed campaigns for many large corporations, but after a spiritual awakening in 2008, she shifted her career path away from campaigns that didn't serve humanity's best interests. Since then, she has served in directorial positions and on boards of a number of NGOs and led transformational coaching and training programs for 15+ years. She has designed many programs and events for conscious organizations around the world and was, most recently, Director of The UPLIFT Foundation and currently serves as “Core Synergist” of the Holomovement.

Panel Presentations:

The Holomovement: Exploring the cosmological and sociological underpinnings of a “movement of movements”

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Associate Director of Community Stewardship and Engagement
Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy,

Yakuta Poonawalla, the Associate Director of Community Stewardship and Engagement at the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, works to create programs and community partnerships that support  stewardship, volunteerism, recreation, conservation and community science efforts. Yakuta, who also serves on the California Landscape Stewardship Network’s JEDI Roundtable and on the board of TOGETHER Bay Area, has written extensively for the National Recreation and Parks Association, the Children & Nature Network, the Center for Humans and Nature, and Bay Nature, and was recently a recipient of Bay Nature’s 2024 Local Community Hero Award.

Panel Presentations:

Stewardship For All

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Professor of Pediatrics and Planetary Health
University of Western Australia

Susan L. Prescott MD, PhD., a pediatrician, immunologist, artist, and award-winning author, internationally recognized for her research into the early environmental determinants of health and disease, is: Professor of Pediatrics and Planetary Health at University of Western Australia; Adjunct Professor in Family and Community Medicine, University of Maryland, Baltimore; founding Director of the Nova Network; Editor-in-Chief of Challenges journal; and a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and the prestigious Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences. In addition to over 350 scientific publications, Susan is author of several books for the public, including: The Allergy Epidemic, Origins: Early-life solutions to the modern health crisis; and The Secret Life of Your Microbiome.

Panel Presentations:

Nurturing Connected Consciousness for Personal, Collective, and Planetary Health and Wellbeing

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Member
Emergency Committee for Rojava

Arthur Pye is a writer and activist based in the Pacific Northwest. He previously spent one year living in North-East Syria and conducting research on the Rojava Revolution. He is a steering committee member of the Emergency Committee for Rojava.

Panel Presentations:

The Rojava Revolution: Women’s Liberation, Democracy and Ecology in North-East Syria

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Senior Staff Technologist
Electronic Frontier Foundation

Cooper Quintin, a security researcher and senior public interest technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation Threat Lab and a board member of Open Archive, has worked on projects including Privacy Badger, Canary Watch, and the analysis of state-sponsored malware campaigns such as Dark Caracal. He has given talks about security research at prestigious security conferences including Black Hat, DEFCON, Enigma, and ReCon and has been published or quoted in a wide range of publications including The New York Times, Reuters, NPR, CNN, and Al Jazeera. Cooper has given security trainings for activists, nonprofit workers, and vulnerable populations around the world.

Panel Presentations:

How to Fight for a Fair and Free Digital Landscape

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Co-Founder
Moving Forward

Anselmo Ramirez, a Richmond, CA native, co-founded Moving Forward (a fiscally sponsored project of Urban Tilth) to uplift and empower the Richmond community through health, academics, and community service. Since 2017, Anselmo and the Moving Forward team have: held an annual 5K fundraiser event, raising over $60,000 for Richmond youth pursuing higher education; hosted 100+ community clean-ups and 100+ health and wellness related events; and supplied thousands of local youth with backpacks, school supplies, and shoes to ensure local youth feel confident and prepared when stepping into their classrooms.

