SUSTAINABILITY LEADERS NETWORK - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Chief Strategy Officer
- Chief Strategy Officer at Elevate Energy
Abigail is currently the Chief Strategy Officer at Elevate Energy, located in Chicago, Illinois. In this role, she oversees Elevate's strategy in developing new programs nationwide from energy efficiency, solar, and planning including building up our existing dynamic pricing and flagship multifamily building retrofit programs. Prior to this role, she served as Chief Program Officer and Director of New Market Initiatives, and she was responsible for expanding Elevate's affordable multifamily energy efficiency programs into new markets outside of the Chicago region including Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Oregon. She brings a variety of skills to Elevate including: business planning; energy efficiency program design; operations and sysems customization; quality assurance planning and implementation; and, communications and outreach. The programs launched by Elevate in new markets will become part of a national network of affordable multifamily energy efficiency implementers that offer building owners comprehensive energy efficiency services that result in reliable and persistent energy and water savings.
Prior to joining Elevate Energy in 2012, Abigail was a Managing Director at the Delta Institute where with her Delta Institute colleagues Abby developed processes and methods that allow companies to incorporate local eco-system issues into corporate policies in a way that increases environmental stewardship and achieves environmental improvement.
Agnieszka Rawa is a vision-driven collaborative leader with a 26-year track record delivering programs that generate value, inclusion and social good while breaking new ground to advance sustainable development. Currently, Agnieszka leads MCC's $21.8 million Data Collaboratives for Local Impact partnership to empower people and communities to use data to improve lives and drive their own development. The program applies a systems approach and strategic investments like the Tanzania dLab and Sejen to build data skills and improve decisions, innovation challenge s, fellowships, and efforts to make data relevant to communities through local listening campaigns, citizen mapping, and art.
Prior to 2015, Agnieszka led MCC's Africa portfolios totaling $4 billion of investments in infrastructure and policy reform in the education, health, water & sanitation, agriculture, power and transportation sectors. Before joining MCC, Ms. Rawa spent 16 years in the private sector and was an equity partner in a global consulting firm where she worked in socio-environmentally complex areas around the globe.
Agnieszka's experience spans a wide array of sectors and settings: From the outskirts of New Orleans responding to a state-wide environmental health emergency when a toxic chemical was erroneously used in low-income homes; to Intuto, a remote locality in the Peruvian Amazon, balancing extractives development with the needs of indigenous communities; and most recently Tanzania and Côte d'Ivoire equipping youth with the data, innovation and tech skills they need to access jobs of the growing digital economy.
Ms. Rawa graduated from Stanford University; is a Donella Meadows Sustainability Fellow and is fluent in English, French, Spanish, and Polish. Her passion for sustainable development and novel approaches to achieve a better world began in Tangier where she spent 15 years.
Expertise: International / Sustainable Development, environment, economic empowerment and poverty reduction, social inclusion, youth.
Job Titles:
- Founder of Intra Yoga Therapy
A development consulting expert with over two decades of multidisciplinary and multi- team experience from policy formulation to project development, implementation and review, Amba is professionally trained as an environmental lawyer and development communicator. He is a grassroots convenor, trainer, and facilitator with experience in the Asia Pacific region in areas of education, rural development, community institutions and resource management, livelihood, policy advocacy and envisioning. Amba works directly with policy makers, NGOs, community leaders, farmers and the poorest of the poor in mountain regions, particularly the Eastern Himalayas. He has extensive experience working in local, national and international NGOs, the government and with advanced regional policy and research think tanks such as the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), Japan. He is a founding member of the Sustainable Development Forum Nagaland (SDFN) and the Integrated Mountain Initiative (IMI).
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and Senior Advisor of CASA Socio - Environmental Fund
- Socio - Environmental Fund - CASA
Amália is Co-Founder and Senior Advisor of CASA Socio-Environmental Fund, with the mission to promote environmental conservation and sustainability, democracy and social justice by supporting and strengthening the capacities and initiatives of civil society in South America. CASA gives grants to bona-fide community groups for their social justice and environmental protection efforts that use a systemic approach. Amália regularly speaks at international conferences about the important impacts and results of giving small grants to grassroots groups in building a sustainable planet.
Job Titles:
- African Wildlife Foundation 's Director
Andrea is the African Wildlife Foundation's Director in Europe, responsible for engaging Africa's strategic partners to build a future in which human development includes thriving wildlife and extensive wild lands as a cultural and economic asset for Africa's future generations.
Having spent her career working on the conservation, sustainable use and equitable sharing of benefits from biodiversity, Andrea's latest decade has been dedicated to designing and supporting teams to deliver integrated conservation and development approaches in African landscapes. Her portfolio spans from Ethiopia to Zimbabwe and from Kenya to Senegal. While living with her young family in Tanzania, she designed and fundraised for programs linking agriculture development to forest and wetland conservation in the Kilombero valley and Mbeya highlands, critical elephant habitats and the source of water for millions of people downstream. Bringing experience linking business into the biodiversity agenda, Andrea continues to engage at a global level on technical issues such as integrated impact assessments, biodiversity offsets, conservation enterprises, incentive measures, and financing. Most recently, she has been designing sustainable and lasting finance for Africa's protected area networks, and linking the private sector into landscape conservation efforts.
Andrea holds a Master's in Environmental Assessment and Evaluation from the London School of Economics and a Bachelor's degree in Economics and English from the University of Michigan. She is a passionate backcountry and downhill skier and loves to be on the stand-up-paddleboard.
