Professor of Constitutional Law and Global Health Policy | Georgetown University

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

Award-Winning Author and Naturalist

Terry Tempest Williams, a writer, educator, and environmental activist known for her lyrical and impassioned prose, is the author of over twenty creative nonfiction books including the environmental literature classic, Refuge – An Unnatural History of Family and Place, and: The Open Space of Democracy, Finding Beauty in a Broken World, When Women Were Birds, and Erosion – Essays of Undoing. Her most recent book is the The Glorians – Visitations from the Holy Ordinary (spring ’26). A Recipient of Guggenheim and Lannan literary fellowships, Ms. Williams’ work has appeared widely, including in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Progressive, and Orion, and has been translated worldwide. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she is currently Writer-in-Residence at the Harvard Divinity School.

Faculty Member and Clinician | University of Florida

Dr. Cindy Nelly, DNP, APRN, CNM, is a faculty member and clinician at the University of Florida and a global health consultant with 25+ years’ experience delivering care and building health systems in austere environments affected by conflict, natural disasters, and large-scale displacement. Her work spans over 15 countries and focuses on emergency clinical care, workforce training, and operational leadership. Most recently, she has supported frontline health services in Gaza, strengthening emergency, maternal, and women’s health capacity while partnering with local and international teams to sustain care under extreme constraints.

Founder and Executive Director | Breast Friends Lactation and Support Services

Brandi Gates-Burgess, IBCLC, the founder and Executive Director of Breast Friends Lactation Support Services, a nonprofit that provides clinical lactation care, peer counseling, support groups, and community-based education to Black families across the Bay Area, also works as a hospital-based lactation consultant at Highland Hospital in Oakland. In addition to her clinical work, Brandi serves as the Community Engagement Specialist for the UCSF MILK Research Lab, where she co-developed the NICU Toolkit for Black Families, Hospitals, and Birth Centers. She is also deeply involved in community research and advocacy, serving on the Community Advisory Boards for the UCSF Preterm Birth Initiative and the Perinatal Equity Initiative and also co-chairs the Breastfeeding Cultural Outreach Taskforce (BCOT), whose mission is to revive the art and tradition of breastfeeding in the Black community.

Communications Strategist

Tiffany McElroy, a two-time Emmy Award-winning television journalist and news anchor with experience covering major political and cultural stories at the local and national levels, received an Emmy Award in 2009 for an hour-long news special, The Legacy of Martin Luther King: Forty Years After Memphis. A UCLA graduate, McElroy began her broadcasting career in California before anchoring and reporting in Philadelphia and New York City. She now serves as a part-time instructor of Communications and Media Technology and works as a communications strategist in the Bay Area.

Emergency Room and Pediatric RN

Sandra Adler Killen, an Emergency Room and Pediatric RN and Internationally Board-Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC), has, since 2009, dedicated her career to supporting underserved communities in the U.S. and internationally, with projects spanning Mexico, Syria, and Lebanon. In 2024, she deployed to Gaza as a trauma RN, providing frontline care for mass casualties with the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and recently completed her third deployment with GINA—the Gaza Infant Nutritional Alliance—where she focused on pediatric care, lactation support, and capacity-building initiatives. Sandra is also part of an international telehealth lactation consultant team offering remote care and guidance to thousands of mothers and babies in Gaza.

Award-Winning Author and Naturalist

Terry Tempest Williams, a writer, educator, and environmental activist known for her lyrical and impassioned prose, is the author of over twenty creative nonfiction books including the environmental literature classic, Refuge – An Unnatural History of Family and Place, and: The Open Space of Democracy, Finding Beauty in a Broken World, When Women Were Birds, and Erosion – Essays of Undoing. Her most recent book is the The Glorians – Visitations from the Holy Ordinary (spring ’26). A Recipient of Guggenheim and Lannan literary fellowships, Ms. Williams’ work has appeared widely, including in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Progressive, and Orion, and has been translated worldwide. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she is currently Writer-in-Residence at the Harvard Divinity School.

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.

Professor of Constitutional Law and Global Health Policy | Georgetown University

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

Professor of Law and Harry & Lillian Hastings Research Chair | UC College of the Law

Radhika Rao, Professor of Law and Harry & Lillian Hastings Research Chair at UC Law San Francisco, clerked for Justices Harry Blackmun and Thurgood Marshall at the Supreme Court after graduating from Harvard Law School, and has gone on to become a widely published, major legal scholar and thought leader in a number of domains, including constitutional law, abortion, assisted reproduction, and property rights in the human body. She has been a Fulbright Distinguished Professor at the University of Trento in Italy and served on the California Advisory Committee on Human Cloning, and she currently serves on the California Human Stem Cell Research Advisory Committee.

Assistant Professor of Law | UC Irvine School of Law

Ji Seon Song, J.D., LL.M., on the faculty at the UC Irvine School of Law, teaches and writes in areas of criminal and health law, and is a leading scholar on the deployment of policing authority and its effects on racial minorities and other marginalized groups. Her recent work has focused on policing in healthcare sites, the criminalization of pregnancy, and crisis response. Her scholarship draws on years of practice experience, including representing youth and adults as a public defender in California and serving as a Senior Policy Advocate for the National Juvenile Defender Center. Prof. Song works with regional and national networks of scholars and practitioners focused on policing and patient rights and regularly conducts trainings and consults for medical providers on the intersection of medical care and policing.

