Thursday, March 27th
Welcome to The Chrysalis Project, an immersive workshop designed to ignite personal transformation and foster leadership through dynamic, collaborative artmaking. We’ll dive into wire-sculpting and reflective writing in which we weave our unique stories into a collaborative art piece. This workshop isn’t just about learning a craft, it’s about embracing our roles as leaders and change-makers in our communities. As we twist and shape wire, we’ll also weave connections with other young visionaries, collaboratively crafting art and a collective vision. Come discover how the act of making can shift us from passive onlookers to active creators of our futures. No artistic experience necessary. With Chrysalis creator Carrie Ziegler.
NOTE: This workshop will initiate the art project, which will continue with drop-in sessions on Friday & Saturday for youth to continue working on the collaborative project throughout the conference weekend.
March 27th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Kinzie Room, Brower Center
Panelists
Carrie Ziegler
Artist
Carrie Ziegler, an international artist and leader in collaborative art initiatives, seeks to harness the collective power of art to drive social and environmental transformation. Through her Art in Action initiatives, she collaborates with local governments, organizations, and educational institutions to create multi-dimensional works that blend participant creativity with pressing societal issues, inspiring active engagement to bring communities together to create lasting change. The Chrysalis Project, now a global initiative, initially contributed to the passing of the Thurston County, WA, Climate Mitigation Plan, and the Plastic Whale Project played a pivotal role in the successful passing of a local ban on single-use plastic bags.
Discover the profound ability of music and movement to inspire resilience, healing, and transformation in this soulful workshop led by Rising Appalachia. Drawing from their acclaimed Folk Choir master class, sisters Leah and Chloe Smith invite you into an immersive exploration of how art and sound can hold space for beauty, hardship and disaster alike. This workshop weaves together community singing, storytelling, and embodied practices to tap into the universal language of music as a means of connection and catharsis. Learn how to use your voice as a tool for personal and collective empowerment, exploring melodies, harmonies, and movement rooted in folk traditions and global rhythms. Together, we will explore how music can be a balm in times of struggle, and a celebration in moments of Joy.
March 27th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Lotus Cafe, Dharma College
Panelists
Rising Appalachia
Internationally Touring Folk Ensemble
Rising Appalachia, the brainchild of Atlanta-raised sisters Leah Song and Chloe Smith, rooted in the rich musical traditions of their family and region, is an internationally touring folk ensemble with a passionate global following. Eschewing industry norms, they have independently forged their own exemplary, deeply ethical, value-driven path for 16 years, producing seven albums and conducting tours around the world while simultaneously immersing themselves in community-building, cultural exchange programs, and music gathering and sharing everywhere they go. Their most recent album (their first of carefully curated cover songs) is: Folk & Anchor.
Come join us in a circle to explore how surviving and thriving in these difficult times requires expanding our ability to pause our busy lives and be present with grief. In naming our losses and mourning together we will get to experience grief’s potential for solace, regeneration and transformation. Through basic breathing practice, intimate sharing, guided group conversation, and a simple ritual with elements from nature, we will touch into the gifts of connection and healing available when we take time to honor our losses and tend to our grief in community. Facilitated by death/grief educators and community gatherers, Anneke Campbell, Asha Kohli and Nisha Arcadia Shah.
We invite you to bring a sacred item to place on our collective altar—a token that holds meaning for you. This altar will hold us as we tend to our grief, weaving our individual stories into a shared tapestry of honoring and healing.
March 27th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Insight Room, Dharma College
Panelists
Anneke Campbell
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, co-authored (with Thomas Linzey): We The People: Stories from the Community Rights Movement in the U.S. and edited Nina Simons' book, Nature, Culture and the Sacred: One Woman Listens for Leadership. Anneke also publishes essays and articles and writes and co-produces the Bioneers newsletter: Leading From The Feminine: Weaving The World Anew and has facilitated grief sessions at the conference for the past 5 years.
Asha Kohli
Executive Assistant | Bioneers
Asha Kohli, a life coach, movement artist, and practitioner of herbal medicine with ancestral lineages in the Andes and India, facilitates grief circles, embodiment immersions, and communal rituals. She is the founder of Kohlibri Creative, a healing arts project that weaves artistry and ancient ways to guide others in their journey of self-healing and empowerment through artistic expression and earth-based rituals.