Job Titles:
- Independent Consultant
- Researcher
Angela Park is an independent consultant, researcher, and writer dedicated to making social justice and equity hallmarks of progressive institutions-across advocacy, policymaking, philanthropy, education, and business. She helps mission-driven organizations embed social justice and equity throughout their operations and programs, bringing three decades of experience on sustainable development policy, environmental justice, equity and diversity, and organizational and leadership development. Angela has worked with nonprofits, coalitions, foundations, philanthropic networks, governmental agencies at all levels, educational institutions, and companies across the consumer products, banking, technology, retail, communications, insurance, and utilities industries.
Angela has testified before Congress, state legislatures and lectured at universities across the United States. A sought-after speaker, she has keynoted conferences for the League of Conservation Voters, Bowdoin College, State Environmental Leaders Conference, Urban Sustainability Directors Network, The Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities, Coalition for a Livable Future, Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders, Western States Center, and the North American Association for Environmental Education, among others. She researched and wrote Equity in Sustainability (2014) and Everybody's Movement: Environmental Justice and Climate Change (2009) and her work has been published by The Diversity Factor, Grist, and Yale University and featured in The Washington Post and Audubon. She was an adjunct professor at Antioch New England where she co-taught a graduate course in Environmental Advocacy and Organizing.
Previously, Angela worked at The White House in both terms of the Clinton-Gore administration, managing sustainable communities policy and constituency engagement at the President's Council on Sustainable Development. She led research and recommendations to the President on wide-ranging issues from civic participation and environmental justice to sustainable economic development and smart growth. Angela was the longest-serving staff member and the only person appointed for both recommendations and implementation phases of the Council's work. She coordinated state-level sustainable development initiatives at the Center for Policy Alternatives, focusing on legislation to promote renewable energy, public transportation, energy efficiency, and environmental justice. Angela co-founded and served as deputy director of the Environmental Leadership Program where she created it's leadership development programming and launched and facilitated two collaborative peer learning networks on environmental leadership and diversity in the environmental field.
She participated in the inaugural class of the Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows Program and was named a Young Woman of Achievement by the Women's Information Network in Washington, DC. She graduated from the NTL Institute's Diversity Practitioner Certificate Program and studied psychology, environmental studies, and journalism at Boston University. Angela has served as a director on numerous nonprofit boards and as an advisor to foundations. She recently concluded a major energy retrofit and renewable energy installation with her family and is on an ongoing mission to expand perennial and vegetable gardens at their home in Vermont.
Angela participated in the inaugural class of the Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows Program. She has integrated the systems thinking skills she gained from the Fellowship into her work with mission driven organizations. This includes testing assumptions about the root causes of inequity on specific issues and within movements; mapping impacts and dynamics of systemic racism, classism, and sexism-in addition to other forms of oppression within organizations and coalitions; and making visible the mental models that can thwart well-intended organizational efforts.
Expertise
Strategy, planning, and implementation on the integration of equity throughout programmatic work, grantmaking, organizational policies, practices, and infrastructure; rewriting organizational policies and practices (employee handbooks, recruitment and hiring policies, orientation/onboarding, job descriptions and position announcements, performance review processes, promotions policies, professional development, learning curricula)
Training, education, and learning on environmental, social, racial, and economic justice; implicit bias; equity, diversity, and inclusion; leadership development; management and supervisory competencies; emotional intelligence; feedback, communication, and interventions skills; Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Coaching, management counsel, conflict transformation
Nonette actively bridges indigenous peoples and local community actors, their governments and institutions in key ecosystems, including forest, agroforest landscapes, in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. She provides support to strong national groups, focusing on land rights and land tenure recognition options as a condition without which policy and practice in natural resource management by indigenous peoples and local communities efforts will diminish. At the Land Tenure Facility, Nonette is leading a team of fifteen to generate more financial and technical support to community-led actions for sustainable solutions. Amid threats of landscape conversion and devastation, Nonette is inspiring action.
In her free time, she continues to connect and actively advise online with the Samdhana Institute at her birthplace in Cagayan de Oro, Northern Mindanao, Philippines. She is a fellow with the Samdhana Institute working with local facilitators with the Indigenous Peoples/local communities, linking them with key foundations and technical partner NGOs and Universities. They combine teaching, research, and extension in a robust inquiry into education for sustainable development, working in a ridge to reef landscape involving the last remaining forests of Mindanao. Here, watersheds feed key aquifers and rivers, flowing into Macajalar Bay, which bursts with beautiful and endemic marine life.
Her greatest challenge remains working with effective global finance, whilst ensuring local ownership and stakeholder decision-making. She works towards keeping a balance between human rights and interests of millions of poor people living within protected areas or key environmental corridors not only in the Philippines and Indonesia, but within Southeast Asia. She also continues to learn from experiences in Latin America and Africa in the context of resistant, cash strapped governments and a semi accountable private sector. This becomes doubly difficult when reliable science and good legal recourse are not readily available.
Job Titles:
- Partner
- Wellspring Consulting / Partner / Boston, Massachusetts
Ashley is a Partner and oversees Wellspring's Boston office. She brings experience in strategic planning, impact assessment, communications and systems thinking. Previously, Ashley worked as a Portfolio Manager for Strategic Grant Partners, a foundation and pro-bono consulting firm. Prior to that, Ashley worked as a Senior Researcher for the Barr Foundation, managed the Heart of the City project at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and facilitated land-based microenterprise schemes with agro-pastoralists in rural Kenya. Ashley is a founding Board Member of My Sister's Keeper, an organization that supports Sudanese women through education and advocacy and serves as Vice-Chair of the Board of the Centering Healthcare Institute. Ashley received her MESc at Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. She graduated with a BA in English and Environmental Studies from Dartmouth College, where she won the Faculty Award for Excellence in Environmental Studies.
Job Titles:
- Director of Public Engagement With Science
Brooke Smith is the Director of Public Engagement with Science at The Kavli Foundation. In this role, she works to strengthen the field of public engagement with science and science communications. Brooke is passionate about scientists engaging with the public, and ensuring those who enable scientists to communicate and engage are supported to do so effectively. Brooke's expertise and experience are rooted in science, science communication, public engagement of science, public policy, journalism, organizational leadership, and fundraising.