Panel Presentations:

Richmond CA’s Groundbreaking Progress on Access, Resiliency, Mobility, and Policy

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Executive Director
Political Research Associates

Tarso Luís Ramos has been researching and challenging the U.S. Right Wing for 25+ years. At Political Research Associates (PRA), Tarso has launched major initiatives on antisemitism, misogyny, authoritarianism, White nationalism, and other threats to democracy. Ramos’ work has been featured in The Guardian, The New York Times, and Time Magazine, among other outlets. Before joining PRA in 2006, Ramos served as founding Director of Western States Center’s racial justice program where he exposed and challenged corporate anti-environmental campaigns as Director of the Wise Use Public Exposure Project. Ramos recently served as an activist in residence at the Barnard Center for the Study of Women.

Panel Presentations:

What the Hell Should We Be Doing About Rising Fascism?

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Member
Emergency Committee for Rojava

Anna Rebrii is a New York–based researcher and journalist focusing on the Kurdish issue in Syria and Turkey and Indigenous movements in Mexico. Her writing has appeared in The Nation, Jacobin, Truthout, openDemocracy, and other outlets. She is a member of the Emergency Committee for Rojava in the U.S.

Panel Presentations:

The Rojava Revolution: Women’s Liberation, Democracy and Ecology in North-East Syria

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Certified Facilitator
Singing Tree Project

Leslie Rein, a mental health counselor early in her career, became the head of a large, multi-level department in a Bay Area government agency but has focused since 2017 on visual art, a process which she describes as “a creative soul awakening.” She is a certified Singing Tree Project facilitator and is passionately committed to that approach to collaboration and “peace-building through process” to bring people together, heal common heartbreaks, rebuild trust, strengthen respect, practice acceptance, and cultivate love.  Leslie has facilitated five Singing Tree Murals.

Panel Presentations:

Youth Leadership Program – Singing Tree: Hands on Mural-Making 

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Youth Leadership Program – Singing Tree Mural Completion

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Executive Director
Menīkānaehkem

Anahkwet (Guy Reiter), a traditional Menominee who resides on the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin, is Executive Director of the community organization, Menikahnaehkem. A community organizer, Indigenous rights activist, author, amateur archaeologist and lecturer, Anahkwet has organized many cultural events, lectured widely, and written extensively on Menominee issues.

Panel Presentations:

The Rights of Nature Movement: Scaling Up

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director
Liberation in a Generation

Solana Rice is the co-founder and Co-Executive Director of Liberation in a Generation, an organization dedicated to shaping a vibrant, inclusive, and sustainable economy. Solana was previously Director of State & Local Policy at Prosperity Now where she built strong advocacy partnerships with organizations in the field and advanced dozens of policies in nearly half the states in the nation.  Before that, she served as Director for Financial Security Initiatives at PolicyLink.

Panel Presentations:

The Grassroots Anti-Monopoly Movement Challenging Corporate Power From the Ground Up

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Assistant Professor in the Applied Biology Program
University of British Columbia

Tabitha Robin, Ph.D. (Métis/Cree/settler ancestry), an Assistant Professor in the Applied Biology program at the University of British Columbia, earned her doctorate in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Manitoba, where she examined the role of food in Cree helping and healing practices. Her research includes how Indigenous knowledges can be used as food literacy; the reclamation of Indigenous seed knowledges; and factors that affect Indigenous food sovereignty.

Panel Presentations:

Indigenous Forum – Natural Law and Food Sovereignty

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Associate Professor
University of New Mexico College of Nursing

Heidi Honegger Rogers, DNP, FNP C, APHN BC, FNAP, a clinician educator, is: Associate Professor at the University of New Mexico (UNM) College of Nursing; Director of Interprofessional Education for the UNM Health Sciences Center; and leader of the Planetary Health Task Force for the American Holistic Nurses Association. Her advocacy and scholarship centers on climate change and health, equity and justice, nature connection, wellbeing, and planetary health. She works with a number of organizations, including: Nurses for Planetary Health, Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, the Global Consortium for Climate Change, Health Education Nurses Working Group, and the Planetary Health Alliance. Heidi is also a Facilitator with “the Work That Reconnects” and a certified “Nature and Forest Therapy Guide.”