Nisha Arcadia Shah
Public Health and Lifestyle Medicine Professional
Nisha Arcadia Shah, MDiv, MPH, RDN, a public health and lifestyle medicine professional, social movement and eco-chaplain, literary activist, and doctoral student in transformative studies, works on projects supporting literary, health, and social change initiatives and specializes in lifestyle research. She is also an avid land walker, backyard farmer, voracious reader, nature lover, and library volunteer.
ReParentive® Therapy, a somatic, experiential, non-hierarchical and non-pathologizing therapeutic modality that has roots in approaches to mental wellbeing that prioritize embodiment, mindfulness, liberation, and social justice, views the body as an ecosystem that reflects what’s happening in the larger society and in which resulting negative patterns can get encoded. ReParentive® concepts and approaches can be valuably applied to systems, leadership styles, activism and personal/spiritual growth, providing tools that permit us to heal at a deep level and shift those deeply encoded cellular and neurological patterns, allowing us to “spiral out” from an authentic, embodied place with radically increased efficacy. Come discover how ReParentive Therapy techniques and perspectives can enhance your life and work. With therapist, teacher and group leader, Pamela Rosin, MFT.
March 27th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm | Lotus Cafe, Dharma College
Panelists
Pamela Rosin
Founder | ReParentive Therapy
Pamela Rosin, MFT, the founder of ReParentive Therapy (an intergenerational trauma healing model), is an adjunct faculty member at the Integral Counseling Psychology Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and a Certified Hakomi Therapist who utilizes experientially-based modalities and a synergy of Buddhist and Somatic psychologies to cultivate healing in her patients. In her therapy, teaching and leading of groups, Pamela draws from her extensive and varied background, which apart from her formal studies, includes professional acting, a decade as a bodyworker, and many years of teaching Shakespeare in prison.
This session invites participants to explore the concept of “Cultural Currency,” a framework for exchanging value that centers creativity, care, and collaboration over monetary returns. Through storytelling, group discussion and reflective prompts participants will identify ways their personal and professional practices can contribute to building a culture of reciprocity and shared humanity. Participants will leave with actionable ideas for fostering transformative relationships and projects that honor cultural and artistic sovereignty. Facilitated by Sol Guy, founder of Quiet.
March 27th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm | Skillful Means Center, Dharma College
Panelists
Sol Guy
Co-Founder | Quiet
Sol Guy, an award-winning producer and director whose career in filmmaking, music, community-building, and support of artists seeks to demonstrate the power of art to heal and to catalyze social change, is the co-founder of Quiet, an artist-led community seeking a new approach to creative practice and support anchored in value alignment, artistic sovereignty, spiritual well-being, and reciprocity. Honored by National Geographic as an “Emerging Explorer,” Sol most recently directed the documentary about his family, The Death of My Two Fathers. He has also co-produced and directed a number of highly acclaimed projects in music, film, and TV, including the Oscar-nominated film Bobi Wine: The People’s President.
Since time immemorial, First Peoples have understood the need to center human-nature relationships at the core of their prayers, ceremonies and ways of living. How can we in the modern, industrialized world, so frequently cut off from the natural world, draw from that ancestral wisdom to repair our severed ties to the rest of the web of life? Without recovering that deep understanding that we are not separate from nature but completely embedded in it, our efforts to prevent the unraveling of our ecosystems and global climate will not succeed. Come hear from some inspired visionaries from a wide range of backgrounds as they share their perspectives on how to re-awaken that sacred spark. With: Haley Mellin, renowned artist and conservationist; Willow Defebaugh, co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Atmos; Pat McCabe, a Diné mother, grandmother, activist, artist, writer, and ceremonial leader. Hosted by the Program Director of Bioneers Learning, patience kamau.
March 27th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm | Freight & Salvage
Panelists
Pat McCabe
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.
patience kamau
Program Director, Bioneers Learning | Bioneers
patience kamau, born and raised in central Kenya, a self-described “peacebuilder-conservationist,” is the Program Director of the Bioneers Learning program, a new online course and connection platform for activists, innovators, and anyone seeking knowledge and tools to manifest solutions for people and planet.