Until late 2016, Brooke served as the inaugural Executive Director of COMPASS, a leading non-profit organization dedicated to empowering scientists to be effective communicators and to engage in the public discourse about the environment. Her experiences stem from work in the federal government, as a consultant to federal agencies, as a University-based communication professional, and in the non-profit sector. Brooke frequently writes and speaks about the state and future of public engagement with science field.
She has an M.S. from Oregon State University's College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences and a bachelor's degree from Duke University. Brooke serves on the National Caucus for Environmental Legislators Board of Directors and the National Academy of Science's LabX Advisory Board. She was a member of the National Academy of Sciences Roundtable on the Public Interfaces of Life Sciences, served on the National Board of Directors for the Surfrider Foundation and Portland's Forest Park Conservancy, and was a Donella Meadows Leadership Fellow.
Buckminster Fuller Institute, located in San Francisco, serves as our fiscal sponsor, and is a strategic partner in promoting systems thinking and network building among sustainability practitioners to address contemporary challenges. Buckminster Fuller and Donella Meadows were two of the world's leading systems thinkers who devoted their careers to designing a more sustainable future. Their example, designs, strategies and writings continue to inspire us.
Job Titles:
- Director of Sustainability
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder
- Senior Advisor
Cynthia Pansing is Berkshire Agricultural Ventures (BAV) Executive Director. For more than 20 years, she has brought strategic direction to nonprofit and public organizations working on food systems and sustainable agriculture in Massachusetts and elsewhere in the US for more than 20 years. She is guiding BAV's investment in food and agricultural entrepreneurs and enterprises to forge a stronger and resilient food and farming system and enhance food security in the Berkshire region.
Over the course of her professional life, Cynthia has gained respect for her leadership in developing and implementing cutting-edge food systems and sustainable development programs and projects in collaboration with a wide range of organizations. In so doing, she has worked with farmers, business associations, food businesses, foundations, nonprofit organizations, planners, designers, government agencies, universities and communities to identify and develop sustainable strategies.
Cynthia served for over a decade as principal partner and later CEO of Changing Tastes, a national consulting firm. Clients have recently included the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, the National Farm to School Network, the New England Grassroots Environmental Fund, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and a partnership of five North American cities - San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis and Vancouver - under the aegis of the Urban Sustainability Directors Network and the Surdna and Summit Foundations.
To help the five city partnership shift more investment into local food systems, Cynthia led the creation of A Roadmap for City Food Sector Innovation and Investment, a nationally recognized report that offers new tools to guide city planning and economic development around food and agriculture. Most recently, with the Wallace Center and Common Market, she co-led and coauthored From the Ground Up: Inspiring Community-based Food System Innovations, a national food scan for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Cynthia holds BA and MA degrees in Anthropology and an MA in Urban and Environmental Planning from the University of California at Los Angeles. Her work has been featured in Science, the New York Times and the National Academy of Sciences Transportation Research Record, among other publications. In addition to the Sustainability Leaders Network, Cynthia is a former Donella Meadows Leadership Fellow and a former Policy Fellow with the University of Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey Institute.
Cynthia lives with her daughter in West Stockbridge, MA.
Danielle Hirsch worked for three years in Mexico, Paraguay and Kenya during and after her studies in Economics. In 1995 she started working as an international consultant, working for governments and international agencies in Central and South Asia, Latin America and Eastern Africa. At the same time, she became a volunteer at Both ENDS in 1995, where in 2003 she became policy advisor on water management. She was elected director of the organisation in 2008. Over the years she has been working in many of Both ENDS' projects, mainly in the field of international financial flows, water and climate. Although she's often still involved with projects, she now focuses primarily on policy influencing, both of the public as well of the private (financial) sector. Under her mandate, the organization has doubled in staff and more than tripled its budget. Danielle is a fellow of the Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows Program since 2008. She is also a member of the board of the Netherlands Water Partnership and is member of the Sustainability Advisory Board of MeesPierson.
Dominic is an action-oriented collaborator who convenes diverse action teams to address complex sustainability challenges. He is facile with group processes and able to thrive within different cultures and sectors. Dominic cares deeply about the Earth, the community of life, future generations, and envisions a world that is just, sustainable, and peaceful. Dominic is Managing Partner at the Collective Leadership Institute with offices in Germany and South Africa. He facilitates high quality, multi-sector dialogue and collaboration trainings for individuals and teams of sustainability leaders and development practitioners. He also coaches and accompanies multi-stakeholder teams in co-designing and collectively leading complex change processes for systems transformations, including:
Dominic published a chapter entitled Environmental Injustices, Unsustainable Livelihoods, and Conflict: Natural Capital Inaccessibility and Loss among Rural Households in Tajikistan in Environmental Justice and Sustainability in the Former Soviet Union (MIT Press, 2009), edited by Julian Agyeman and Yelena Ogneva-Himmelberger.
See more articles and policy documents written by Dominic and colleagues on youth engagement.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder of Biomimicry 3.8
- Senior Editor of Biomimicry Resource Handbook
Dr. Dayna Baumeister is the Co-founder of Biomimicry 3.8. With a devotion to applied natural history and a passion for sharing the genius of nature, Dayna has worked in the field of biomimicry with business partner Janine Benyus since 1998, traveling the world as a biomimicry thought-leader, business consultant, and professor. Together they founded the Biomimicry Guild consulting practice, The Biomimicry Institute 501c3, and most recently, Biomimicry 3.8, a B-Corp social enterprise that helps clients find innovation inspired by nature and offers the highest level of biomimicry training to professionals worldwide.