Panel Presentations:

Nurturing Connected Consciousness for Personal, Collective, and Planetary Health and Wellbeing

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Interactive Session – Moving through Despair and Grief to Connection, Action and Passion

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Indigeneity Program Director
Bioneers

Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), Program Director of the Bioneers Indigeneity Program, previously served her Mojave-based tribe in several capacities, including as: first Executive Director at the Chemehuevi Cultural Center, a member of the tribal council, and Chair of the Chemehuevi Education Board and Chemeuevi Headstart Policy Council. Cara is also a highly accomplished photographer/artist.

Keynote Address:

Indigenous Forum – Rematriation: Indigenous Women’s Leadership

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Introducing:

Corrina Gould – Rematriation: Indigenous Women’s Work to Recover, Remember and Heal

March 28th | 9:24 am to 9:46 am

Founding Board Member
Jewish Voice for Peace

Penny Rosenwasser, Ph.D., a white Ashkenazi-Jewish queer activist, educator and intersectional feminist, is: a founding board member of Jewish Voice for Peace: co-teacher of an Antisemitism/Anti-Arabism class with a Palestinian colleague at City College of San Francisco; and on the Advisory Board of the Center for Jewish Non-Violence. Penny is also on Kehilla Synagogue’s DEI Team and leads Kehilla’s affinity group, White Folks Decentering Whiteness. She is also the author, of, most recently, the award-winning Hope into Practice, Jewish women choosing justice despite our fears.

Panel Presentations:

Hope is a Discipline: Sharing & Listening Circle around Palestine/Israel

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Hope is a Discipline: Sharing & Listening Circle around Palestine/Israel

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Hope is a Discipline: Sharing & Listening Circle around Palestine/Israel

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Co-Founder and Editor
The Colorado Sun

Larry Ryckman, co-founder and Editor of The Colorado Sun, was previously: Senior Editor at The Denver Post; Managing Editor at The Gazette in Colorado Springs; and City Editor at the Greeley Tribune. Ryckman also spent 22 years at The Associated Press (AP), where he was Assistant Managing Editor and a National Editor and Supervisor of the AP's national desk in New York. He also spent nearly four years as a Moscow correspondent for AP and helped cover the fall of the Soviet Union and supervised AP's coverage of the Columbine High School massacre and directed its coverage of the presidential election recount in Florida in 2000.

Panel Presentations:

The Struggle to Save and Revivify Local Media 

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Executive Director
Amazon Watch

Leila Salazar-López has worked for 25+ years to defend the world’s rainforests, human rights and climate through grassroots organizing and international advocacy campaigns. She has been the Executive Director of Amazon Watch since 2015, leading that organization’s work to protect and defend the bio-cultural and climate integrity of the Amazon rainforest in solidarity with Indigenous and forest peoples.

Panel Presentations:

Reforesting Hearts and Minds to Protect the Amazon and Mother Earth

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Adjunct Professor in Indigenous Studies
UBC Okanagan

Marlowe Sam (sc̓waʔnytəm), Ph.D., a Wenatchi/Lakes descendant from the Colville Confederated Tribes of Washington State (CCT), is an adjunct professor in Indigenous Studies at UBC Okanagan, a lecturer in the En’owkin Center/Selkirk College Syilx Studies Program, and an expert on Indigenous water rights in Canada as well as in traditional Syilx governance. He is also a traditional harvester and hunter who mentors his grandchildren, seeking to pass on Syilx ways on the land.

Panel Presentations:

Indigenous Forum – Listening to Wisdom Keepers

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Youth Leadership Program – Community of Mentors with Marlowe Sam 

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Founder
Our Bodhi Project

Sonali Sangeeta Balajee, an artist, organizer, and mindfulness/yoga instructor, is the founder of: the Spiritual Social Medicinal Apothecary (SSoMA), a spiritual and political project; and Our Bodhi Project, which focuses on healthy movement-building through enlivening the connection between social and spiritual wellness.  Sonali previously spent 13 years in U.S. local government, creating, leading, and managing social justice and racial equity initiatives and has had a long community organizing background focused on climate and racial justice, youth development, death-and-dying, and HIV/AIDS-related advocacy and service. She also currently serves on the boards of Bioneers and Worldtrust.