Haley Mellin
Artist and Land Conservationist
Haley Mellin, PhD, is an artist focusing on painting and land conservation. In 2017, she founded Art into Acres, a non-profit supporting permanent land conservation on behalf of the arts. Indigenous-led and community-led protected areas are the focus, and the initiative has supported the designation of about 70 million acres of new protection. Haley initiated the first environmental council and carbon emissions calculations at U.S. art museums, and juried the inaugural National Endowment for the Humanities climate grants. She is the co-author of Conservation Imperatives published last year in Frontiers. Her painting is observational and done outdoors. Haley advocates for environmental justice for all life, and was mentored by Dr. Thomas Lovejoy, Chandra Pai and the South African artists rosenclaire.
Willow Defebaugh
Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief | Atmos
Willow Defebaugh, Brooklyn-based co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Atmos Magazine, an award-winning climate and culture media platform that tells stories about the environment through a lens of creativity, is also the author of The Overview, a deep ecology newsletter and book. A lifelong student of nature who graduated with a degree in creative writing from the University of Michigan, her work has been widely published, including in: Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Teen Vogue, V Magazine, Interview, i-D, BBC, The Guardian, them, and New York Magazine.
An immersive and poetic film centered on iconic shaman Davi Kopenawa and the Yanomami community of Watoriki in the Brazilian rainforest, based on the book co-authored by Davi Kopenawa and anthropologist Bruce Albert, invites us to participate in the sacred ritual of Reahu, and challenges all of us in the industrialized world whose economic structures exploit nature for financial gain to rebel against the damage wrought by predatory extractive industries on the Amazon rainforest. Directed by Eryk Rocha and Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha. (Running time: 110 minutes)
March 27th | 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm | Goldman Theater, Brower Center
A love affair with chocolate has many wonderful benefits: it’s heart healthy, it elevates one’s mood, and some studies even suggest that it can promote capillary growth and increase energy, but most of all it is its rich, intense flavor that keeps us coming back for more. No wonder it has been called the “Food of the Gods.” The cacao tree grows near the Equator and is particularly expressive of its “terroir.” Flavors that range from fudge to floral are expressed depending on which region in Africa, the Caribbean or South America it’s grown. In this interactive experience, we’ll learn a lot about chocolate and get to sample a delicious range of chocolate flavors at a chocolate-tasting hosted by expert chocolate maker Gillian Goddard who has started chocolate micro-enterprises in 12 countries in Africa and the Caribbean.
There is limited space for this event, and pre-registration is required to participate, including a $20 fee. Please add to your conference registration if interested.
March 27th | 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm | Ashby Room, Residence Inn
Panelists
Gillian Goddard
Founder | The Chocolate Rebellion
Gillian Goddard, a community organizer and chocolate-maker, founded the Alliance of Rural Communities, a non-profit focused on “circular economy” principles, regenerative farming, and sustainable rural livelihood creation, in 2014. In 2021, she founded the Cross Atlantic Chocolate Collective, which unites farming communities from Africa, the Caribbean, North America, the UK and Europe. Goddard’s work seeks not only to enhance the wellbeing of rural populations, but to explore complex issues around power, decolonization and emancipation in grassroots, commercial, and academic spaces.
Friday, March 28th
Join Chrysalis creator Carrie Ziegler and fellow Bioneers youth for a session of collaborative wire-sculpture artmaking. This relaxed, hands-on session is a perfect way to unwind, connect with peers, and engage in a creative, collective experience. Dive in at any stage and help bring our community project to completion by the conference’s end. No prior workshop attendance or experience required.
March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Terrace outside Tamalpais Room, Brower Center
Panelists
Carrie Ziegler
Artist
Carrie Ziegler, an international artist and leader in collaborative art initiatives, seeks to harness the collective power of art to drive social and environmental transformation. Through her Art in Action initiatives, she collaborates with local governments, organizations, and educational institutions to create multi-dimensional works that blend participant creativity with pressing societal issues, inspiring active engagement to bring communities together to create lasting change. The Chrysalis Project, now a global initiative, initially contributed to the passing of the Thurston County, WA, Climate Mitigation Plan, and the Plastic Whale Project played a pivotal role in the successful passing of a local ban on single-use plastic bags.