Dayna's foundational work has been critical to the biomimicry movement, establishing it as a fresh and innovative practice, as well as a philosophy to meet the world's sustainability challenges. As an educator, researcher, and design consultant, Dayna has helped more than 100 companies consult the natural world for elegant and sustainable design solutions, including Nike, Interface, General Mills, Boeing, Herman-Miller, Kohler, Seventh Generation and Procter & Gamble.
Dayna is known for her engaging presentations and her ability to empower others to use biomimicry in every aspect of their work. She has been a featured speaker at the National Science Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, International Congress on Biodiversity of the Guyana Shield 2016, GreenBiz 2016, SXSW Eco 2015, and countless other events.
In 2008, Dayna designed (and continues to teach) the world's first Certified Biomimicry Professional Program, an in-person, two-year master-level course that trains, certifies, and connects biomimicry professionals with practitioners world-wide. She also co-designed the Biomimicry Specialist Program. Both programs are creating a new kind of professional who can employ the practice of biomimicry at its highest level. Due to the overwhelming success of these programs, Biomimicry 3.8 and Arizona State University partnered in 2015 to create an online graduate certificate program and the world's first Master's of Science in Biomimicry. Dayna serves as the co-director of ASU's Biomimicry Center and is a Professor of Practice at ASU.
Dayna is the senior editor of Biomimicry Resource Handbook: A Seed Bank of Knowledge and Best Practices (2014), where she compiled more than a decade's worth of practical biomimicry experience into one comprehensive biomimicry handbook.
Her fascination with the natural world began with daily forays into the woods and mountains around her childhood home in Colorado. Since, she has fused a lifelong fascination with nature into a career that began after Dayna received a B.S. in marine biology from New College in Sarasota, Florida. After several years exploring the intricate relationships of coral reefs, she turned in her wetsuit and headed back to the mountains. She earned an M.S. in resource conservation and a Ph.D. in organismic biology and ecology from The University of Montana in Missoula, where she specialized in the dynamics of positive interactions among animal and plant life.
From discovering sloth bears in the wild with the president of a textile company in India, to candling sea crabs out of a student's ear after snorkeling over a coral reef, Dayna's work has taken her around the world on grand adventures. She is a natural systems thinker, who brings an unique perspective to every challenge, helping others see nature as model, measure, and mentor.
She has served the board of her local science museum, ExplorationWorks!, and is a staunch advocate for bringing systems thinking into the local school system. She is also a Dana Meadows Fellow of the Sustainability Institute.
Dayna finds physical and spiritual sustenance as a gardener, green remodeler, llama packer, purveyor of alternative healing, and naturalist. She feels fortunate to live with her family in the rugged and ever-inspiring Rocky Mountains of Montana.
With colleagues Robyn Klein, and Janet Kübler, Dayna wrote the article Competition versus cooperation for BioInspired!, volume 7.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Executive Director
- Founder
Edie's vision for the Sustainability Leaders Network (SLN), founded in 2010, is that each individual has the opportunity to unfurl their innate talents and passions, and to contribute these gifts in service of global sustainability. Previously, she promoted this message of leadership for sustainability by serving as founding director of the Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows Program where she co-designed the curriculum's focus on systems thinking, reflective conversation, the discipline of vision, and creative expression, and served as a leadership coach for each of the four cohorts of the Fellows Program. Through SLN she continues to work with alumni Fellows and key partners to further their impact as strategic sustainability and climate solutions thought leaders, instigators, and actors. As well, recently Edie was Senior Program Director of Climate Solutions at Confluence Philanthropy. She now focuses on coaching sustainability leaders for climate solutions, sustainability strategy and personal wellness.
Early in her career Edie served as executive director of the Association for Progressive Communications where she helped build the early adoption of information and communication technology by a network of global civil society organizations. This included managing international communications teams at United Nations world conferences: the Earth Summit in Brazil; the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna; and the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Edie has an MA in Cultural and Social Anthropology from the California Institute of Integral Studies and a BA in Anthropology and Environmental Studies from Dartmouth College. She raised her two sons at the Cobb Hill Cohousing experiment in sustainable living that Donella Meadows co-founded in Hartland, Vermont. She now lives with her family in Norwich, Vermont.
Elaine is currently serving as the Acting Regional Forester for the Southwestern Region (Arizona and New Mexico). She has been in a permanent position as Deputy Regional Forester for the Southwestern Region since May 2018. She held a previous position as Forest Supervisor of the Cibola National Forest and National Grasslands from 2013 to 2018. She started as a wilderness ranger in 1986 and has held numerous positions over 33 years at the district, forest, regional, and national level. She has extensive experience in large-scale collaboration, sustainability, restoration, recreation, planning, tribal consultation, and socioeconomics.
Previous positions include Branch Chief for Strategic Planning, Budget and Accountability for out-year budgeting and congressional hearings in the Washington Office; acting Deputy Forest Supervisor on the Colville National Forest, District Ranger on the Prairie City Ranger District on the Malheur National Forest in Oregon. Other assignments include social scientist/economist for large-scale fire recovery, range, timber, and restoration projects on the Wallowa-Whitman, Umatilla, and Malheur National Forests in Oregon. Her background includes forest planning in the Blue Mountains for three regions; and Economist for the National Hydropower Relicensing Team. Elaine was an interdisciplinary team leader at the district level for a wide variety of projects including team leader for the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area.
She holds a bachelor's degree in Economics from Colorado State University, a master's degree in Whole Systems Design from Antioch University-Seattle, and is a Donella Meadows Leadership Fellow. She is also a Senior Leader Coach, certified yoga and sound practitioner. She and her husband Matthew enjoy traveling, biking, and outdoor adventures to awesome landscapes and diverse cultures.