Panel Presentations:

Nurturing Connected Consciousness for Personal, Collective, and Planetary Health and Wellbeing

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Community Organizer
Urban Tilth

Arleide Santos, a passionate educator and community activist from Brazil who has lived in the Bay Area since 2017, is the Greenway Community Organizer for the renowned, influential, multi-faceted Richmond, CA grassroots non-profit, Urban Tilth.

Panel Presentations:

Richmond CA’s Groundbreaking Progress on Access, Resiliency, Mobility, and Policy

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Co-Founder
MPower Change

Linda Sarsour, a Brooklyn-raised Palestinian Muslim-American multi-award-winning racial justice and civil rights activist, community organizer, direct action strategist, and mother of three, co-founded the first Muslim online organizing platform, MPower Change; and Until Freedom, an intersectional racial justice organization. A national co-chair of the largest single-day protest in U.S. history, the Women’s March on Washington, Linda has been honored for her work by dozens of prestigious local and national organizations and institutions and is the author of: We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders: A Memoir of Love & Resistance.

Panel Presentations:

The #Next250 Initiative: Using the 250th Anniversary of the U.S. to Co-Author a Declaration of Interdependence

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Book Signings With Pegasus Books

March 28th | 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm

Director of the California Local News Fellowship Program
UC Berkeley

Christa Scharfenberg, Project Director of the California Local News Fellowship Program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, was previously Senior Vice President at the American Journalism Project (AJP), a venture philanthropy that invests in the growth of local nonprofit newsrooms across the country. Prior to AJP, Christa spent more than 18 years at Reveal/The Center for Investigative Reporting, serving as CEO from 2017-2021. She is also on the advisory boards of the Poynter Institute, the Legal Clinic Fund and Correctiv (in Berlin).

Panel Presentations:

The Struggle to Save and Revivify Local Media 

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

California Wildlife Program
Wildlife Conservation Network

Neal Sharma, Senior Manager of the California Wildlife Program at the Wildlife Conservation Network, focuses on connectivity conservation, incorporating experience with protected area planning and implementation, habitat restoration, land management, and linear infrastructure. Prior to his work with WCN, he was with Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST), where he focused on the organization’s efforts to establish a protected network of resilient ecosystems that enable wildlife to persist and adapt in a rapidly changing landscape and climate.

Panel Presentations:

Coexistence with Wild Animals: New Frontiers in Wildlife Conservation

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Founder
Santa Cruz Permaculture and the UCSC Right Livelihood Center

David Shaw, a whole systems designer, facilitator, educator, and musician, founded Santa Cruz Permaculture and the UCSC Right Livelihood Center, a partnership with the “Alternative Nobel Prize.” He supports communities locally and globally to transform their shared future through strategic dialogue and collective action.

Panel Presentations:

Community Conversations: Conflict Is A Gift

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Community Conversations: Trust in Elections

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Community Conversations: The Value of Your Body’s Wisdom – How Being Embodied Helps the Healing Process

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Community Conversations: Becoming Change Agents by Fostering Skillful Transformation

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Community Conversations – The Five Elements: An East Asian Approach to Achieving Balance in our Communities

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Community Conversations: Electoral Justice as Climate Justice in 2024

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Managing Director, Advocacy
Electronic Frontier Foundation

nash Sheard, Managing Director for Advocacy at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), works to assure that the organization's work is impactful, collaborative, and innovative. Before joining the executive team, nash led EFF's grassroots, student, and community organizing efforts, supporting member organizations of the Electronic Frontier Alliance in educating their neighbors on digital-privacy best practices and advocating for privacy and innovation-protecting policy and legislation.