Come join us in a circle to explore how surviving and thriving in these difficult times requires expanding our ability to pause our busy lives and be present with grief. In naming our losses and mourning together we will get to experience grief’s potential for solace, regeneration and transformation. Through basic breathing practice, intimate sharing, guided group conversation, and a simple ritual with elements from nature, we will touch into the gifts of connection and healing available when we take time to honor our losses and tend to our grief in community. Facilitated by death/grief educators and community gatherers, Anneke Campbell, Asha Kohli and Nisha Arcadia Shah.
We invite you to bring a sacred item to place on our collective altar—a token that holds meaning for you. This altar will hold us as we tend to our grief, weaving our individual stories into a shared tapestry of honoring and healing.
March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Insight Room, Dharma College
Panelists
Anneke Campbell
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, co-authored (with Thomas Linzey): We The People: Stories from the Community Rights Movement in the U.S. and edited Nina Simons' book, Nature, Culture and the Sacred: One Woman Listens for Leadership. Anneke also publishes essays and articles and writes and co-produces the Bioneers newsletter: Leading From The Feminine: Weaving The World Anew and has facilitated grief sessions at the conference for the past 5 years.
Asha Kohli
Executive Assistant | Bioneers
Asha Kohli, a life coach, movement artist, and practitioner of herbal medicine with ancestral lineages in the Andes and India, facilitates grief circles, embodiment immersions, and communal rituals. She is the founder of Kohlibri Creative, a healing arts project that weaves artistry and ancient ways to guide others in their journey of self-healing and empowerment through artistic expression and earth-based rituals.
Nisha Arcadia Shah
Public Health and Lifestyle Medicine Professional
Nisha Arcadia Shah, MDiv, MPH, RDN, a public health and lifestyle medicine professional, social movement and eco-chaplain, literary activist, and doctoral student in transformative studies, works on projects supporting literary, health, and social change initiatives and specializes in lifestyle research. She is also an avid land walker, backyard farmer, voracious reader, nature lover, and library volunteer.
Bioneers brings together a very diverse, discerning, engaged and reflective community, and the curated conversations around crucial topics we have been hosting recently (“Conversation Cafes”) have proven highly popular and stimulating. Each session begins with a very brief presentation by one of the conference presenters as a “conversation starter” to frame the topic, followed by structured group discussion. At the end of each session, a “harvester” who has carefully witnessed and “absorbed” what has transpired, offers us a poetic synopsis/recapitulation of the highlights of our time together.
Growing in Southeast Louisiana near a corridor callously but accurately dubbed Cancer Alley means growing up with the ecological grief and anxiety that accompanies knowing your home and ecosystem are harming you and your community’s health. When your connection to home and family binds you to a place riddled with toxic pollution and politics, what is the antidote? Leave and find a safe community, or stay and take up the work of your ancestors to resist these toxic industries? For those living in and around Cancer Alley, these choices can be a daily battle, but the best elixir for ecological grief is action.
This youth-led community conversation is for anyone living on the frontlines of endemic pollution or climate catastrophe who has wrestled with the choice of staying and fighting or leaving to find a better place to call home—and for anyone who wants to learn from and support them. With: Lael Kylin Judson from Rural Roots Louisiana; and Skye Williams. Facilitated by David Shaw, Santa Cruz Permaculture and UCSC Right Livelihood Center; and Tenika Blue, an advocate for anti-violence initiatives, social justice reform, and community healing. “Harvester:” Jason Bayani, author, theater performer, Artistic Director, Kearny Street Workshop.
March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Ashby Room, Residence Inn
Panelists
David Shaw
Founder | Santa Cruz Permaculture and the UCSC Right Livelihood College
David Shaw, a whole systems designer, facilitator, educator, and musician, founded Santa Cruz Permaculture and the UCSC Right Livelihood College, a partnership with the “Alternative Nobel Prize.” He supports communities locally and globally to transform their shared future through strategic dialogue and collective action.
