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Brock Dolman, a founding member and resident of the Sowing Circle LLC, an intentional community in the Sonoma County hamlet of Occidental, California, is the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center's (OAEC) WATER (Watershed Advocacy Training Education & Research) Institute director and co-directs OAEC's Permaculture Design and Wildlands Biodiversity programs. Brock’s extensive cross-disciplinary experience ranges from the study of wildlife biology, native California botany and watershed ecology to the practices of habitat restoration, community watershed education, and ecological literacy activism to engender societal transformation.
Kari Fulton, the national campus campaign coordinator for the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative, has become a pioneer organizer working to mobilize youth of color around issues of campus sustainability and climate justice. She was a 2008 recipient of Earth Island Institute’s Brower Youth Award and the Damu Smith Power of One Young Professional Award (Deep South Center For Environmental Justice at Dillard University). A graduate of Howard University, Fulton acts as a mentor for other youth leaders and as a spokesperson for the Energy Action Coalition, and is currently a senior fellow with Young People For the American Way (YP4) and a member of the 2009 YP4 Leadership Academy.
Jack D. Hidary, after studying philosophy and neuroscience at Columbia University, became a very successful entrepreneur in the finance and technology sectors, and later co-founded SmartTransportation.org, a nationwide organization dedicated to encouraging clean technology in the transportation sector, which has, among other achievements, led a coalition to establish thousands of hybrid taxis in New York and other cities. He also currently serves on the advisory board to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and is board chair of AmericansforCleanEnergy.org.
Sarah James, a Gwich'in elder from Arctic Village, Alaska, is the board chair and a spokesperson for the Gwich’in Steering Committee, and has educated people around the world about the porcupine-caribou herd and the importance of protecting “the Sacred Place where Life Begins” (the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) from oil exploration and drilling. She has received many awards, including the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, the National Conservation Land Trust Award and the Ecotrust Award for Indigenous Leadership.
Michael Pollan, a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and the recipient of numerous journalistic awards, served for many years as executive editor of Harper’s Magazine and is now a professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at UC Berkeley. He is also the nation’s most influential and important thinker and writer on food and agriculture, the author of many seminal, award-winning, bestselling books, including, most recently In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, and previously: The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals; The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World; A Place of My Own; and Second Nature.
Jason McLennan, CEO of the Cascadia Green Building Council, the Pacific Northwest's leading green building and sustainable development organization (a chapter of both the U.S. and Canadian Green Building Councils), is: the creator of the international green building program-the Living Building Challenge; co-creator of Pharos, the most advanced building material rating system in North America; and founder/CEO of Ecotone Publishing. He is the author of The Ecological Engineer and The Philosophy of Sustainable Design (currently used as a textbook in over 40 universities internationally), and is a former principal at BNIM Architects, one of the pioneering firms in the green design movement in the U.S.
Lily Yeh is an internationally celebrated artist whose work has taken her to communities throughout the world. As founder and executive director of the Village of Arts and Humanities in North Philadelphia from 1968 to 2004, she helped create a national model of community building through the arts. In 2004, Yeh pursued her work internationally, founding Barefoot Artists, Inc., to bring the transformative power of art to impoverished communities around the globe through participatory, multifaceted projects that foster community empowerment, improve the physical environment, promote economic development, and preserve indigenous art and culture.
Jensine Larsen, formerly a freelance journalist covering indigenous movements in South America and Southeast Asia, is the founder of World Pulse Media, a global media source covering world issues through women's eyes, and its flagship, World Pulse magazine, as well as PulseWire.net, an interactive website that enables women worldwide to speak for themselves and to connect to solve global problems.
Arturo Sandoval has been active in community, cultural, environmental and civil rights efforts in New Mexico and across the United States for nearly 40 years. Sandoval is president and founder of VOCES, Inc., a communications and organizational development firm with headquarters in Albuquerque and with offices in Chihuahua, México. He also founded the Center of Southwest Culture (CSC), Inc. in 1991 to help develop healthy indigenous and Latino communities through economic, educational and cultural work.
Andrew Weil, MD, the nation’s most renowned exponent of a more holistic approach to medicine, is director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona (the leading effort in the world to develop a comprehensive curriculum in integrative medicine), and is also a clinical professor of medicine and a professor of Public Health there.
He is the author of many scientific and popular articles and of 10 books, including: The Natural Mind; Health and Healing; Natural Health, Natural Medicine; the international bestsellers, Spontaneous Healing, and Eight Weeks to Optimum Health, and most recently, Eating Well for Optimum Health; and Healthy Aging. Dr. Weil also, among many other endeavors, appears on PBS specials, writes a monthly newsletter, maintains a popular website (www.drweil.com), and writes a syndicated newspaper column.
Joanna Macy, a renowned Buddhist teacher, eco-philosopher, systems theorist, and scholar, is a longtime activist in the peace, justice, and ecology movements. Her wide-ranging work spans Eastern and Western thought and seeks to bring to human consciousness the perspectives of other life forms, as well as those of past and future generations. Joanna's experiential group work, known to activists around the world as The Work That Reconnects, seeks to convey the extraordinary opportunity of being alive now to serve the survival of life on Earth. Joanna’s many seminal books include: Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age; Dharma and Development; Thinking Like a Mountain; Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World; Widening Circles; and, most recently, World as Lover, World as Self.
Mari Margil is the first associate director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). She opened CELDF’s West Coast office in Portland, Oregon, in 2007 and teaches Democracy Schools (weekend seminars which assist groups and communities challenge the ability of corporate “rights” to trump the rights of communities) across the country. Mari was also involved in CELDF’s groundbreaking work assisting Ecuador’s Constituent Assembly in its historic decision to place ecosystem rights (the “rights of nature”) directly into the new Ecuadorian constitution, a global first.
Almir Narayamoga Surui, 32, an environmentalist, political activist and tribal chief, has been fighting to save both his Surui tribe and the Amazon rainforest for more than 15 years. His efforts are credited with almost single-handedly bringing his tribe back from the brink of extinction. His opposition to logging, mining, agricultural and other development interests in favor of more sustainable ventures in western Brazil has made him the target of death threats and violence.
Jerome Ringo is the president of the Apollo Alliance, the highly influential vanguard coalition of labor, business, environmental, and community leaders working to catalyze a clean energy revolution and put millions of Americans to work in high-quality, “green-collar” jobs. Ringo got firsthand experience of pollution working for more than 20 years in Louisiana’s petrochemical industry and seeing the impacts on his fellow workers and on adjoining (mostly poor and black) communities’ health. He became a union activist, an environmental justice advocate and eventually chair of the board of the National Wildlife Federation, the first African-American to head a major conservation organization. Jerome was also the U.S.’ only black delegate at the 1998 Global Warming Treaty Negotiations in Kyoto.
Annie Leonard has worked on international environmental health and sustainability issues for over 2 decades. Annie has also worked with GAIA, Health Care without Harm, Essential Action, and Greenpeace International; has traveled to over 30 countries to investigate the factories where our stuff is produced and the dumps where it is disposed; and is the writer and host of the internet film, The Story of Stuff, viewed by over 6 million people around the world since its launch in December 2007. Annie currently coordinates the non-profit Story of Stuff Project, based in Berkeley, and is working on additional films, organizing projects, and The Story of Stuff book to be published by Free Press of Simon and Schuster in March 2010.