Elizabeth is an innovative and analytical landscape designer with experience in creating sustainable and harmonized landscapes. She is engaged in real time lessons of thriving urban plazas, smart growth, multimodal transport, and community engagement as a resident of Davis Square, Somerville, MA. Elizabeth utilizes blue green infrastructure techniques, and native plant knowledge for projects in both urban and suburban settings. She has broad experience in project management, urban design, and application of nature-based solutions. An engaging speaker with experience holding public meetings, advocating for open space policy, and managing public lands, Liz enjoys conferring with homeowners, civil engineers, local officials, developers, and the public. Skilled at conveying concepts using schematics, AutoCAD drawings, 3d modeling, and renderings, she collaborates with architects and engineers on projects such as complete streets, parks /greenways, and constructed wetlands.
Previously, Liz worked with the Boston Society of Landscape Architects, Boston Architectural College, Friends of the East Boston Greenway, and Fiori Secchi Gardens. Before that, she directed The Food Project in Boston to bring youth and adults together from city and suburb, to grow and distribute healthy food using sustainable agriculture practices. The Food Project's community develops youth leaders, connects people to the land, teaches people about their food system, and empowers all towards personal and social change. Liz developed replication strategies, and processes that capture the organization's management, operational, and educational systems, to bring this innovative model to communities nationwide. She also managed a national training program to share this organizational knowledge.
Liz received an MBA from Babson College's Franklin W. Olin Graduate School of Business, and a BA from the Rochester Institute of Technology's Saunders College of Business.
Job Titles:
- Strategic Partnerships Officer
The vital nature of water has driven Elizabeth's work. As part of the Strategic Partnerships team at the Water Foundation, Elizabeth works at the nexus of strategy and fundraising, helping to develop and deliver on fundraising strategies for safe drinking water and fresh water ecosystem restoration. She also leads the foundation in monitoring, evaluating, and learning.
Before joining the Water Foundation, Elizabeth was Senior Director of Conservation and Development at American Rivers and launched initiatives on in-stream flows and mountain meadow restoration. Prior to that, she was Director of the Sierra and Africa Rivers Program at the Natural Heritage Institute where she led programs in adaptive management in the context of river restoration and floodplain management.
For four years, she was Science, Engineering and Diplomacy Fellow at USAID's Regional Center for Southern Africa based in Botswana. There, she worked on transboundary river management with a focus on the Okavango River. Elizabeth serves on the boards of the Consensus Building Institute, Stockholm Environment Institute - US, and TreeSisters. She also sits on the advisory board of the South Yuba Citizens League. She received a BA in English Literature, a BS in Biological Sciences, and an MS in Biological Sciences from Stanford University and a PhD in Wildlands Resource Science and River Science from UC Berkeley. Elizabeth lives with her husband, daughter, several dogs, goats and chickens on a tiny farm in Nevada City, CA.
Job Titles:
- President of Resero
- Resero Consulting / President / Granite Bay, California
Ellen is President of Resero offers transformational consulting to experts, leaders, and organizations. Her predominant technical focus has been on climate change and the electric utility sector. For this, she works with electrical system operators, policy makers, regulators, and market participants to effect change in market structures and to advise stakeholders wanting to improve the markets and operations. Resero conducts large-scale technical and policy studies and works with multi-stakeholder groups, and advises companies wanting to affect positive change in the energy production sector.
Resero also works one-on-one with corporate leaders to enhance their effectiveness and decision-making skills. Through ReseroWisdom Ellen offers training and coaching to leaders and organizations on emotional intelligence and other skills and practices to improve one's impact in this changing world.
Evelyn Arce Erickson, is of Colombian Indigenous Muisca descent and is the Founder of a new business called Coastal Escape HMB (coastalescapehmb.com). She works with high tech companies like Facebook, Ford and Ancestry in designing team activities for their annual off-site strategic meetings at her beach home. She is one of the Founding members and Chair of the board for a new not for profit organization called Coastside Friendship Organic Gardens (c-Fog.org) whose mission is to create sustainable gardening practices and give access of organic foods for all along the California coast. She joined the HalfMoon Bay Parks and Recreation Commission in 2018 and is currently taking a program to become a Master Gardener. She is also an advisor to a new NGO called Earth Codes Observatory https://www.earthcodesobservatory.org/team
Previously she ran an international NGO for 15 years called International Funders for Indigenous Peoples (IFIP) Under Evelyn's leadership, (IFIP) became a self- standing not for profit organization while she lived in the Akwesasne Mohawk Territory, New York. Evelyn built Indigenous Philanthropy to a respected and credible field in the world of Philanthropy. Her work with IFIP created a network of funders, NGO's and Indigenous Peoples and was instrumental in leveraging hundreds of millions to the most marginalized communities of the world. Evelyn brought Indigenous leaders and youth from over 40 countries to over 15 IFIP conferences, organized donor site visits to over a dozen Indigenous communities, organized dozens of regional meetings nationally and globally and brought alliances of donors together to create the first ever Indigenous- led` funds. Evelyn has spoken about the importance of funding Indigenous communities at over a dozen conferences including United Nations Permanent Forum, SOCAP, Bioneers, Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmakers Support, Council on Foundations, Environmental Grantmakers Association, EDGE Funders Alliance, IUCN, Opportunity Collaboration and others globally and nationally. She also helped to develop and fundraise for several critical publications including "Funding Indigenous Peoples: Strategies for Support" which was published in collaboration with the Foundation Center and GrantCraft. Evelyn has been a nominator for the Goldman Environmental Prize for the last 10 years and she remains an active nominator. She served as one of the judges for the World Bank's "Indigenous Adaptation to Climate Change Fund", a 2 million dollar fund that chose 20 of the best Indigenous global projects.