Executive Director | Home Planet Fund

Dilafruz Khonikboyeva, of indigenous Pamiri ancestry from Khorog, Tajikistan, is the Inaugural Executive Director of Home Planet Fund. Previously a political appointee in the Biden-Harris Administration who spent five years with the Aga Khan Development Network and eight years responding to conflict and climate crises, she is a transformational conflict expert, focused on civil war, environment and resource conflicts. Dilafruz has also served on the board of her alma mater, the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University and led the Climate Change Working Group for Women of Color Advancing Peace, Security and Conflict Transformation (WCAPS).

Co-Founder | Daughters for Earth

Zainab Salbi, a humanitarian, author, and media host who has dedicated her life to women’s rights and global freedom, is co-founder of Daughters for Earth, a philanthropic fund and a movement focused on supporting, celebrating, and mobilizing women to protect and restore our Earth. At age 23, she founded Women for Women International, which helped more than 460,000 women survivors of war rebuild their lives. Honored with the TIME100 Impact Award, she has been recognized by Oprah Winfrey, People, and Harper’s Bazaar for her groundbreaking leadership on behalf of women worldwide.

Founder and Executive Director | Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network

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.

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.

Executive Director | Spirit Aligned Leadership Program

Tekatsi:tsia’kwa Katsi Cook (Wolf Clan member of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation), an Onkwehonweh traditional midwife, lifelong advocate of Indigenous midwifery and Native women’s health throughout the life-cycle (drawing from the longhouse traditionalist teaching that “woman Is the first environment”), is Executive Director of the Spirit Aligned Leadership Program. Her work over many decades has spanned a range of worlds and disciplines at the intersections of environmental reproductive health and justice, research, and policy. Katsi’s groundbreaking environmental research of Mohawk mother’s milk revealed the intergenerational impact of industrial chemicals on the health of her community, and she is a major figure in a movement of matrilineal awareness and “rematriation” in Native life.

Family Nurse Practitioner

Beverly Kiohawiton Cook who recently concluded her 4th term as an elected Chief on the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribal Council, is a Family Nurse Practitioner and a prominent voice in the mind-body medicine approach to restoring wellness, reproductive health and environmental justice for Mohawk people. She was previously Clinic Coordinator of the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe’s Health Services and also served on the United South and Eastern Tribes (USET) Board of Directors and on the National Indian Health Board (NIHB), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration Technical Tribal Advisory Committee (SAMHSA TTAC). Beverly is also active in traditional practices and circles in her ancestral community of Akwesasne, along the St. Lawrence River.

Founder and Executive Lead | Rematriation

Bio coming soon.

Bio coming soon.

Author and Activist

Jose Barreiro (Hatuey), an author and activist, is a Taino elder and a journalist who has covered Indian Country issues and themes for four decades. Among many other achievements, Barreiro directed several major multi-year exhibitions at the Smithsonian-National Museum of the American Indian between 2006 and 2017, including: "Taino: Native Heritage and Identity in the Caribbean," and “The Great Inka Road: Engineering an Empire." A resident of Akwesasne Mohawk Nation, Barreiro retired from the Smithsonian Institution, as a Scholar Emeritus, in 2017, but serves as an advisor to several Indigenous community projects in Guatemala, Cuba and Peru.

Co-Founder | 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.

Ifa spiritual leader

Bio coming soon.

Project Board Secretary | Pamir Roots (Social Good Fund)

Rano Abutrobova, Board Secretary for Pamir Roots and a consultant to the Home Planet Fund, is a mission-driven projects and grants management professional with 10+ years’ experience leading climate resilience, sustainability, and community-led initiatives across the UN, OSCE, USAID, and nonprofit sectors. As a Pamiri Indigenous woman, Rano brings a lived understanding of community stewardship and Indigenous knowledge systems, particularly in the mountain regions of Central Asia’s “Third Pole.” She has managed multi-donor portfolios, supported trust-based partnerships, and contributed to policies and programs rooted in local leadership and reciprocity.

Storytelling and Communications Manager | Home Planet Fund

Dahr Jamail, Storytelling and Communications Manager at Home Planet Fund, is a former mountaineer, guide, and rescue volunteer on Denali in Alaska who went on to work for a decade as a war correspondent in the Middle East, then for another decade as a journalist covering the global environmental crisis. The author of five books, he most recently edited We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth, which is focused on Indigenous perspectives on the polycrisis.

Executive Director | Spruce Root

Alana Peterson, whose Tlingit name is Gah Kith Tin (from Diginaa Hit, Luknahadi), grew up and currently lives in Sitka, a small island community in Southeast Alaska, where she is Executive Director at Spruce Root, an Indigenous institution that provides all Southeast Alaskans with access to business development resources including loans, coaching, workshops and more, seeking to catalyze local communities and empower small businesses. Alana who has a Master’s in Business Administration, also worked with the Peace Corps in southern Peru on economic development projects for two years.