Beaming Speakers From the 21st Annual Bioneers Conference

These visionaries are already creating the healthy, diverse, and more equitable world we want to live in—our legacy for future generations. Connect with engaged bioneers, who are making a real difference.

At the Three Rivers Bioneers conference, we will screen live via satellite these compelling speakers.  Be a part of history as these luminaries gather to share their breakthrough solutions.

Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE, began her landmark study of chimpanzees in what is now Tanzania in 1960 under the mentorship of famed anthropologist and paleontologist Dr. Louis Leakey. Her work at Gombe Stream would become the foundation of future primatological research and redefine the relationship between humans and animals. She continually urges her audiences to recognize their personal responsibility and ability to effect change. "Every individual counts," she says. "Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference."

Andy Lipkis is President of TreePeople, which he founded in 1973, as a guiding light for the global citizen forestry movement. For more than 35 years Lipkis’ leadership has helped make Los Angeles a testing ground for visionary, community-based efforts seeking urban environmental health and sustainability, including spearheading integrated watershed management approaches that apply forests’ natural infrastructure services in cities, helping create L.A.’s curbside recycling program and the L.A. Conservation Corps, and most recently working with Green L.A., a collaboration of 60 mainstream and environmental justice groups.

Mary Gonzales is the western territory director for the Gamaliel Foundation, an institute that seeks to build faith-based organizations in the U.S., Great Britain and South Africa. With nearly 30 years' organizing experience, she has helped create many regional faith and value based community organizations in California and Hawaii. Mary also conducts leadership training events within the Gamaliel network and for several national religious and educational institutions.

John Francis, Ph.D., is known the world over as the Planetwalker. In 1971, Dr. Francis witnessed an oil spill in San Francisco Bay. The effects of the spill compelled him to stop using motorized vehicles. Several months later, to stop the arguments about the power of one person's actions, he took a vow of silence. His non-motorized lifestyle lasted twenty-two years, and his silence seventeen. During that time Dr. Francis walked across the United States earning a B.A at Southern Oregon State College, an M.S. in Environmental Studies at the University of Montana and a Ph.D. in land resources at the University of Wisconsin. He later sailed and walked through the Caribbean and then walked the length of South America. Dr. Francis will speak on his journey, his unique perspective on environment, and how we can each make a difference in our world. He is the author of:Planetwalker. 22 Years of Walking. 17 Years of Silence.

Lynne Twist (www.soulofmoney.org) is president of Soul of Money Institute, dedicated to inspiring, educating and empowering individuals, organizations and institutions to align the acquisition and allocation of their financial resources with their most deeply held values. Co-founder of the Pachamama Alliance (which works to preserve Earth's tropical rainforests), trustee of Fetzer Institute, former director of global funding with The Hunger Project, on the boards of many organizations including Youth for Environmental Sanity, the Global Security Institute, Educating Girls Globally and the Institute of Noetic Sciences, Lynne is also president of The Tide Turning Coalition, a lecturer, consultant to many nonprofits and author of The Soul of Money.

Peter Warshall is a world-renowned water steward, biodiversity and wildlife specialist, research scientist, conservationist and environmental activist. His multifaceted areas of expertise include natural history, natural resource management, conservation biology, environmental impact analysis, and conflict resolution and consensus building among divergent interest groups. Peter's rich life has included a stint as a Fulbright Scholar studying in Paris with Claude Lévi-Strauss, working for the U.N., USAID and other organizations in eleven African nations, working with the Tohono O'odham and Apache people of Arizona, and advising corporations and municipal governments. He also edited the legendary, highly influential publication Whole Earthfrom 1996 until it ceased publication, and is the co project director of Bioneers' Dreaming New Mexico initiative.

john a. powell is an internationally recognized authority in the areas of civil rights, civil liberties, structural racialization, ethnicity, housing, poverty and democracy. He is currently executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State and holds the Gregory H. Williams Chair in Civil Rights & Civil Liberties at the University's College of Law. Previously, he founded the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota; was national legal director of the ACLU; lived and worked in India and Africa; co-founded the Poverty & Race Research Action Council; and taught at numerous law schools including Harvard and Columbia.  

Gary Hirshberg has worked on sustainability issues for over 33 years, first as the Executive Director of the New Alchemy Institute in the late 1970's and early 1980's, and for the last 27 years as the CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farm, the world's largest organic yogurt company. Hirshberg and founder Samuel Kaymen began Stonyfield started as a 7-cow organic farming school on a hilltop NH farm and today it is a $340 million enterprise supporting over 165,000 acres of organic agriculture and thousands of organic family farmers over 100 different crops.

Mallika Dutt is the Founder and Executive Director of Breakthrough, an innovative, international human rights organization using the power of popular culture, media, and community education to transform public attitudes and advance equality, justice, and dignity.  Mallika is a co-founder of SAKHI for South Asian Women and currently serves on the Boards of WITNESS, the Open Society Institute US Programs, Games for Change, and on the Rights Working Group Steering Committee. (www.breakthrough.tv, www.sakhi.org)

Anthony Cortese, one of the nation’s longtime, pioneering leaders in greening higher education, is president and co-founder (with Senator John Kerry and Teresa Heinz) of Second Nature, a nonprofit working to make healthy, just, and sustainable action a first principle of higher education. He is a co-organizer of the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, co-founder of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, and a consultant on institutionalizing sustainability principles and programs.

Gloria Feldt, a leading women's activist, writer, speaker and commentator on leadership, politics, reproductive and public health and media who has appeared frequently on major national radio and TV news programs, pens the much-quoted Heartfeldt Politics blog, and is the author of several books, including: The War on Choice: The Right-Wing Attack on Women's Rights and How to Fight Back; and, most recently: No Excuses: How Women Can Redefine Power.

Elizabeth Kapu'uwailani Lindsey, Ph. D., is the first female National Geographic Fellow. An award-winning filmmaker and anthropologist, she is also the first Polynesian explorer for the National Geographic Society. Lindsey's commitment to the conservation of vanishing indigenous knowledge and tradition not only provides a cultural record for present and future generations, but also serves as the foundation for a global, digital repository, an initiative which she spearheads at the National Geographic Society. Her expeditions take her to some of the most remote regions of the world. Presently, Dr. Lindsey and members of the United Nations work on behalf of Pacific Islanders who are experiencing the punishing realities of climate change. Her documentary film, "Then There Were None", which chronicles the near extinction of native Hawaiians, is considered a Hawaiian history classic and has received numerous awards including the prestigious CINE Eagle.