Panel Presentations:

How to Fight for a Fair and Free Digital Landscape

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Leading Courageously
Founder and President

Eveline Shen is an award-winning leader and principal at Leading Courageously, where she supports BIPOC women, trans and non-binary leaders to step into their power. A key leader in the Reproductive Justice Movement for over two decades, she served as Executive of Forward Together for 22 years, but is now focused on teaching the Courageous Operating System, a framework she developed to help leaders of color face challenging situations with courage, confidence and strength. Eveline has created numerous experiential trainings that have engaged hundreds of mostly BIPOC leaders and activists, domestically and globally, and is the author of the forthcoming: Choosing to Lead Against the Current.

Panel Presentations:

Advancing Reproductive Justice: Defending Abortion, Bodily Autonomy & Democracy

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Community Journalism Director
Cityside Journalism Initiative

Jacob Simas, Oakland-based Community Journalism Director at Cityside Journalism Initiative, previously managed social-impact initiatives at Univision, established a youth journalism training program with Fusion Media Group, and was a Senior Editor and Director of Youth and Community Media at New America Media/Pacific News Service. Before journalism, Simas was a school-based counselor and program director for Latino youth and families at the nonprofit Horizons Unlimited in San Francisco’s Mission District.

Panel Presentations:

The Struggle to Save and Revivify Local Media 

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Spiritual Leader and Tribal Chief
Winnemem Wintu Tribe

Chief Caleen Sisk, the Spiritual Leader and Tribal Chief of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe since 2000, is an internationally known speaker on traditional tribal and spiritual issues including topics such as water and global warming. In addition, Chief Sisk is the Spiritual and Environmental Commissioner for ENLACE Continental, an international network of Indigenous women. Throughout her career she has focused on maintaining the cultural and religious traditions of her tribe as well as advocating for California salmon restoration, conferring rights to rivers and the protection of Indigenous sacred sites.

Keynote Address:

Indigenous Forum – Rematriation: Indigenous Women’s Leadership

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Volunteer Program Supervisor
East Bay Regional Park District

Jessica Sloan draws on her academic background in Geography and her passion for parks, conservation, and stewardship in her work as the Volunteer Program Supervisor for the East Bay Regional Park District for the last 4 years. She previously spent 6 years with the National Park Service.

Panel Presentations:

Stewardship For All

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Artist, Dancer and Somatic Movement Educator

brooke smiley, an Osage earth artist, dancer and somatic movement educator who works with Native and non-Native communities, national parks, and institutions worldwide to enliven public art experiences, seeks to capture the complexity of contemporary Native identity across generations through the collaborative creation of embodied earth markers and multisensory dance performances. Her choreographic and earth works are intended as embodied acts of change that can catalyze a deeper awareness of Indigenous, environmental, and social justice issues.

Panel Presentations:

Indigenous Forum – Sustainable Practices with Native Professionals

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Executive Director
RICH City Rides

Najari Smith is the Executive Director of Rich City Rides, a Richmond, CA-based organization he founded in 2012 that uses bike ownership and bicycling as base-building vehicles for healthy civic change, and that has been transitioning into the broader community-focused development through the incubation of new enterprises. For over 10 years, Najari and Rich City Rides have worked to unite communities, transform vacant lots into vibrant parks, make closed storefronts into worker-owned cooperatives and strip away the barriers to using bicycles as viable, healthy green transportation options.

Panel Presentations:

Richmond CA’s Groundbreaking Progress on Access, Resiliency, Mobility, and Policy

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Muralist
Climate Justice Arts Project

David Solnit is a longtime mass arts organizer and street muralist with the Climate Justice Arts Project. David uses the arts as a tool with movements and campaigns to help tell stories and win positive change. He has supported movements with art and direct action on four continents, using giant street murals, street theater and pageants, street art poster newspapers and art builds (people making art together).  He has co-created numerous art kits (Ceasefire in Gaza, To End Fossil Fuels) and editor/author of GlobalizeLiberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World.

