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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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".

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”.

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).

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.