Tenika Blue
Social Justice Advocate
Tenika Blue, a fourth-generation Bay Area native with 20+ years’ experience advocating for anti-violence initiatives, social justice reform, and community healing, organizes sacred circles as a central part of her work, employing a heart-centered approach to foster community resilience, empower individuals to connect with their roots, and embrace transformative healing.
Lael Kylin Judson
| Rural Roots Louisiana
Lael “Kylin” Judson, a sophomore honor student at The Dunham School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and a resident of Ascension Parish, has lost loved ones to pollution-related illnesses and works with Rural Roots Louisiana on Environmental Justice issues centered around Cancer Alley, a region disproportionately impacted by industrial toxicity. Kylin aspires to becoming an Environmental Lawyer dedicated to addressing systemic inequities and protecting vulnerable communities.
Skye Williams
Activist | Rural Roots Louisiana
Skye Williams, a soon-to-be graduate of Donaldsonville High School in Louisiana is an activist with the Environmental Justice, Eco-Literacy, Earth-care advocacy and community-building organization, Rural Roots Louisiana. Skye plans a career in nursing as well as Environmental Justice activism.
Jason Bayani
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.
In a time when people too often run from grief and struggle in order to seek joy, this session will delve into how coming into a more active, balanced relationship with joy and grief is essential to nurturing our sense of wholeness. Join us for a cross-generational conversation between panelists and among attendees, as we collectively explore how these twin pillars can frame essential practices for not just surviving, but thriving in a time of deep uncertainty. Facilitated by Akaya Windwood, Liz Ogbu, Benja Mertz.
March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Skillful Means Center, Dharma College
Panelists
Akaya Windwood
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).
Liz Ogbu
Designer and Grief Worker | Studio O
Liz Ogbu, a designer and grief worker, is an expert on transforming unjust urban environments. Her multidisciplinary design practice, Studio O, operates at the intersection of racial and “spatial” justice. She collaborates with/in communities in need to leverage design to address collective harm and catalyze community healing. Her honors include IDEO.org Global Fellow, Aspen Ideas Scholar, and Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Resident. Her TED Talks, which share a creative practice rooted in community wisdom and healing, have been viewed over a million times.
Benja Mertz
Performer, Educator, Folklorist, and Song-Leader
Benja Mertz, a performer, educator, public speaker, folklorist, and song-leader, is Board Chair of the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, an immigrant rights and anti-incarceration nonprofit organization. Also founder and Director of Joyful Noise! Gospel Singers in Sonoma County, Benja trained in song-leading through legendary programs such as Dr. Ysaye Barnwell's Vocal Community and Bobby McFerrin's CircleSong Schools and is part of a long tradition of writers and musicians at the forefront of social change in America.
4:45 pm: Sacred Activism: Reimagining Awakened Action
An Emergent Conversation
Although a great deal of human rights and ecological activism is rooted in secular rationalism and scientific materialism, there are also illustrious lineages of spiritually based social justice champions, including many prominent figures in the Civil Rights and various anti-war movements, and quite a few contemporary eco activists who draw from Indigenous teachings that view the entire web of life as ensouled. In this session, three leaders from very different backgrounds and generations working in very different fields but whose vision is anchored in a deep sense of the sacred will share their perspectives on how to bring one’s full heart and spirit to the quest for healing our relations with ourselves, each other, and the earth. With: Pat McCabe, a Diné mother, grandmother, activist, artist, writer, and ceremonial leader.; Sonali Sangeeta Balajee, Founder of Spiritual Social Medicinal Apothecary (SSoMA) and Our Bodhi Project, lifelong meditator, spiritual practitioner, artist, and activator; Kazu Haga, a trainer and practitioner with over 25 years’ experience in nonviolence and social change work, author of Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm. Hosted by Nina Simons, author, co-founder and Chief Relationship Officer of Bioneers.
March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm | Magnes Museum
Panelists
Sonali Sangeeta Balajee
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.