Panel Presentations:

Artivism in the Age of Climate Chaos and Societal Instability 

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Author and Activist

Rebecca Solnit, one of our nation’s most influential writers, thinkers, historians and activists, is the author of 20+ books, including: Orwell’s Roses; Recollections of My Nonexistence; Hope in the Dark; Men Explain Things to Me; A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster; and A Field Guide to Getting Lost. She is also co-editor of Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility (coming April 2023) and writes regularly for the Guardian, serves on the board of the climate group Oil Change International, and just launched the climate project Not Too Late.

Panel Presentations:

Collaboration, Conflict, and Community: A Cross-Generational Conversation

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Book Signings with Pegasus Books

March 28th | 6:15 pm to 7:15 pm

Jacelle Steiding, 16, is a junior in high school in Medway, Massachusetts.

Panel Presentations:

Indigenous Forum – Native Youth Organizing for the Rights of Nature

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Drummer and Teacher

Mar Stevens has studied West African drumming for 19 years. She started her journey under the apprenticeship of Master Drummer Afia Walking Tree of Spirit Drumz and has studied in Guinea, Africa. She has led a number of drum circles for women and taught classes and workshops at Born to Drum and Drum Sundays in Berkeley. She currently teaches a children’s drum class at Meadows Livingstone School and leads the ensembles Sistahs of the Drum and Sistah Boom.

The Butterfly Movement

Minkah Taharkah, a Leimert Park/Los Angeles-based self-described “earth steward, multiplicitous artist and intuitive healer,” works with the California Farmer Justice Collaborative on network building, resource sharing, and overall support for new and established BIPOC farmers. Minkah also works with The Butterfly Movement, an enterprise dedicated to empowering Black women and girls through comprehensive pathways of personal development, fostering entrepreneurship via small business incubation, and advocating for social equity and justice.

Panel Presentations:

Youth Leadership Program – Youth of Color Caucus

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Senior Program Officer
Resources Legacy Fund

Laura Tam, a Senior Program Officer at Resources Legacy Fund (RLF), leads public policy and funding strategies for wildfire, climate, and community resilience in California through philanthropy, advocacy, coalition-building, and communications. Laura, who has 20 years’ experience in environmental policy and climate resilience, currently sits on the statewide steering committee of Smart Growth California, and previously served in advisory committee/board roles for: the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority; Resilient by Design; Friends of the Urban Forest; and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Prior to RLF, Laura was Sustainable Development Policy Director at the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), a leading urban public policy think-tank.

Panel Presentations:

Working with Nature to Boost Climate Adaptation and Resilience

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Executive Director
Honnold Foundation

Emily Teitsworth is the Executive Director of the Honnold Foundation, which provides grants to community-based organizations advancing solar energy access for marginalized communities all over the world. A passionate advocate for climate justice with over two decades’ experience leading organizations in the nonprofit and philanthropic fields, with a focus on sustainability, public health, and gender and race equity, Emily’s thought leadership on trust-based philanthropy and community development has been featured broadly at global convenings and in media outlets including Inside Philanthropy and The Guardian.

Panel Presentations:

Women in Clean/Green Tech Shattering the Glass Ceiling

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

First Secretary
Indigenous Peoples of the State of Para

Puyr Tembé, a leader of the Tembé Indigenous peoples from Alto Rio Guama in the Brazilian Amazon and the first Secretary of Indigenous Peoples of the State of Pará, is co-founder of The National Association of Indigenous Ancestral Women Warriors (ANMIGA) and is a lead protagonist of the new award-winning film “We Are Guardians,” which explores the work of Indigenous forest-guardians and Earth Defenders protecting the Amazon from illegal logging and mining. Puyr also works alongside other Indigenous women leaders, including Minister Sonia Guajajara and Federal Deputy Célia Xakriabá, to launch innovative initiatives to unite Indigenous leaders, policymakers and allies to ensure the full participation and leadership of Indigenous peoples, particularly women, in global climate negotiations on the path to COP 30 in Brazil.

