Speakers

Dr. Andrew Weil

Andrew Weil M.D. is the nation's foremost authority on Integrative medicine. He is author of numerous books including international bestsellers, Spontaneous Healing and Eight Weeks to Optimum Health. Drawing from his newest book, Why Our Health Matters: A Vision of Medicine That Can Transform Our Future, scheduled for publication on September 8, 2009, Dr. Weil will illustrate the critical link between human and environmental health, and transforming the healthcare system to heal the planet.

Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan is an award-winning author of bestsellers including The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, and most recently In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. Michael Pollan is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and former editor of Harper's Magazine. As one of the most influential thinkers on food and agriculture, Pollan will highlight the widespread consequences of our current food system and the growing movement to change it.

Sarah James

Sarah James is an Gwich'in elder from Arctic Village, Alaska and Goldman Environmental Prize winner for her work protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Sarah James will illustrate the devastating impact climate change is having on her people and how they are responding to the crisis.

Arturo Sandoval

Arturo Sandoval is one of New Mexico's most prominent civil leaders. Sandoval will explore how to find the balance between ancient indigenous cultures and newer Western influences that impact land and life, to create a viable future for us all.

Lily Yeh

Lily Yeh is an internationally celebrated artist and the founder of Barefoot Artists, Inc. Yeh will explain how art can heal the environment as well as the hearts and minds of traumatized communities.

Brock Dolman

Brock Dolman is a founding member of Occidental Arts and Ecology Center and the director of their water institute. Dolman will explain the urgency to restore natural habitats and educate communities in preparation for the climate changes that lie ahead.

Kari Fulton

Kari Fulton is a Brower Youth Award winner and national campus campaign coordinator for the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative. Fulton will describe how youth in America are fostering a more unified and inclusive environmental movement for the 21st century.

Jack D. Hidary

Jack D. Hidary is the co-founder of SmartTransportation.org and chair of AmericansforCleanEnergy.org. Hidary will explore the social, political and economic implications of transitioning to renewable energies.

Jensine Larsen

Jensine Larsen is the founder of World Pulse Media. Larsen will share the story of her journey in building an interactive global media enterprise that empowers women worldwide to speak out and collaborate with one another to solve global issues to create a better world.

Jason McLennan

Jason McLennan is the CEO of Cascadia Green Building Council and a leading figure in the green architecture movement. McLennan will show breathtaking examples of building designs that reduce energy by mimicking nature.

Alex Steed

Alex Steed is a communication consultant for nonprofit organizations and advocacy groups, and he specializes in community management and constituency activation. In mid-2008, he organized, fundraised for an executed Millennials Changing America, a cross-country research tour that took him to 30 different cities in exploration for how, exactly, Millennials leverage their political power by way of using Internet technologies. He is also an educator, and will be teaching a class about the history and methodologies of Internet-based activism at the University of Maine Honors Program in January. He is a volunteer staff member for Maine Youth Leadership, a leadership seminar made available for one high school sophomore from every high school in Maine. At present, he is organizing several extra-curricular media literacy classes, also for high school sophomores.

Dr. Mitchell S. Thomashow

Dr. Mitchell Thomashow is the President of Unity College in Maine, a small environmental liberal arts college whose  mission entails stewardship, sustainability, and service. Thomashow is the founder of Whole Terrain, an environmental literary publication, originating at Antioch New England Graduate School, and a new publication “Hawk and Handsaw,” a journal of reflective sustainability.He is also an Associate Faculty Member in the Doctoral Program in Environmental Studies at Antioch New England Graduate School, a program which he founded. Bringing the Biosphere Home (The MIT Press, 2001) is a guide for learning how to perceive global environmental change. Currently, he is in the initial stages of two writing projects: one a book on the ecology of improvisation, linking music, play and sports, and patterns in nature, a second a series of essays exploring how an environmental studies education promotes virtue.

Maude Barlow

Maude Barlow is the National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians and Senior Advisor on Water to the President of the United Nations General Assembly. She also chairs the board of Washington-based Food and Water Watch and is a Councillor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council. Maude is the recipient of eight honorary doctorates as well as many awards. She is also the best selling author or co-author of 16 books, including the recently released Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and The Coming Battle for the Right to Water.

Zoe Weil

Zoe Weil, co-founder and president of the Institute for Humane Education and is considered a pioneer in the comprehensive humane education movement, which provides people with the knowledge, tools, and motivation to be solutionaries for a better world. Zoe has built a reputation as a dynamic speaker on the issues of education and social change and leads workshops and speaks frequently about humane education and humane living across the U.S. and Canada. She has served on the graduate faculty at the University of Maine and is on the faculty at Cambridge College. Zoe has written numerous articles and essays, appeared frequently on TV and radio, and has served as a consultant on humane education to people around the world.

Aaron Fredrick

Aaron Fredrick is the former Executive Director and Co-Founder of Rippleffect, Inc, a Portland, ME based non-profit educational institution, Rippleffect was created to serve the Maine coast and Greater Portland community by transforming a 1907 island military outpost into a living classroom 3 miles from Portland. Aaron alongside his life partner Emilia Dahlin will share his discoveries and observations as part of an intergenerational team who visit and bear witness to 'accupuncture' points around the planet, communities who seek solutions to our most pressing challenges.

Emilia Dahlin

Emilia Dahlin is an award-winning, nationally-touring songstress, an avid rock-climber, devout ice-cream eater, ardent storyteller/ listener, and spirited gardener, who's passionately interested in how we nourish ourselves and each other in all realms. Emilia alongside her life partner Aaron Fredrick will share her discoveries and observations as part of an intergenerational team who visit and bear witness to 'accupuncture' points around the planet, communities who seek solutions to our most pressing challenges.

Dan Mathews

How can a serious cause compete for attention in a society hungrier for entertainment than education? With provocative campaigns that use sex, celebrities, and humor, just like a Madison Avenue ad agency. Dan Mathews is the irreverent force behind the colorful crusades and star-studded stunts carried out by PETA, one of the most high-profile pressure groups of all time.

Jay Salinas

Jay Salinas is a farmer, artist and educator. In 1993, together with his partner Donna, they started the Neu Erth Wormfarm, a CSA based in Reedsburg Wisconsin. In 1997 the Wormfarm was named one of Wisconsin's top Rural Development Initiatives. In 2000, they founded the Wormfarm Institute, a non-profit whose mission is to re-integrate culture and agriculture. The Institute recently received the Robert E. Gard Wisconsin Idea Award. In 2006. Jayaccepted a position with Growing Power in Milwaukee and in 2007 was named as a Co-Director. He returned to the Wormfarm in the summer of 2009 to head the Re-enchantment of Agriculture project exploring the parallels between art and farming. Jay has taught art to at-risk youth, registered nurses and at the university level. He has taught innovative farming techniques and technologies to farmers across the nation.

Abby Rockefeller

Abby Rockefeller shares some revolutionary and evolutionary ideas for simultaneously maintaining the purity of water and the fertility of soil. Join Abby as she presents a short entertaining history of the ways human animals have dealt with our excreta from pre-agricultural times to the industrial present. Critically examining sewers and sewage treatment she discovers a fundamentally flawed system and proposes a complete reorientation away from technologies that use water to transport wastes and towards technologies that provide source separation, appropriate recycling and prevent pollution.