Kazu Haga
Author, Trainer, Practitioner
Kazu Haga, a trainer and practitioner of nonviolence and restorative justice who works with incarcerated people, youth, and activists from around the country and has over 25 years’ experience in nonviolence and social change work, is a core member of Building Belonging, the Ahimsa Collective, and the Fierce Vulnerability Network. Kazu is also a Jam facilitator and the author of Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm. He and his family are residents of the Canticle Farm community on Lisjan Ohlone land, Oakland, CA.
Pat McCabe
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.
Nina Simons
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.
Saturday, March 29th
Join Chrysalis creator Carrie Ziegler and fellow Bioneers youth for a session of collaborative wire-sculpture artmaking. This relaxed, hands-on session is a perfect way to unwind, connect with peers, and engage in a creative, collective experience. Dive in at any stage and help bring our community project to completion by the conference’s end. No prior workshop attendance or experience required.
March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Terrace outside Tamalpais Room, Brower Center
Panelists
Carrie Ziegler
Artist
Carrie Ziegler, an international artist and leader in collaborative art initiatives, seeks to harness the collective power of art to drive social and environmental transformation. Through her Art in Action initiatives, she collaborates with local governments, organizations, and educational institutions to create multi-dimensional works that blend participant creativity with pressing societal issues, inspiring active engagement to bring communities together to create lasting change. The Chrysalis Project, now a global initiative, initially contributed to the passing of the Thurston County, WA, Climate Mitigation Plan, and the Plastic Whale Project played a pivotal role in the successful passing of a local ban on single-use plastic bags.
Bioneers brings together a very diverse, discerning, engaged and reflective community, and the curated conversations around crucial topics we have been hosting recently (“Conversation Cafes”) have proven highly popular and stimulating. Each session begins with a very brief presentation by one of the conference presenters as a “conversation starter” to frame the topic, followed by structured group discussion. At the end of each session, a “harvester” who has carefully witnessed and “absorbed” what has transpired, offers us a poetic synopsis/recapitulation of the highlights of our time together.
The fervor of our ecological and social movements, while well-intentioned, can often shut people down, sometimes even turning them into opponents, but to achieve genuine transformation, we will need just about everyone. In this session, we will explore how to tap into our compassion, flexibility, curiosity, listening, engagement, and service to widen the possibilities for wellness for all sentient beings. The central question we will contemplate will be: How can we show up in ways that welcome everyone into change? Participants should be prepared to listen and interact in mindful, respectful conversations with open minds and hearts.
The conversation starter for this session will be Jeanine M. Canty, author and professor of Transformative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Facilitated by David Shaw, Santa Cruz Permaculture and UCSC Right Livelihood Center. “Harvester:” Jason Bayani, author, theater performer, Artistic Director, Kearny Street Workshop.
March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Ashby Room, Residence Inn
Panelists
Jeanine Canty
Professor of Transformative Studies | California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS)
Jeanine M. Canty, Ph.D., a professor of Transformative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) whose teaching intersects issues of social and ecological justice, ecopsychology, and the process of worldview expansion and change, is author of Returning the Self to Nature: Undoing Our Collective Narcissism and Healing Our Planet and both editor and contributor to the books Ecological and Social Healing: Multicultural Women’s Voices and Globalism and Localization: Emergent Approaches to Ecological and Social Crises. Her newest book (April ’25) is an expanded, second edition of Ecological and Social Healing: Multicultural Women’s Voices. (ciis.edu)
David Shaw
Founder | Santa Cruz Permaculture and the UCSC Right Livelihood College
David Shaw, a whole systems designer, facilitator, educator, and musician, founded Santa Cruz Permaculture and the UCSC Right Livelihood College, a partnership with the “Alternative Nobel Prize.” He supports communities locally and globally to transform their shared future through strategic dialogue and collective action.
Jason Bayani
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.
Come join us in a circle to explore how surviving and thriving in these difficult times requires expanding our ability to pause our busy lives and be present with grief. In naming our losses and mourning together we will get to experience grief’s potential for solace, regeneration and transformation. Through basic breathing practice, intimate sharing, guided group conversation, and a simple ritual with elements from nature, we will touch into the gifts of connection and healing available when we take time to honor our losses and tend to our grief in community. Facilitated by death/grief educators and community gatherers, Anneke Campbell, Asha Kohli and Nisha Arcadia Shah.