Evelyn graduated from Cornell University with a Master's in Teaching, Agriculture and Adult Education and worked for seven years as a high-school teacher to youth in transition from incarceration. Evelyn has been a board member for Cultural Survival since 2013 and serves as the Chair for the Development committee, and is also on both the Nomination and Executive committee. Cultural Survival, is one of the oldest not for profit organizations in the US that advocates for Indigenous Peoples.
She lives in Half Moon Bay, CA with her husband, two teenage children and rat terrier. She is very active in her community and is involved with many groups including Community Emergency Response Team, Abundant Grace, Immigration Action Network, AAUW, Tutoring kids and more. She enjoys hiking, painting and permaculture gardening
Job Titles:
- Independent Consultant
- Independent Consultant / Mexico City, Mexico
Gabriela is an independent consultant providing services to individual donors, foundations, donor agencies, and donor networks to develop collaboration-oriented and culturally sensitive strategies to address environmental and social problems and opportunities in Mexico and Latin America. She also provides services to collaborative initiatives within and across sectors. She has worked for the nonprofit and government sectors on various positions related to the design, implementation, and oversight of marine and coastal conservation and sustainability projects and initiatives.
Gabriela serves on various committees and advisory boards of nonprofits and philanthropic organizations and enjoys writing a personal blog on the meaningful, joyful, and challenging pathways and intersections of inner life and work. She applies the lessons and skills gained as a Fellow in the different facets of her work, personal causes, and everyday life.
Job Titles:
- Co - Director
- Co - Founder
Through Serendip Productions - the media and communications company she founded with her husband - Huma has created hundreds of documentaries on all issues of development and poverty alleviation, including frontline flood impacts in Pakistan. In the last two years alone, some 7 million people have lost their homes, property, and livelihoods. Others that were less fortunate lost their lives.
Huma's documentaries, a selection of which are below, have been screened at numerous international film festivals and have won awards from the British Medical Association in the United Kingdom to the Sony Awards in Japan. For her services in media she was awarded the "Champion of Reform" in her home country. She is also the Vice President of Adventure Foundation Pakistan and the Media Director for National Paralympics Committee - Pakistan.
In 2010, Huma was tapped to become the Executive Director of the Imran Khan Foundation, founded by internationally acclaimed cricketer turned humanitarian and now politician, Imran Khan. The Imran Khan Foundation has delivered aid to those in need. Huma is not satisfied, however, with offering flood victims handouts only. The support that she has directed comes mostly in the form of capacity building efforts and initiatives to improve the education and health systems, as well as rural livelihoods for youth and women. She focuses on setting up localized provincial networks of service delivery in a country where much has been devastated. The Foundation distributed wheat seeds to 150,000 acres of land and launched a village development plan with aims to build 100 villages in the first phase with schools, health units, skill development centers, etc. The Foundation invests in local human resources through training and links with livelihoods.
Huma is now back at Serendip and focusing on establishing Pakistan's first sustainability development channel to create a permanent platform for all issues related to personal and societal development in relation to the new global challenges that communities face today.
Attending the annual Fellows workshops in 2010 and 2011, Huma views these as essential to her work, a time and place to re-ground herself in our leadership skills and re-connect with a supportive network of people with whom she can - in contrast with her colleagues in Pakistan - share her personal and professional challenges as well as visions for the future.
Job Titles:
- Director of Sustainability
Jed has been involved in dairy agriculture and cooperatives his entire life. Raised on a seven-generation family dairy farm in New England, since 1991 he has held a variety of positions for Cabot Creamery Co-operative in Vermont. In 2008, Jed has appointed to direct Cabot's sustainability practice, focused on advancing a framework for sustainability performance at the historic dairy co-op. Cabot draws inspiration from its Sustainability Credo of "Living within our means and ensuring the means to live" from cow-to-creamery-to-customer. Cabot is proud to be certified as a B Corporation since 2012.
Jed's experience as a Fellow provided perspectives, approaches and tools that have contributed richly to both his professional and personal advancement, including whole system thinking, visioning, system dynamics, reflective conversation, and coaching. The fertile, creative space created by the Fellows program and further defined by the Cobb Hill community, plus the diversity of the cohort participants, have led to lasting friendships, collaborations and inspiration.
Job Titles:
- Capital Implementation Program Manager for King County Metro
Jen Sokolove is Director of Programs and Strategy at the Water Foundation, where she drives grant making to secure safe water for people, restore and sustain freshwater ecosystems, and build climate resilience. As a member of the senior management team, Jen helps implement the foundation's overall mission and works closely with the CEO to engage new partners, develop campaign strategies, and grow field capacity. She has been working on sustainability issues for more than two decades, with a focus on community-based conservation. Prior to joining the Water Foundation, she led strategy and grant making at the Compton Foundation around movement-building and narrative in climate change, reproductive justice, and peace and security. She joined Compton initially to advance its environmental programs on fresh water, climate, and rural conservation in the western United States, as well as sustainable food systems and art for social change. Before Compton, Jen worked on a variety of community-led conservation projects in California, Montana, and the Pacific Northwest. She serves on the boards of the Story of Stuff, EcoAdapt, and the Biodiversity Funders Group, and advisory boards for the Healthy Headwaters project of Carpe Diem West and the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program at UC Santa Cruz. Jen received a PhD in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management from UC Berkeley.
Job Titles:
- Trust for Public Land / Program Director / Minneapolis, Minnesota
Job Titles:
- Program Manager, Equity and Social Justice Capital Implementation
Prior to consulting for Living Cities, Jen was a Senior Vice President at Ernst and Young Infrastructure Advisors, helping state and local governments and other clients develop innovative ways to deliver transportation projects. In her former Federal Highway Administration role, Jennifer conducted policy research and education on funding and financing of transportation projects, and provided technical assistance nationwide on public private partnerships and project finance. She was part of a new office established by the Federal Highway Administration to encourage innovative thinking and cultural change in the transportation infrastructure industry.
