Co-Founder
The Biomimicry Institute

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

Keynote Address:

Janine Benyus – Becoming a Welcome Species: Biomimicry and the Art of Generous Design

March 27th | 9:50 am to 10:15 am

Panel Presentations:

Book Signings with Pegasus Books

March 27th | 4:30 pm to 5:15 pm

Climate Action Fellow
Student Environmental Resource Center

Shreya Chaudhuri, a senior at UC Berkeley, majoring in Environmental Science and Geography with minors in Global Poverty & Practice and Data Science, runs Project Planet, a nonprofit for decolonial environmental education, including teaching the class Decolonizing Environmentalism at Berkeley that she created. As a Climate Action Fellow at the Student Environmental Resource Center and UC Office of the President, Shreya advances equity in UC Climate Policy and leads the Decolonial Environmental Network on campus. She is also on the council for the Students of Color Environmental Collective, and, for her senior thesis, Shreya studied Indigenous ecological knowledge and climate resilience on her family’s ancestral tea farm in India.

Keynote Address:

Youth Leadership: Shreya Chaudhuri – Reclaiming Roots: The Global Fight for Indigenous Science

March 27th | 11:15 am to 11:25 am

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.

Keynote Address:

Katsi Cook – Matrilineal World-Making: Embracing for Impact

March 27th | 10:15 am to 10:40 am

Panel Presentations:

Worlds Within Us — Ancestral Wisdom, Courage, and Healing

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

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.

Keynote Address:

Haley Mellin – Creativity, Courage and Conservation

March 27th | 11:30 am to 11:58 am

Panel Presentations:

Re-Igniting a Sacred Relationship to Nature: An Emergent Conversation

March 27th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm

Writer, Producer, Proud Earthling

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

Keynote Address:

Baratunde Thurston – From Me to We, A Story of Interdependence

March 27th | Noon to 12:20 pm

Closing by Baratunde Thurston

March 29th | 12:05 pm to 12:15 pm

Panel Presentations:

Indigenous Forum – How Indigenous Roots of American Democracy Can Regenerate the Practice of Self-Governance

March 27th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

Natural Resources Secretary
State of California

Wade Crowfoot, on the frontlines of environmental leadership throughout his long career in the public and non-profit sectors, California’s Natural Resources Secretary since 2019, leads efforts to conserve California’s environment and natural resources, overseeing an agency of 25,000+ employees spread across 26 departments, commissions, and conservancies charged with stewarding the state's forests, natural lands, rivers, water supplies, coasts, wildlife and biodiversity, as well as helping oversee its world-leading clean energy transition, including a commitment to conserve 30% of its land and coastal waters by 2030. Secretary Crowfoot has led efforts to navigate California’s record-breaking droughts, floods, and wildfires and has initiated a new era of partnerships with the state's Native American tribes.

Keynote Address:

Wade Crowfoot – Keynote Address

March 28th | 9:55 am to 10:20 am

U.S. Poet Laureate

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

Keynote Address:

Joy Harjo

March 28th | 11:30 am to 11:55 am

Panel Presentations:

Indigenous Forum – Art and Healing—A Conversation with Joy Harjo and Cara Romero 

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

Book Signing with Pegasus Books

March 28th | 4:30 pm to 5:15 pm

Marine Science Researcher

Asa Miller, 18, a marine science researcher and Greenburgh, NY’s Youth Poet Laureate, is an international leader in marine conservation who combines an acute knowledge of the issues facing marine ecosystems with the sensibility and creativity of a poet. He has conducted coral reef conservation in both his native Cuba and in Israel, each time working with teams whose collaborations transcended conflicts and borders. His documentary short “Coral Reef Restoration” has screened and won awards at 26 international film festivals. He is a winner of the Brower Youth, National Marine Educators Association Youth Leadership in Marine Conservation, and Blue Hatchling Youth awards.

Keynote Address:

Youth Leadership: Asa Miller – Viva el Vivero: Finding the Best Nursery for Cuba’s Coral

March 28th | 11:00 am to 11:10 am

Panel Presentations:

Young Leaders Program – Community of Mentors with Asa Miller

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

Executive Director
Urban Tilth

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

Keynote Address:

Doria Robinson – Empowering Community from the Grassroots: The Richmond, CA Model  

March 28th | 9:35 am to 10:00 am

Panel Presentations:

Environmental Justice at a Difficult Crossroads

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

More Than Human Life (MOTH) Program
Founding Director

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

Keynote Address:

César Rodríguez-Garavito – More-Than-Human Rights: Pushing the Boundaries of Legal Imagination to Re-Animate the World

March 28th | 11:10 am to 11:34 am

Panel Presentations:

What if We Understood What Animals are Saying?

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

Amira Diamond, Kahea Pacheco, and Melinda Kramer
Co-Directors

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

Vision & Initiatives Partner
Taproot Earth

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

Keynote Address:

Colette Pichon Battle – Keynote Address

March 29th | 10:10 am to 10:20 am

Panel Presentations:

Biomimicry and Justice

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

Going Globalocal: Bioregional Climate Action Strategies

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

Stormy Weather: Confronting our Long Emergency

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

Co-Founder and Executive Director
Ridges to Riffles Indigenous Conservation Group

Amy Bowers Cordalis (Yurok Tribe member whose ceremony family is from Rek-woi at the mouth of the Klamath River), a devoted advocate for Indigenous rights and environmental restoration as well as a fisherwoman, attorney, and mother deeply rooted in the traditions of her people, is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Ridges to Riffles Indigenous Conservation Group and leads efforts to support tribes in protecting their sovereignty, lands, and waters, including the historic Klamath Dam Removal project. A former general counsel for the Yurok Tribe and an attorney at the Native American Rights Fund, Amy has won many awards and honors, including as a UN Champion of the Earth and Time 100 climate leader.

Keynote Address:

Amy Bowers Cordalis – The Water Remembers: Year Zero

March 29th | 9:20 am to 9:45 am

Author and Talk Show Host

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

Keynote Address:

Thom Hartmann – Supreme Oligarchy at the Gates

March 29th | 11:15 am to 11:35 am

Panel Presentations:

Supreme Oligarchy: Deconstructing the Alliance Between the Supreme Court and American Oligarchs

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

Executive Director
Sierra Club

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

Keynote Address:

Ben Jealous – A Green Economy Lifts All Boats

March 29th | 11:35 am to Noon

Panel Presentations:

Stormy Weather: Confronting our Long Emergency

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

Environmental Justice at a Difficult Crossroads

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

Program Coordinator and Legal Assistant
Project ANAR

Mahjabin Khanzada, a young Afghan woman, a former interpreter for the U.S. embassy, fled her homeland during the Taliban takeover in 2021 and has worked in the face of great challenges to rebuild her life in the Bay Area. She has become a passionate activist for Afghani women’s rights and an advocate for her community and has been working with the Immigration Justice organization Project Anar to help newly arrived Afghan refugees resettle successfully. Mahjabin has also worked for three years with Crescent Moon Theater Productions, sharing her story through the documentary theater project: "Hold On, When Everything Changes in a Flash."

Keynote Address:

Youth Leadership: Mahjabin Khanzada – Courage: From Kabul to California

March 29th | 10:50 am to 11:00 am

Panel Presentations:

Defending Refugees and Immigrants

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

Co-Founder
Third Act

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

Keynote Address:

Bill McKibben – Back to the Wall, Face to the Sun

March 29th | 9:45 am to 10:10 am

Panel Presentations:

Stormy Weather: Confronting our Long Emergency

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