We invite you to bring a sacred item to place on our collective altar—a token that holds meaning for you. This altar will hold us as we tend to our grief, weaving our individual stories into a shared tapestry of honoring and healing.
March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Insight Room, Dharma College
Panelists
Anneke Campbell
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, co-authored (with Thomas Linzey): We The People: Stories from the Community Rights Movement in the U.S. and edited Nina Simons' book, Nature, Culture and the Sacred: One Woman Listens for Leadership. Anneke also publishes essays and articles and writes and co-produces the Bioneers newsletter: Leading From The Feminine: Weaving The World Anew and has facilitated grief sessions at the conference for the past 5 years.
Asha Kohli
Executive Assistant | Bioneers
Asha Kohli, a life coach, movement artist, and practitioner of herbal medicine with ancestral lineages in the Andes and India, facilitates grief circles, embodiment immersions, and communal rituals. She is the founder of Kohlibri Creative, a healing arts project that weaves artistry and ancient ways to guide others in their journey of self-healing and empowerment through artistic expression and earth-based rituals.
Nisha Arcadia Shah
Public Health and Lifestyle Medicine Professional
Nisha Arcadia Shah, MDiv, MPH, RDN, a public health and lifestyle medicine professional, social movement and eco-chaplain, literary activist, and doctoral student in transformative studies, works on projects supporting literary, health, and social change initiatives and specializes in lifestyle research. She is also an avid land walker, backyard farmer, voracious reader, nature lover, and library volunteer.
Modernity has stripped many of us of our ancestral lifeways. In this interactive session with Maija West and Hilary Giovale, we will explore the reclamation of matriarchal principles, practices, and ways of knowing. Calling on our supportive ancestors, we will create small circles within our larger circle, to sense this reclamation in our bodies, imagine it in our hearts, and begin speaking it into being. How can people of all genders come together and respectfully embody the ancestral teachings that connect us to land, water, and each other?
March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Lotus Cafe, Dharma College
Panelists
Maija West
Author and Consultant
Maija Danilova West, a retired attorney, author, and consultant with 25+ years’ experience advising nonprofits, businesses, tribes, and government agencies, specializes in utilizing reconciliation strategies to foster strong agreements within diverse communities. Her Latvian heritage has deeply influenced her leadership vision, emphasizing the importance of relationships, traditions, and honoring life's transitions. This cultural grounding, combined with her extensive professional experience, informs her work as a peacemaker. Maija's recent book, "Matriarch Makeover, a 30-Day Invitation," is an ecological call to action for women leaders.
Hilary Giovale
Author and Activist
Hilary Giovale, a ninth-generation American settler, descended from Celtic, Germanic, Nordic, and Indigenous peoples of ancient Europe, is an active “reparationist” who seeks to “divest from whiteness” and seeks to 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.
3:00 pm: The Vegetal Mind: From Plant Neurobiology to Panpsychism?
Co-sponsored by Thinking with Plants and Fungi Initiative, Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School
Cutting edge research is radically expanding our understanding of plants’ and fungi’s capacities to perceive their environments and make complex decisions in response. The groundbreaking cross-disciplinary Thinking with Plants and Fungi Initiative at Harvard was recently founded to draw from biology, ecology and the humanities to explore how inquiry into plant and fungal life could illuminate the nature of mind and matter and humans’ relationships to the more-than-human world. This session will delve into some of the most recent scientific findings on plant cognition and their implications for our own species as well as venture into more philosophical terrain, exploring such topics as the nature of intelligence and traditions that speculate about whether consciousness in some latent form might permeate the universe (i.e., “Panpsychism”). Hosted by Rachael Petersen, program lead for the Thinking with Plants and Fungi Initiative, Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School. With Luke Roelofs, Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, working on the ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology of consciousness; and Kristi Onzik, anthropologist of science, currently researching the field of PNCB (Plant Neurobiology, Cognition, and Behavior).
March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Goldman Theater, Brower Center
Panelists
Rachael Petersen
Program Lead | Harvard's Thinking with Plants and Fungi Initiative
Rachael Petersen, MDiv, Program Lead for Harvard's Thinking with Plants and Fungi Initiative, an interdisciplinary exploration into how cutting-edge science on plants is challenging our notions of mind and matter, previously worked for a decade in environmental policy, with expertise in climate mitigation, forest protection, and Indigenous rights, conducting fieldwork in the Amazon, Borneo, and Arctic Canada. She served as Senior Advisor to National Geographic Society and founding Deputy Director of Global Forest Watch at the World Resources Institute. A writer and translator, her work has been published in many publications, including Aeon, The Sun, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Tricycle Magazine, Peripheries Poetry Journal, The Rumpus, The Outline.
Luke Roelofs
Assistant Professor | University of Texas at Arlington
Luke Roelofs is an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, working on the ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology of consciousness. Their first book, Combining Minds (2019), explores the possibility that minds in general, and the human mind in particular, might be collectives of many mental parts. Their more recent work has explored the possibility of conscious minds outside humans and animals, the mechanisms of imagination, and the role of empathy in morality.
Kristi Onzik
Anthropologist
Kristi Onzik, Ph.D., a student of plants and an anthropologist of science, is currently doing ethnographic research exploring a small, interdisciplinary community of cutting-edge scientists working in the emerging and controversial field of Plant Neurobiology, Cognition, and Behavior (PNCB).
These times call on all of us to become more resilient as individuals and communities. In this engaging, highly interactive “playshop,” we will explore a dozen or so simple practices to help us calm our nervous systems, energize our bodies, and open to new possibilities. The practices span breath, movement, expression, connection and self-discovery. We’ll leave with a toolkit to create our own personalized resiliency routines, as well as practices we can share with our families, friends and communities. With: transformational coach, advisor, and eco-artist, Laura Loescher.
March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm | Lotus Cafe, Dharma College
Panelists
Laura Loescher
Transformational Coach, Philanthropic Advisor, and Eco-Artist
Laura Loescher is a transformational coach, philanthropic advisor, and eco-artist with home bases in Oregon and Vermont. Living a semi-nomadic lifestyle, she creates Earth Altars—impermanent nature art crafted from natural objects gathered in beautiful outdoor settings. Deeply committed to personal, community, and planetary well-being, Laura developed Resiliency Cards: 64 Simple Practices for Resilient Living, a unique card deck that combines her nature-inspired art with practical exercises to calm the nervous system, energize the body, spark new possibilities, and foster self-awareness.
4:45 pm: Interactive Session – Moving Towards Belonging: A Dance/Theater Experience
Co-Sponsored with The Belonging Resident Company
Come explore the radical idea of “belonging without othering,” as espoused by the Othering and Belonging Institute’s Director, john a. powell, through simple movement and theater techniques, and guided conversation. This workshop offers participants a chance to explore personal and collective experiences of belonging, and to dream a world in which everyone belongs in the circle of human concern. Instructors: Sarah Crowell and Sangita Kumar, Co-Directors of The Belonging Resident Company, an ensemble of artists and facilitators dedicated to making the revolution of belonging irresistible.
March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm | Skillful Means Center, Dharma College
Panelists
Sarah Crowell
Co-Director | The Belonging Resident Company
Sarah Crowell, a Black, biracial, lesbian/queer dancer/choreographer and artistic collaborator, sees her work in the world as the bringing of mindfulness and physical embodiment into movements for social justice and racial healing. A leader at Oakland’s Destiny Arts Center for 30 years who now does consulting work with the Othering and Belonging Institute, Dance Mission Theater and other organizations, Sarah is currently the Co-Director of the The Belonging Resident Company, a performance ensemble that centers BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ artists, facilitators, and musicians and aims to foster embodied experiences of belonging and dismantle systems of oppression.
Sangita Kumar
Co-Director | Belonging Resident Company
Sangita Kumar, an organizational development consultant and somatic coach, is the founder of Be The Change Consulting, a human-centered consulting firm that seeks to support organizations and movements to bring liberatory practices into their work. She is also the Co-Director of the The Belonging Resident Company, a performance ensemble that centers BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ artists, facilitators, and musicians and aims to foster embodied experiences of belonging and dismantle systems of oppression.