Jennifer uses systems thinking to develop a vision for a sustainable and equitable national transportation system, which delivers mobility, not just capital facilities. She draws on her experiences as a Fellow to improve skills that will help her implement that vision, including how to make it simple and compelling, and how to bring about culture change both internally and externally.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder
- President
- President of the Meadowlark Institute
Jerry is President of the Meadowlark Institute, based in Minnesota. Meadowlark is committed to developing individual and collective capacity to be responsive during times of rapid change, to be comfortable with uncertainty, to hold multiple points of view simultaneously, and engage in meaningful conversations with those who hold different traditions, values and goals.
He was Executive Director of the Northern Great Plains Rural Development Commission, a Federal Commission established by Congress to look at the future of the 5-state region of Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska. He co-led the international Trade and Transport project initiated by Congress to specifically look at the relationship between the region's transportation infrastructure and international trade development.
Jerry organized and co-led the Meadowlark Project. The Project was funded by the Bush, Blandin, Bremer and Kellogg Foundations and the US Department of Agriculture. Its purpose was to bring a project team representative of all walks of life using the Change Lab (Theory U) approach to explore how the region could address some of its most intractable problems, such as high unemployment within Tribal Nations while nearby hundreds of jobs went unfilled. A key outcome was the recognition that while the region had built a strong economic development infrastructure at the local and State levels, it did not have the human infrastructure to host difficult conversations. This led to formation of the Meadowlark Institute and support by the Bush and Blandin Foundations to bring Art of Hosting trainings to Minnesota.
He co-authored Talking Wires, a history of North Dakota's rural telephone cooperatives for the North Dakota Rural Telephone Cooperative Association. The hardcover book was distributed to coop members. He authored "Aid to the Poor: Am I My Brothers Keeper?", a study guide used in a series of community humanities seminars. Jerry is co-author of several NGP publications including "The New Marketplace in European Agriculture: Environmental and Social Values within the Food Chain," "Private Sector Protocols: Threats and Opportunities for American Farmers," and Towards New Horizons: Trends in Transportation and Trade - Moving the Northern Great Plains Region to a Stronger Economic Future, which was written under contract for the Minnesota Department of Transportation. He was an editor of Renewing the Countryside-North Dakota, which was written under contract for Renewing the Countryside (RTC), a Minnesota non-profit. The hardcover book was both given to various organizations and sold in bookstores by RTC.
Jerry received an MA in economics from the University of North Dakota in 1984. He has taught economics classes at the University of North Dakota and University of Minnesota-Crookston. He received his PhD in Social and Behavioral Sciences from Tilburg University, the Netherlands in May 2015. Jerry has attended the Senior Executives in State and Local Government program at Harvard University as a Fannie Mae Foundation Fellow and is a Donella Meadows Sustainability Leadership Fellow. He has served on numerous Boards of Directors over the years, including Dakota Sun, Greater Minnesota Housing Fund, the Consensus Council, and Great Plains Sustainable Development. A lifelong fan of public radio, he is the past Chair of the Board for Prairie Public Broadcasting.
Job Titles:
- Co - Manager of the Climate and Energy Program at the Democracy Collaborative
- Researcher and Writer
Johanna is the Co-Manager of the Climate and Energy Program at the Democracy Collaborative, alongside her colleague, Carla Santos Skandier. Her research focuses on transitioning from the extractive, fossil fuel economy and building towards resilient and equitable communities based on energy democracy.
Johanna received her M.Sc. in sustainable innovation from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She also has a B.A. in Environmental Policy from Barnard College, where she was an Athena Scholar for Women's Leadership. She has organized around climate justice both in the United States and the Netherlands. She was previously an Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) Fellow, working to bridge the gap between scientists and society.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director
- Executive Director of the Mary Reynolds Babcock
Justin Maxson is the Executive Director of the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, a 66-year old foundation that seeks to move people and places out of poverty in the South. The Foundation supports organizations and networks that work across race, ethnic, economic and political differences to make possible a brighter future for all. For 13 years, Justin was President of the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development, a 44-year-old multi-strategy community economic development organization serving Central Appalachia based in Berea, Kentucky. Before MACED, he was founding Executive Director of the Progressive Technology Project. He holds a Masters in Anthropology from Boston University and a BA from the University of Kentucky.
Andrew Leonard of Grist featured Justin as one of the ‘Change Gang' members on December 7, 2011. Read the article Justin Maxson: An Appalachian trailblazer for sustainability
Job Titles:
- Director of Global Ideas for US Solutions
Karabi Acharya is the Director of Global Ideas for US Solutions at Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The Global team examines promising solutions from around the world that may have exciting ramifications in the US. The team explores transformations that have taken place abroad to improve health and create health equity, learning from these accomplishments to spark our imaginations and urge action here in the United States.
Previously, Karabi was global director for Ashoka, a network of social entrepreneurs worldwide, with over 3,000 fellows in 70 countries putting their system-changing ideas into practice on a global scale. She led Ashoka's efforts to document the impacts of its work and convene critical conversations that will shape our future.
Prior to Ashoka, Karabi served as a senior program officer with the Academy for Educational Development where she developed the SCALE TM approach, a whole-system approach that builds social capital by strengthening organizational networks. SCALE TM has been used in agriculture, tourism, and health sectors in more than nine countries. Also, during this period, Karabi was on faculty at Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health.
Karabi earned a BA in Anthropology from the University of Chicago, a Masters of Health Science in International Health from Johns Hopkins University, and a Doctor of Science from Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. She is also a Donella Meadows Leadership Fellow. She has written and presented extensively on a host of issues, such as sustainability, nutrition, health disparities, child health, infectious diseases, immunizations and many other areas of national and global health. She recently founded Conquering Gyrate Atrophy to catalyze research on this retinal disease.
Karabi enjoys crossing boundaries, whether conceptual or geographic, and has lived in Belgium, France and India and traveled to more than 20 countries.
Karin is a Practitioner in Residence in the Biology and Environmental Science Department at the University of New Haven. An interdisciplinary scientist and educator, her academic training spans three disciplines including the biological sciences, marine resource management, and environmental education.
Her research explores the social aspects of global climate change and includes understanding the knowledge and perceptions of various stakeholders to these changes in order to understand the vulnerability of socio-ecological systems and resilience. She has been working with coral reef dependent communities in the Caribbean for the past ten years. Her current research includes assessing socioeconomic impacts of climate change on the United States Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico's coral reef fisheries. Karin is also interested in raising awareness about pollution stressors to our marine environments. Her current research focuses on testing outreach strategies to promote environmentally responsible behaviors to prevent debris from entering coastal waterways.
Karin enjoys teaching science to all audiences in various settings which have included salt marshes on Cape Cod, exhibit halls at the Museum of Natural History in New York, and onboard a tourism vessel in Southeast Alaska. Currently, she is working on developing curriculum for middle school and high school students which focuses on our changing climate and sustainability. At the University of New Haven, Karin teaches courses in the marine affairs, marine biology, and environmental science programs. She is inspired by her students and dedicated to their success in these fields. In her spare time, Karin enjoys reading, gardening, watching wildlife, hiking forested paths, and spending time around salt water. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, two sons, two dogs, and a couple of chickens. All of which bring her great joy.
Job Titles:
- Artist & Attorney
- Cherokee Artist
Kathy is a Cherokee artist and semi-retired attorney. She writes a weekly opinion editorial for the Tahlequah Daily Press. In 2019, she co-founded a 20+ artist-member cooperative art gallery in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. She teaches classes in creative expression. Before that, she was a member of the National Treasury Employees' Union in Kansas City, Missouri where she worked for the IRS. She formerly worked as a planner, organizer, and policy analyst for ten years with Cherokee Nation, with a focus on sovereignty and sustainable self-governance.
For Cherokee Nation, she helped to start the Cherokee Small Farm Project and helped found the Oklahoma Food Cooperative. The Food Cooperative is both a producer cooperative and a consumer cooperative with approximately 2,000 members, 125 producers, and 2,600 monthly ‘Oklavore' products. Monthly sales average $65,000, of which 95% goes to the farmer producers.
On the Board of Legacy Cultural Learning Community, she helps to preserve Cherokee ethnobotanical traditions and to give traditional cultural and artistic opportunities to young Cherokees, sustaining intergenerational connectedness to the Earth. As Co-Founder of the Cherokee Film Festival, she was a part of establishing programs to help rural Indian youth learn film-making for the expression of traditional indigenous values.
Kathy is also coordinating an Energy Policy Team to assess Cherokee Nation's carbon footprint, including that of the government, it's businesses, and the businesses and governments that Cherokee Nation interacts with. For Blue Sky Water, a Cherokee traditional conservation group, Kathy is helping to bring together stakeholders on a collaborative Greenway of the Cherokee Ozarks with the help of National Park Service. This will link traditional Cherokee, conservation, and recreation nodes along a 94-mile highway route through the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma.
Through the conservation group Save The Illinois River, Kathy also produces an annual Earth Day Songwriters' Music Jam and is working on a second CD music anthology documenting the culture of the Illinois River as a measure of conservation values.
Kathy has a BA degree in Political Science from Univerity of Oklahoma and a JD in Law from University of Tulsa.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director
- Executive Director of the Charles
Kristi Kimball is executive director of the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, which focuses on improving the quality of K-12 education in California and nationwide, with emphasis on charter schools, teacher and principal preparation, and parent information and engagement. The foundation also supports human services organizations that provide direct services throughout the Bay Area to help people climb out of poverty.
Previously, at the Hewlett Foundation Kristi developed a portfolio of grants to exemplary "deeper learning" schools across the country and another portfolio focused on policy advocacy, research, and communications that contributed to the landmark school finance reform in California known as the Local Control Funding Formula. Earlier, Kristi worked as a consultant to a number of foundations and non-profits, in the US Department of Education, in the Education Policy Research Center at the Urban Institute, and in the Education Office of the US Senate H.E.L.P. Committee. She holds a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College and a master's degree in public administration from Princeton University.
Kristi has served on a number of non-profit boards including: Grantmakers for Education, Envision Education, and California Charter Schools Association, and she was a participant and member of the California Collaborative on District Reform for a number of years.
Kryn is a recent graduate from Emory University where he studied Sustainability and Urban Development as a focus area of his Interdisciplinary Studies. Sustainability sits at the crux of almost every discipline, both academic and situational, and Kryn works to integrate a broad platform of theory to pursue a sustainable future.
With a focus mainly on greenhouse gas accounting and abatement strategies, Kryn is active in efficiency promotion, energy analysis, and the facilitation of renewable energies. He works to advise and promote organizational sustainability and imagines a world with a clean, reliable electrical grid. Past work has included emission accounting and reduction advising for Emory University and pollutant collection and destruction for use in the carbon. He looks to draw upon a wide range of experience to create innovative and novel approaches to sustainability in practice.
Kryn's most recent work has been with Big Sky Resort in Montana where he is helping to launch a comprehensive sustainability mission for the ski area. His love for the mountains, and dedication to the preservation of Montana wilderness helps to re-imagine the environmental work of Big Sky Resort, and promote a sustainable future for the ski industry as a whole.
Job Titles:
- Director, Global Ideas for US Solutions
Job Titles:
- Capital Implementation Program Manager for King County Metro