Panel Presentations:

Reforesting Hearts and Minds to Protect the Amazon and Mother Earth

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

The Local Honeys (Montana Hobbs and Linda Jean Stokley) is a highly acclaimed musical duo from Kentucky that was formed a decade ago. Montana and Linda Jean are solidly anchored in and deeply respectful of the Appalachian culture and music they grew up in, but their innovative songwriting, storytelling and musicianship, while rooted in tradition, are not constrained by it, as their music is very much of its time, elegantly and powerfully capturing the beauty, struggles and complexities of contemporary Appalachian life. Folks in the know say these two women are poised to become not only the defining voices of their home state of Kentucky but the defining voices of a new Appalachia. Their most recent album is the eponymous, The Local Honeys, on La Honda Records.

Keynote Address:

Performance by The Local Honeys

March 28th | 11:13 am to 11:25 am

Panel Presentations:

Chris Pierce & The Local Honeys: Double-Bill Concert at Freight & Salvage 

March 29th | 8:30 pm to 10:30 pm

Senior Director of Conservation Programs
Wildlife Conservation Network

Paul Thomson, Senior Director of Conservation Programs at the Wildlife Conservation Network (WCN), specializes in highly threatened and endangered species, incubating conservation startups, and building leadership capacity in the environmental field. In addition to his work with WCN, Paul runs Save Pangolins, a project he co-founded to address threats to the little-known pangolin, the world’s most illegally trafficked mammal, and he serves on the board of the Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leaders program (of which he is an alum).

Panel Presentations:

Coexistence with Wild Animals: New Frontiers in Wildlife Conservation

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation

F. Mario Trujillo, J.D., is a Staff Attorney on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's civil liberties team, where he focuses on the Fourth Amendment and privacy rights. He is also part of the Coders' Rights Project. Prior to joining EFF, Mario was an attorney at the privacy law firm ZwillGen and clerked for a federal magistrate judge on the southern border. Before law school, Mario worked as a technology policy reporter at The Hill newspaper.

Panel Presentations:

How to Fight for a Fair and Free Digital Landscape

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Interim Co-Executive Director
National Farm to School Network

Miguel Villarreal, MBA, Interim Co-Executive Director for the National Farm to School Network, was born into a family that followed work in the fields for the first seventeen years of his life. He subsequently worked as a School Food Service Director for 30+ years and was a renowned innovator in bringing locally-grown, plant-based meals to schools. He worked with many partners, including a wide range of educational institutions, community stakeholders, health-oriented organizations, farmers, local and national policy makers, state and national groups, and foundations to achieve a high degree of success in creating sustainable, equitable, nutrition and wellness environments in schools and communities. He serves on numerous local, state and national boards of organizations focused on improving the “culture of wellness” in communities.

Panel Presentations:

Seed to System: Food Equity Leaders Creating Systemic Change

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Core Faculty, East West Psychology Department
California Institute of Integral Studies

Adrián Villaseñor Galarza, Ph.D., an “integral ecopsychologist,” international facilitator, teacher, author, and ritualist whose work weaves together the psycho-spiritual study of the Earth-human relationship, animist principles, and contemplative wisdom, is on the core faculty of the East West Psychology Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies, an adjunct at Naropa University, and founder of the Bio-alchemy Institute and Work That Reconnects Latin America.

Panel Presentations:

Interactive Session – The Ecology of Our Inner Landscapes

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Exploring the Psychological Dimensions of Climate Change 

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Director
Sierra Seeds

Rowen White, an Indigenous seed-keeper from the Mohawk community of Akwesasne and a passionate activist for Indigenous seed and food sovereignty, is the Director of Sierra Seeds, an innovative organic seed organization focusing on Indigenous seed stewardship and education. Rowen is the founder of the Indigenous Seedkeepers Network, which is committed to restoring the Indigenous Seed Commons across North America through restoring seed kinship routes.

Panel Presentations:

Indigenous Forum – Natural Law and Food Sovereignty

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Co-Director
Spiral Journey Work That Reconnects Facilitator Development Program

Constance Washburn, MA, an educator, community organizer and program designer, has been practicing “the Work That Reconnects” since 1994 and is Co-director of the International Spiral Journey facilitator development. Program. A founding member of the Elders Action Network and The Passageways to Elderhood Alliance, Washburn served as Education Director at the Marin Agricultural Land Trust and Marin Organic for almost 20 years and co-founded and directed the Marin Agriculture and Education Alliance. With backgrounds in Education and Theater, she is also a mindfulness meditation instructor in the Vajrayana Tradition and a longtime yoga practitioner.

Panel Presentations:

Interactive Session – Moving through Despair and Grief to Connection, Action and Passion

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Executive Director
Quivira Coalition

Sarah Wentzel-Fisher, Executive Director of the Quivira Coalition, a Santa-Fe, NM-based nonprofit seeking to foster resilience on working lands, has been involved in food and agriculture planning for 10+ years with a focus on supporting young and beginning farmers and ranchers. The Editor of Edible Santa Fe from 2011 to 2017 and an organizer for the National Young Farmers Coalition from 2013 to 2015, she currently serves on the boards of the Southwest Grass-fed Livestock Alliance and the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union. A farmer herself, she is a committed champion of resilient and regenerative agriculture.

Panel Presentations:

How Can Livestock Create Climate Resilience?

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Co-Founder
Greenpeace International and Hollyhock Educational Institute

Rex Weyler, a co-founder of Greenpeace International in 1979, Director of the original Greenpeace Foundation and Editor of the organization's first newsletter/magazine, Greenpeace Chronicles, served on campaigns to preserve rivers and forests, and to stop whaling, sealing, nuclear weapons, and toxic dumping. Rex is also the founder of the Hollyhock Educational Institute and an ecologist, author, and journalist. His books include Blood of the Land, a history of Indigenous American nations, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and Greenpeace: The Inside Story.

Panel Presentations:

Interactive Session –The Warm Data Lab

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Lead Advisor
Third Act

Akaya Windwood, a widely renowned, highly experienced, award-winning activist, leadership trainer and facilitator who served as President of the Rockwood Leadership Institute for ten years, is the founder of the New Universal Wisdom and Leadership Institute, which centers human wisdom in the wisdom of brown womxn. She is also: on the faculty of the Just Economy Institute; Lead Advisor at Third Act; and director of the Thriving Roots Fund. Akaya is the author of: Leading with Joy: Practices for Uncertain Times (2022).

Panel Presentations:

Collaboration, Conflict, and Community: A Cross-Generational Conversation

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Federal Deputy
The Brazilian Congress

Celia Xakriabá, a Federal Deputy in the Brazilian Congress and a co-founder of ANMIGA (the National Association of Ancestral Indigenous Women Warriors), is leading the Planet Caucus of global parliamentarians committed to climate action, biodiversity and the rights of Indigenous and traditional communities on the path to COP30 in Brazil.

Panel Presentations:

Reforesting Hearts and Minds to Protect the Amazon and Mother Earth

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Executive Director
Awi’nakola Foundation

Yakawilas Coreen Child, a member of the Kwakiutl (Kwagu’ł) First Nation who traces her lineage to times before contact and carries many ancestral lines across Kwak’wala-speaking Nations, has served multiple terms as an elected Chief Counsellor and in many leadership positions advocating for Indigenous rights and title for many communities across British Columbia and Canada, as well as for the rights of Indigenous women and girls, and language and cultural revitalization. Currently the Executive Director of the Awi’nakola Foundation, Coreen is also a traditional singer, dancer, and cultural educator.

Panel Presentations:

Healing the Land, Healing the People: Responding to Current Crises with Reconnection and Regeneration

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm