Kenny Ausubel
CEO & Founder
Location: Santa Fe, NM
Bioneer since 1990

Kenny Ausubel is an award-winning social entrepreneur, author, journalist and filmmaker. He is the Founder and CEO of Bioneers, the internationally recognized nonprofit dedicated to disseminating breakthrough solutions for restoring people and planet. He launched the annual Bioneers Conference in 1990 with his business partner and wife Nina Simons, Bioneers Co-Founder and President.

Kenny is a writer, filmmaker and media professional. Since 2004, he has served as executive producer and co-writer of the award-winning international radio series The Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature.He acted as a central advisor to Leonardo DiCaprio’s feature documentary, The 11th Hour, and appears in the film.

He has written four books and edited several volumes of the Bioneers anthology book series. His most recent book Dreaming the Future: Reimagining Civilization in the Age of Nature (Chelsea Green 2012) won the Nautilus Grand Gold prize in the Ecology-Environment category. He writes for the Huffington Post.

Kenny co-founded the national company Seeds of Change in 1989 and served as CEO until 1994 to restore “backyard biodiversity” into the food web through marketing organic, biodiverse heirloom seeds to gardeners.

His critically acclaimed feature documentary film Hoxsey: How Healing Becomes a Crime and related reportage were named for the Best Censored Stories award for investigative journalism. The film played in movie theaters and aired on HBO and international TV, and enjoyed a special screening for member of Congress at the Kennedy Center, reported on NPR. He later published the acclaimed book “When Healing Becomes a Crime.”

Apart from his ongoing work with Bioneers, Kenny is currently developing several film projects.

Teo Grossman
Senior Director of Programs and Research
Producer, Bioneers Radio
Location: Boulder, CO
415-660-9299
Teo@Bioneers.org
Bioneer since 2014

Born and raised in Northern New Mexico, Teo grew up hiking and fishing in the mountains and streams of the southwest. An early interest in Edward Abbey’s writing during a series of family backpacking trips in Utah combined with an odd fascination with renewable energy policy in high school kick-started his trajectory. Teo completed his graduate work at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at UC-Santa Barbara as a Doris Duke Conservation Fellow. Throughout his career, Teo has engaged in diverse efforts including managing youth and educator outreach efforts, conducting state-level assessments of long-range planning efforts, and has lead research for university labs, consultants and international NGO’s on topics including climate change adaptation, ecosystem services and ecological networks. Combining a clear-eyed approach to problem solving with a knack for identifying cutting edge trends and approaches he strives to work towards the healthy integration of natural systems and human communities at multiple scales.

Read more by Teo Grossman here.

Nina Simons

Secretary Board of Directors
Co-Founder & Chief Relationship Strategist
Location: Santa Fe, NM
Bioneer since 1990

Nina Simons is co-founder of Bioneers and serves as its Chief Relationship Strategist. She is a social entrepreneur who is passionate about the power of women to transform the world, reaching racial and gender justice, indigeneity and rekindling a sacred relationship to nature, while co-creating a just transition that’s regenerative, loving and peaceful.

She speaks internationally and co-facilitates transformative leadership offerings that integrate Relational Mindfulness, Restoring the Deep Feminine and The Work That Reconnects.

Nina co-edited Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading from the Heart, and recently wrote the award-winning book Nature, Culture & the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership. She was named a recipient of the Goi Peace Award in recognition of her pioneering work through Bioneers to promote nature-inspired innovations for restoring (reciprocal relationships among) the Earth and our human community.

Nikki Spangenburg
Chief Administrative Officer
Location: Santa Fe, NM
505-395-2792
Nikki@Bioneers.org
Bioneer since 2008

Nikki has worked for Bioneers since 2008 starting with the award winning Dreaming New Mexico project and the Resilient Communities Network that works to build resilience from the ground up at local and regional levels. As Chief Administrative Officer, her work is focused on developing operational systems and processes that supports and delivers Bioneers mission, strategic plan and goals.

Jeffrey Vasterling
VP of Finance
Location: Santa Fe, NM
505-395-2744
JeffreyV@Bioneers.org
Bioneer since 2000

Jeffrey Vasterling spent his youth in the Midwest and moved to the Southwest in 1987. Naturally drawn to Mathematics, Physics and Business Theory from an early age, he used his years at Luther College to earn degrees in Anthropology and Psychology. He has also been a professional in the alternative health field.

Jeffrey is partnered with his best friend, Susan. He’s a gardening and outdoor enthusiast and is an avid supporter of the film industry.

Kenny Ausubel
CEO & Founder
Location: Santa Fe, NM
Bioneer since 1990

Kenny Ausubel is an award-winning social entrepreneur, author, journalist and filmmaker. He is the Founder and CEO of Bioneers, the internationally recognized nonprofit dedicated to disseminating breakthrough solutions for restoring people and planet. He launched the annual Bioneers Conference in 1990 with his business partner and wife Nina Simons, Bioneers Co-Founder and President.

Kenny is a writer, filmmaker and media professional. Since 2004, he has served as executive producer and co-writer of the award-winning international radio series The Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature.He acted as a central advisor to Leonardo DiCaprio’s feature documentary, The 11th Hour, and appears in the film.

He has written four books and edited several volumes of the Bioneers anthology book series. His most recent book Dreaming the Future: Reimagining Civilization in the Age of Nature (Chelsea Green 2012) won the Nautilus Grand Gold prize in the Ecology-Environment category. He writes for the Huffington Post.

Kenny co-founded the national company Seeds of Change in 1989 and served as CEO until 1994 to restore “backyard biodiversity” into the food web through marketing organic, biodiverse heirloom seeds to gardeners.

His critically acclaimed feature documentary film Hoxsey: How Healing Becomes a Crime and related reportage were named for the Best Censored Stories award for investigative journalism. The film played in movie theaters and aired on HBO and international TV, and enjoyed a special screening for member of Congress at the Kennedy Center, reported on NPR. He later published the acclaimed book “When Healing Becomes a Crime.”

Apart from his ongoing work with Bioneers, Kenny is currently developing several film projects.

Nina Simons

Secretary Board of Directors
Co-Founder & Chief Relationship Strategist
Location: Santa Fe, NM
Bioneer since 1990

Nina Simons is co-founder of Bioneers and serves as its Chief Relationship Strategist. She is a social entrepreneur who is passionate about the power of women to transform the world, reaching racial and gender justice, indigeneity and rekindling a sacred relationship to nature, while co-creating a just transition that’s regenerative, loving and peaceful.

She speaks internationally and co-facilitates transformative leadership offerings that integrate Relational Mindfulness, Restoring the Deep Feminine and The Work That Reconnects.

Nina co-edited Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading from the Heart, and recently wrote the award-winning book Nature, Culture & the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership. She was named a recipient of the Goi Peace Award in recognition of her pioneering work through Bioneers to promote nature-inspired innovations for restoring (reciprocal relationships among) the Earth and our human community.

Sonali Sangeeta Balajee is a proud mother, artist, organizer, facilitator, mindfulness / yoga instructor, and emerging health practitioner who works at the intersection of belonging, equity, and deep transformative change. She is the founder of Our Bodhi Project, a spiritual and political project that supports healthy movement-building and organizing through deepening our critical analyses, centering the health of all living systems, and enlivening the connection between social and collectively spiritual wellness. Her life work has focused on bringing forward ideas and strategies that speak to wholeness, specifically calling for leading with multiple truths and perspectives required for collective health.

Her community organizing background has focused on youth development, environmental justice, and HIV / AIDS-related advocacy and service. Her current advocacy focus is on resource mobilization for projects and initiatives that speak to the social and environmental antidotes our world so desperately needs.

Eriel (she/her) is a Dënesųłiné woman (ts’ékui), member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and mother of two, coming from a family of Indigenous rights advocates fighting for the recognition, sovereignty and autonomy of their Indigenous lands and territory in what is now known as Treaty 8, Canada.

In 2015, Deranger worked with local Indigenous organizers to help build out the foundations of Indigenous Climate Action, becoming one of the core co-founders of the organization. She formally stepped into the role of Executive Director in July of 2017.

Prior to ICA, Deranger worked with her First Nation to build out one of the largest inter-sectional keep it in the ground campaigns: The international Indigenous Tar Sands campaign – challenging the expansion of Alberta’s Tar Sands. As part of her role she brought international recognition to issues in her territory with celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio, Darren Aronofsky, Neil Young, Daryl Hannah, James Cameron and many others, drawing attention across the globe.

Deranger has written for the Guardian, Yellowhead Institute, The National Observer, Red Pepper Magazine, been featured in documentary films including Elemental (2012), interviewed for national and international media outlets including Democracy Now!, Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN), and CBC.

Ginny McGinn is a mother, artist, and nonprofit leader. Throughout her career, she has been deeply involved in the work of social and organizational change and in building partnerships across lines of power and privilege. Ginny has a profound interest in how change happens, from the level of individual transformation through the level of entire communities or systems, and it is this process of change that she seeks to continue to study and facilitate in her leadership at Whole Communities.

Previously, Ginny served as president of Bioneers, a national nonprofit dedicated to disseminating practical and visionary solutions for restoring Earth’s ecosystems and healing human communities. While at Bioneers she and her colleagues greatly expanded the reach of its programs by launching satellite conferences and building partnerships in cities around the country, creating access for many who would not have otherwise had it.

Cultivating practices that support whole communities (lower case intended) and bringing those practices into our daily lives is the focus of her current work. Through “Whole Thinking in Practice” we are able to stay present, make better decisions, and act on behalf of the whole as we go about our work in organizations and movements.

Ginny facilitates and consults on organizational change around the country, using the Whole Thinking Practices and the tools she and her colleagues have helped evolve at Center for Whole Communities.

john a. powell, Director of the Othering and Belonging Institute and Professor of Law, African American, and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley; previously Executive Director at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State, and prior to that, founder/Director of the Institute for Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota, has also taught at numerous law schools, including Harvard and Columbia. A former National Legal Director of the ACLU, he co-founded the Poverty & Race Research Action Council and serves on the boards of several national and international organizations. His latest book is: Racing to Justice: Transforming our Concepts of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society.

Dr Anita L. Sanchez is an international consultant, trainer, speaker and coach, focusing on transformational positive change, organization development, diversity, inclusion and engagement.  For thirty-five years, she has provided coaching and training to executives and their teams in dozens of Fortune 500 companies, non-governmental organizations and government agencies, created benchmarked workplace strategies and initiatives, led global organizational culture change initiatives and facilitated executive team and leadership development.

Anita writes on topics of positive change, transformation, and visionary leadership. She is the author of Discovering Your Positive Core – A Personal Guide™, and The Strategic Matrix for Selecting Diversity Initiatives.  Her book, The Four Gifts: Native Wisdom to Transform Our Lives  will be published in 2014.

Recently elected to join luminaries like Don Miguel Ruiz, Jack Canfield and Lisa Nichols and Michael Beckwith on the Transformational Leadership Council, Anita is widely known for her strategic insights and creative intervention designs and delivery, as well as, her skill at bringing together the wisdom in the heads and the hearts of individuals and their organizations.  Bridging the Elders and her first-hand indigenous wisdom with modern day science, she is a widely sought after speaker on leadership, a featured presenter at the Jack Canfield group Train the Trainer series, and is regularly interviewed in “all employee” podcasts on professional and personal development and transformation.

Anita has particularly focused on leadership and empowerment of women and people of many cultures around the world. She is a member of the Transformational Leadership Council.  Anita served two terms as a United States Delegate to the World Council of YWCA’s, where she facilitated visioning the future, peace and development, conflict management programs and training sessions for women from 83 different countries.   Her Ph.D. thesis at the University of Colorado examined visionary leadership demonstrated by women in 43 countries.  She is the past Chair of the Colorado Board of Community Colleges, an honorary Board member of Project AIDS Boulder County, and has served several terms as a professional reviewer of organizational development practitioners in the Rocky Mountain region.  Anita is also an international trainer, community development advisor, Rainforest Journey leader and social justice consultant for the Awakening the Dreamer initiative of The Pachamama Alliance.  She facilitates and certifies trainers for Barry-Wehmiller Communication Skills training, a foundation element of the growing Massive Movement for Listening.

A sample of Anita’s recent clients includes Hewlett Packard, Barry-Wehmiller Corporation, Ford Foundation, Earth Rights International, National Association of Independent Schools, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Dupont, Northwest Province of Jesuits, the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, Xcel Energy, Vista Century Health, Moss-Adams, AGILENT, AT&T, Xerox, IBM, National Security Agency, Johns Hopkins University, the Bocconi University of Milan and St. Thomas University.

Of Mexican and Aztec heritage, Anita resides in the mountains outside Boulder Colorado with her husband and two sons.

Clayton Thomas-Muller is a member of the Treaty #6 based Mathias Colomb Cree Nation, also known as Pukatawagan, located in in Northern Manitoba, Canada. Based in the prairie city of Winnipeg, Clayton is the ‘Stop It At The Source’ Campaigner with 350.org as well as a founder and organizer with Defenders of the Land. Clayton is involved in many initiatives to support the building of an inclusive movement globally for energy and climate justice. He serves on the boards of Black Mesa Water Coalition, the Global Justice Ecology Project and the Bioneers. He is also a steering committee member of the Tar Sands Solutions Network.

Clayton has been recognized by Utne Magazine as one of the top 30 under 30 activists in the United States and as a “Climate Hero 2009” by Yes Magazine. For the last twelve years he has campaigned across Canada, Alaska and the lower 48 states organizing in hundreds of First Nations, Alaska Native and Native American communities in support of grassroots Indigenous Peoples to defend against the encroachment of the fossil fuel industry. This has included a special focus on the sprawling infrastructure of pipelines, refineries and extraction associated with the Canadian tar sands. Clayton is an organizer, facilitator, public speaker and writer on environmental and economic justice.

Bill Benenson has been making films for over forty years, beginning with his award-winning documentaries The Marginal Way and Diamond Rivers. He has produced or executive produced numerous feature films including Boulevard Nights,The Lightship, and Mister Johnson, and was the 1st Executive Producer on the internationally acclaimed Beasts of No Nation.

With his partner Gene Rosow, Bill produced and directed the acclaimed environmental documentary Dirt! The Movie, which premiered as an Official Selection at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. His most recent documentary was The Hadza: Last of the First, about the last true hunter-gatherers of East Africa. He is currently working on a documentary called The Search for Ciudad Blanca, about the finding of a lost Pre-Columbian city / civilization in the Mosquitia jungle of Honduras.

For nearly three decades, Bill and his wife Laurie have been managing directors of the Francis & Benjamin Benenson Foundation, founded by Bill’s father, Charles B. Benenson. The foundation began with an emphasis on granting scholarships to inner-city minority students. Since then, Bill and Laurie have steered their donations toward multiple causes, including gun control, nuclear policy, indigenous rights, the arts, and the environment. More recently, they have focused what they call “filmanthropy,” making and helping to fund films that address the issues they care about.

Extremely committed environmentalists, Bill and Laurie support the Natural Resources Defense Council, Conservation International, Rainforest Action Network, TreePeople, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Amazon Conservation Team, and, of course, Bioneers.

Laurie Benenson began her career as a journalist, writing and editing for such publications as the Arizona Republic, the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, Architectural Digest, New West magazine, and the Whole Earth Catalogue, among others. In 1985 she founded Movieline Magazine, serving as its editor-in-chief for six years. Laurie went on to write for the New York Times Arts and Leisure Section for five years as a West Coast correspondent on film and television.

An ardent environmentalist, Laurie serves on the board of TreePeople (whose founder, Andy Lipkis, she interviewed for the L.A. Herald Examiner in the 70s). She is member of the Leadership Council of the Natural Resources Defense Council, and is a strong supporter of Rainforest Action Network, Conservation International, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Defenders of Wildlife, The Oceanic Society, Amazon Conservation Team, and Bioneers.

With her writing partner, Tracy Brown, she has written a script about the life of environmental pioneer Rachel Carson. In 2009 she served as Executive Producer of the acclaimed documentary Dirt! The Movie (which was significantly influenced by Bioneers), directed by her husband Bill Benenson and his partner Gene Rosow, and is a producer on the documentary The Hadza: Last of the First, also directed by Bill. She is currently an Executive Producer on the film Kiss the Ground, which will focus on the possibility of reducing atmospheric CO2 by sequestering it in the soil.They are collaborating with Kenny as Producers on his new film project, Changing of the Gods: Planetary and Human Revolutions.

Laurie and Bill have a daughter, Amanda, who is interning at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, as well as a son, Stephen, who is an artist-chef-entrepreneur living with his wife and two children in Portland, Maine.

Bill and Laurie first met Nina and Kenny in early 1991 and invested in their heritage seed company, Seeds of Change. They have been avid supporters of Bioneers since the beginning.

Jim Butcher is the Managing Partner of Entegra Partners. Entrega Partners is a strategy, innovation and sustainability consultancy, with over 25 years of experience across most industry sectors, national and state governments, public sector and leading NGOs. He is former Managing Director with Morgan Stanley where he created and led their first global Office of the Environment and created leading sustainability approaches and innovations for companies, cities and sustainable investing. In 1994-96, he led a Clinton White House initiative to create the first sustainable National Energy Plan, which included many of the policies and programs we see today with the Obama Administration. Prior, he led the Ford Foundation international and U.S. environmental efforts to link improved natural resource management to rural economic development. He is an expert in leading multi-stakeholder planning processes, such as for climate adaptation that needs extensive collaboration, whether across corporate, government, public and NGO sectors.

Gay Dillngham is Co-Founder, former President and Chair of Earthstone International, LLC, an environmental IP company manufacturing recycled glass into an engineered “white foam glass” for surface abrasion, non-toxic cleaning technologies, agriculture products and soon-to-be building products. This material is a replacement to many strip-mined materials and the new factory located at a solid waste landfill captures the greenhouse gas methane, converting it to power the kilns. Gay served as Chair of the New Mexico Environmental Improvement Board for six of eight years of her tenure. The EIB passed historic greenhouse gas regulations in 2010. Gay owns a production company, CNS Communications, and is an award-winning producer/director. She is executive director of the Livingry Foundation, served two years as board chair for the New Mexico Association of Grantmakers, and currently serves on the boards of Santa Fe Community College, New Voice of Business, and the World Security Institute.

Lauren Embrey is the Philanthropic Visionary of the Embrey Family Foundation and CEO of Embrey Interests, Ltd. She serves as a Board Member of The Dallas Film Society, The Dallas Theater Center, The AT&T Performing Arts Center, and The Letot Center Foundation in Dallas, The Ms. Foundation for Women, The Women’s Media Center, and Women Moving Millions in New York City.

Lauren’s passion is theater, film and human rights work. She produced the U.S. Premiere of Truth in Translatio in Dallas, TX in 2007. She is Executive Producer for the documentary Playground, a film on the commercial sexual exploitation of children in America, released in 2009. She is also involved in Impact Partners headquartered in New York City and Chicken and Egg Pictures in San Francisco. Lauren is a member of The Clinton Global Initiative, The Women Donor’s Network, and the Threshold Foundation.

Richard Foos has been in the entertainment business for over thirty five years starting with a small record store named Rhino Records, and eventually growing it into an audio label with well over one hundred million dollars in annual revenue. He and his partner, Harold Bronson, sold Rhino to Time Warner in 1998.

In 2003, Richard and his partners started a new company, Shout! Factory. Purveyors of pop culture, Shout! specializes in creating unique products comprised of classic, contemporary and cult TV series and feature films, animation, live music, comedy specials, documentaries, etc. Whether uncovering old favorites or producing new ones, Shout! Factory’s entertainment offerings are distinguished by its creativity, production value and appeal that spans generations. Shout! is one of the leading independent video and music companies in Entertainment.

Foos strongly believes in merging ones social values with business and has installed a strong sense of purpose and giving back in all his business concerns. To this end he serves as Chairman Emeritus for Little Kids Rock and on the boards of The Nation Institute, Government Accountability Project, and other such non-profits that make a strong commitment to social progress. Foos is a 1967 graduate of Beverly Hills High School and a 1971 graduate of Whittier College. He and his family currently reside in Los Angeles.

Connie Cagampang Heller is Co-Director of Linked Fate Fund for Justice and Founder of Project Linked Fate.

She has collaborated with leading experts at the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard Law Schools to design workshops and seminars for philanthropists and executives to disseminate research and strategies for addressing the effects of structural marginalization and societal implicit racial bias. She developed and co-authored, with UC Berkeley Professor john a. powell, the Systems Thinking and Race curriculum for The California Endowment.  Building on this work, she has worked with groups ranging from a national coalition of organizations that organize families with incarcerated children to progressive philanthropic membership organizations to cultivate capacity to identify and design interventions to build structural opportunity and dismantle persistent social inequity.

She is a founding Advisory Board member of the American Values Institute, and serves on the Boards of Groundswell Fund for Reproductive Justice, Demos, Ella Baker Center and the Mario Savio Memorial Youth Awards.

When she is not organizing, Connie creates fabric collages to explore and reveal the complexity of race in America.  Her fiber collages have been included in traveling exhibits with Fiber Artists for Hope, private collections, and collages from her series, “Seeing in Black and White: Missing The Delights in Between” and “White-not-White: Inside The House of Jim Crow ” are featured in Shakti Butler’s most recent film, Cracking the Codes: The System of Racial Inequity, and most recently “Seeing in Black and White” was selected for the cover of Lani Guinier’s The Tyranny of Meritocracy.

She holds a Masters in Architecture from University of California at Berkeley, a Masters in Anthropology from Columbia University, and completed her undergraduate studies at Mount Holyoke College and the University of California at Berkeley in Japanese Studies.

Darian Rodriguez Heyman is a serial social entrepreneur with a passion for the green economy and “helping people help.” Heyman served as a Commissioner for the Environment for San Francisco, where he helped pass the largest solar rebate program in the country, is a frequent collaborator of UNEP, and worked at Sir Richard Branson’s Carbon War Room and Cradle to Cradle author Bill McDonough’s institute. He is the former Executive Director of Craigslist Foundation, a best selling nonprofit author, co-founder of the global Social Media for Nonprofits conference series, and most recently, co-founder of Sparrow: Mobile for All. He recently released another best selling book, Nonprofit Fundraising 101 (Wiley), and is working with the United Nations to produce an impact investing global summit at their NYC headquarters later this year.

Polly Howells was active in the civil rights, peace, and women’s movements in the late Sixties and early Seventies. She became an LCSW psychotherapist, and practiced in Brooklyn, New York for 38 years. During that time she contributed to two Ms. Foundation for Women donor collaboratives as well as several other nonprofits, mostly organizations dedicated to women’s issues or the environment. She was Board Chair of Internews Interactive, a pioneer of digital media convergence, for thirteen years, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Cambridge School of Weston, Massachusetts for six years. In the summer of 2007 she and her husband traveled to the Ecuadorian rainforest with the Pachamama Alliance, and in 2009 they closed their private psychotherapy practices. Since then she has been a facilitator of the Pachamama Alliance’s Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream symposium, Joanna Macy’s Work that Reconnects, and a yearly five-day residential workshop for women: Reclaiming our Lives, Living in Earth. She is also a member of the initiating group of Woodstock New York Transition.

Jeffrey Hull is founding partner and CEO of Leadershift, Inc. a leadership development and coaching consultancy based in New York City. He is Director of Education and Business Development at the Institute of Coaching, clinical instructor in psychology at Harvard Medical School, and an adjunct professor of leadership at New York University. His background includes over twenty years of consulting and coaching experience with C-suite executives at major corporations and non-profit institutions. Dr. Hull has recently been involved with coaching physician leaders at MGH, Yale-New Haven, Weill Cornell and NYU medical Centers. A case study from his recent coaching work with anesthesia faculty at Harvard/Mass General Hospital, entitled, “Developing Physician Leaders” was published in the primary journal of anesthesia practitioners, “Anesthesiology”, in the fall of 2012.

A social entrepreneur, climate change activist, artist, attorney and philanthropist, Maggie Kaplan is perhaps most proud of founding Invoking the Pause, one of her most recent social entrepreneur projects  www.invokingthepause.org

Launched in 2007, Invoking the Pause (ITP) is an environmental small grants program designed to advance public awareness and engagement about climate change issues.  ITP’s mission is to invest time and resources to seed ideas, make connections, spark collaborations, and nurture networks– to help sustain the health and vitality of our planet.  At its heart, ITP offers a creative “pause” – a gift of time – to seed innovative reflection in interdisciplinary and collaborative ways to face these matters.  Maggie believes in the urgency of understanding and developing new strategies addressing various aspects of climate change realities.   Through 2015,  ITP has funded 35 projects covering a variety of disciplines–including artists, activists, business people, educators, filmmakers, health professionals  journalists, locavores,  photographers, scientists, and writers with a diverse geographic focus–from the local to the international–including the Amazon, Indonesia, Carribean & Jamaica, and Thailand.

Chief Oren Lyons, is Faithkeeper of the Wolf Clan, Onondaga Council of Chiefs of the Hau de no sau nee, or Six Nations — Onandaga, Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscarora. Chief Lyons helped establish the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations in 1982. He has been very active defending indigenous rights in U.N. forums around the world, and is a principal figure in the Traditional Circle of Indian Elders, a council of grassroots leaders of North American Indian nations. Recently retired as a professor of American Studies at SUNY Buffalo, where he directed the Native American Studies Program, Chief Lyons co-edited Exiled in the Land of the Free: Democracy, Indian Nations and the U.S. Constitution, with the late John Mohawk, who also served on the Bioneers board. He is also a widely exhibited artist, the author of Dog Story, and a major figure in world lacrosse.

Bioneers has long been committed to empowering, cultivating and supporting youth leadership and youth voices. Xiuhtezcatl Martinez’s work at Earth Guardians is giving voice to the current generation and generations to come who are committed to protecting our planet. We are honored that one of Earth’s preeminent and most inspiring youth leaders and defenders is joining our board.

Xiuhtezcatl Martinez is a 16-year old indigenous climate activist and hip-hop artist, and a powerful voice on the front lines of a global youth-led environmental movement. At the early age of six, Xiuhtezcatl began speaking about the need for action on climate change. Since then he has spoken around the world, from the Rio+20 United Nations Summit in Rio de Janeiro to addressing the General Assembly at the United Nations New York. He is the Youth Director of Earth Guardians, an organization of over 2,000 young activists, artists and musicians from across the globe who are stepping up as leaders and working together to create positive concrete action in their communities to address climate change. His work has been featured on PBS, Showtime, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Upworthy, The Guardian, Vogue, CNN, MSNBC, HBO and many more outlets.

Xiuhtezcatl is also a plaintiff in the ground-breaking lawsuit against the federal government for its failure to protect against the dangers of climate change. “Our Children’s Trust” includes 21 youth, aged 9-20, along with renowned climate scientist Dr. James E. Hansen; their case asserts that the federal government has violated the youngest generation’s constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property, and has failed to protect essential public trust resources.

Matthew Monahan is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who is passionate about how we can quickly transform our global systems for a more just and sustainable world. He is currently working on identity software, reimagining philanthropy, and building bridges to New Zealand.

Melissa K. Nelson, Ph.D., is a cultural ecologist and indigenous scholar-activist. She is associate professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University and executive director of The Cultural Conservancy, an indigenous rights organization that she has directed since 1993. Her work is dedicated to indigenous revitalization, environmental restoration, intercultural understanding, and the renewal and celebration of community health and cultural arts. Melissa publishes essays in academic and popular journals and books. She edited a Bioneers anthology,Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings For A Sustainable Future (2008), focusing on the persistence of traditional ecological knowledge in contemporary indigenous communities. In 2005, Melissa co-produced the award-winning documentary, The Salt Song Trail: Bringing Creation Back Together. She has been a visiting scholar at the American Indian Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. Melissa is Anishinaabe/Métis/Norwegian and an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Tribe.

David Orr, Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and senior advisor to the president of Oberlin College, is an award-winning scholar and leader in the sustainability movement, renowned for his pioneering work on environmental literacy in higher education and ecological design. David authored Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse (“The real fault line in American politics is not between liberals and conservatives… It is, rather, in how we orient ourselves to the generations to come who will bear the consequences, for better and for worse, of our actions.”) He is also the author of Design on the Edge: The Making of a High-Performance Building; The Last Refuge: Patriotism, Politics, and the Environment In An Age of Terror; The Nature of Design: Ecology, Culture, and Human Intention; Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition To A Postmodern World; and Earth In Mind: On Education, Environment, and The Human Prospect. (http://www.oberlin.edu/envs/)

Larry Rasmussen did his doctoral work at Union Theological Seminary in New York where he later held the Reinhold Niebuhr Chair in Social Ethics. He organizes an annual Earth-Honoring Faith workshop at Ghost Ranch, Abiquiu, NM. The 2015 theme was the wisdom of indigenous communities. The June 19-25, 2016, seminar theme is “Climate Justice,” with a teaching team representing African-American, Native American, and Anglo American communities and perspectives.

The Peoples Climate March in New York City on September 21, 2014 culminated in a Multi Faith worship service at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. It included a manifesto written by Larry.

Larry’s latest book Earth Honoring Faith – Religious Ethics In a New Key (Oxford University Press) is the Grand Winner of the 2014 Nautilus Book Awards. It also won the Gold Prize for the category, Best Book in Ecology/Environment.

The comments to the book include the following:

“Thoughtful observers agree that the planetary crisis we now face-climate change; species extinction; the destruction of entire ecosystems; the urgent need for a more just economic-political order-is pushing human civilization to a radical turning point: change or perish. But precisely how to change remains an open question.

In Earth-honoring Faith, Larry Rasmussen answers that question with a dramatically new way of thinking about human society, ethics, and the ongoing health of our planet. Rejecting the modern assumption that morality applies to human society alone, Rasmussen insists that we must derive a spiritual and ecological ethic that accounts for the well-being of all creation, as well as the primal elements upon which it depends: earth, air, fire, water, and sunlight. He argues that good science, necessary as it is, will not be enough to inspire fundamental change. We must draw on religious resources as well to make the difficult transition from an industrial-technological age obsessed with consumption to an ecological age that restores wise stewardship of all life. Earth-honoring Faith advocates an alliance of spirituality and ecology, in which the material requirements for planetary life are reconciled with deep traditions of spirituality across religions, traditions that include mysticism, sacramentalism, prophetic practices, asceticism, and the cultivation of wisdom. It is these shared spiritual practices that can produce a chorus of world faiths to counter the consumerism, utilitarianism, alienation, oppression, and folly that have pushed us to the brink.

Written with passionate commitment and deep insight, Earth-honoring Faith reminds us that we must live in the present with the knowledge that the eyes of future generations will look back at us.”

More background on Larry:

https://gustavus.edu/events/nobelconference/2009/rasmussen-profile.php

http://ghostranch.org/earth-honoring-faith-listening-to-earth-opening-to-god/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcp56IvCwf4

Sister Gloria Rivera, IHM was born in Mexico City. Women religious served people, but they were segregated from society. While attending college in the United States, she became drawn to a life of serving others and the Church. Her goal was to return to her homeland and teach and serve children and the poor.

She began her religious life with the Sisters of Mercy from Iowa. In 1992 she met three Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary at a conference in Mexico, and two years later, she moved to Detroit to become further acquainted with the IHM community.

A longtime leader on justice and environment within the IHM community, Gloria has worked on an impressive array of projects over the course of her time in Detroit. She ministered at Groundwork for a Just World, providing education and action on women’s issues, peace, environment and education. This was followed by a position at Proyecto Ayuda – Project Help, which provided older adults with minimum-wage jobs in nonprofit organizations. From there, she became the executive director of Freedom House, which provides comprehensive services for asylum-seekers, and then ministered at the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights planning educational events and providing opportunities to highlight human rights issues.

Since 2005, Sister Gloria has been a leader with Great Lakes Bioneers Detroit (GLBD), a network site for the national conference. Since 2009 Gloria has worked year-round with GLBD. Currently she is focusing on Biomimicry’s possibilities for social innovation.

Dale Rodrigues has always been a maverick. At age 4 his father started him racing Quarter-Midget racecars.  By age 7 he won his first race, and from then on he rarely lost.  By the time he “retired” at age 14 he had won over 300 trophies.  “Quarter-Midget racing contributed to my management style,” Dale says, “when you’re racing there is no ‘fast enough,’ you always want to go faster, be better.  That’s how I manage, we start at excellent and then go up from there.”

So it is no surprise that Dale is celebrated for his unorthodox management style of Mary’s Gone Crackers, which he co-founded with Mary Waldner, and served as CEO and President from 2004-2014. Built from scratch into a robust and profitable international enterprise, Mary’s reported a compound annual growth rate in excess of 40 percent every year under Dale’s leadership, earning its position as one of the premier natural-food brands in the industry.

As a leader, Dale cultivated a revolutionary culture in which he empowered his team through a safe, creative work environment. With Dale at the helm, no one was punished for independent thinking. He encouraged his team to take risks because “without risk, there is no personal growth, no evolution.” Personal growth and organizational evolution were two core values at Mary’s under Dale’s management.

Dale has been an entrepreneur most of his working life, starting in high school when he formed a light-show company. Later, he took the helm of his father’s construction company, growing the business four-fold in three years.

Dale utilized his construction experience and technical ingenuity in the creation of a database marketing company that provided building-permit data to suppliers and sub-contractors in the construction industry. After selling the business in 1996, he worked as a project manager for high-end residential contractors in San Francisco.

In 2003 Dale left the construction industry to direct the launch of Mary’s Gone Crackers.

Reflecting on his past experiences, he says, “I’ve learned that it’s best to think as big as you’re capable of thinking. It’s key to success.”

In 2012, Dale successfully brokered the sale of 80 percent of his company to Kameda Seika, Co. Ltd., Japan’s largest manufacturer of rice crackers, securing a return on investment in excess of 4x for Mary’s 53 investors.  Dale resigned as CEO and President at the end of 2014, and left the company in March of 2015.

Since his recent departure from Mary’s, Dale has devoted his time to entrepreneurship, mentoring, and the study and practice of yoga and meditation. He has traveled the world to study with master teachers, cultivate relationships, and invest in worthy business opportunities internationally.

Jim Sheehan is Founder and President of both the Center for Justice and the Community Building Foundation in Spokane, Washington. After graduating from Gonzaga Law School and spending more than 20 years as a public defender in Eastern and Western Washington, he received a windfall inheritance and wanted to put it to work for the greater good. Jim renovated the rundown Saranac Hotel, recreating it as the Community Building, a safe, welcoming, and affordable home for area nonprofit offices in Spokane’s downtown. In addition, he founded the Center for Justice, a nonprofit law firm dedicated to protecting human rights, preserving the Earth, and holding the government accountable to the principles of democracy. Since Jim established the Center, it has served its numerous clients at low or no cost. The son of a house painter and a housewife, Jim graduated from college in California and served two years in the army. He also serves on the board of the New Priorities Foundation.

Nikki Silvestri is the Co-Founder and CEO of Silvestri Strategies, working to support thriving communities, economies, and natural environments.

As the Co-Founder of Live Real and former Executive Director of People’s Grocery and Green for All, Nikki has built and strengthened social equity for underrepresented populations in food systems, social services, public health, climate solutions, and economic development. A nationally recognized thought leader, her many honors include being named one of The Root’s 100 Most Influential African Americans in 2014.

An accomplished communicator, Nikki is well known for her combination of vulnerability and razor-sharp analysis. In addition to her speaking appearances at conferences and private events, Nikki regularly forwards the message of equitable economies through numerous media channels. BET.com, the Huffington Post, and the San Francisco Chronicle have featured her writing, and her recent television appearances include All In with Chris Hayes and the Melissa Harris Perry Show on MSNBC.

Nikki began her work in social change through the foster care system in Southern California, where she directed Foster Youth Empowerment Workshops. She has a master’s degree in African American Studies from UCLA, and is originally from Los Angeles. She currently lives in Oakland, with her husband.

Hugo Steensma was a Director of SAM Sustainable Asset Management USA, Inc. SAM uses financial markets as the most powerful transmission mechanism to promote sustainable business practices. With its exclusive focus on Sustainability Investing, SAM provides a unique and broad range of sustainability solutions for investors, including the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. He founded a consulting firm specializing in assisting sustainable companies to procure equity and debt financing. Hugo started and managed Rabobank’s entry in the U.S. market. He initiated and directed the bank’s corporate finance activities with a focus on the food and agribusiness sector. He opened offices in New York, Dallas and San Francisco. He was with Bank of America, where he held management positions in corporate finance in Amsterdam, Brussels and San Francisco. Hugo served on the Board of Presidio Graduate School, which provides an MBA and MPA in sustainable management (www.presidioedu.org), and several environmental committees., and several environmental committees.

Paul Vosbeek is the founding partner of Real NewEnergy. Since the founding and launch of Real NewEnergy early 2010, Paul has been involved and responsible for the development of whole spectrum of sustainability projects and technologies including small wind turbine technology, hydrokinetic turbine technology, the development of an offshore wind test lab and numerous energy vision, energy management and energy efficiency programs.

Paul is the Founder and Board Member of OrangeGoesGreen which has further broadened the team’s horizon and capabilities in sustainable and resilient solutions at the intersection of energy, water and food. Paul currently serves as the Managing Director for Energyworx USA. Paul founded cleantech startups in small-scale hydro energy and energy storage technology.

Paul transferred to Washington D.C. in September 2006 to set-up the US operations for a leading Dutch supplier of specialized machinery for the destruction of currency, coin and classified information media. Paul has been able to successfully develop the company based on developing a strong network of strategic partnerships and securing contracts with the Federal Government and the private sector. Paul has developed an in-depth understanding of the workings of the US market in general and US Government specifically.

Prior to that, Paul was running his own consulting company, Vosbeek Consulting which was specialized in international environmental and agricultural technology transfer projects.

Paul holds a Bachelor degree in International Business obtained in 1992 at the Higher School of Economics in Groningen, the Netherlands and the Ryerson University of Toronto, Canada

Kenny Ausubel
CEO & Founder
Location: Santa Fe, NM
Bioneer since 1990

Kenny Ausubel is an award-winning social entrepreneur, author, journalist and filmmaker. He is the Founder and CEO of Bioneers, the internationally recognized nonprofit dedicated to disseminating breakthrough solutions for restoring people and planet. He launched the annual Bioneers Conference in 1990 with his business partner and wife Nina Simons, Bioneers Co-Founder and President.

Kenny is a writer, filmmaker and media professional. Since 2004, he has served as executive producer and co-writer of the award-winning international radio series The Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature.He acted as a central advisor to Leonardo DiCaprio’s feature documentary, The 11th Hour, and appears in the film.

He has written four books and edited several volumes of the Bioneers anthology book series. His most recent book Dreaming the Future: Reimagining Civilization in the Age of Nature (Chelsea Green 2012) won the Nautilus Grand Gold prize in the Ecology-Environment category. He writes for the Huffington Post.

Kenny co-founded the national company Seeds of Change in 1989 and served as CEO until 1994 to restore “backyard biodiversity” into the food web through marketing organic, biodiverse heirloom seeds to gardeners.

His critically acclaimed feature documentary film Hoxsey: How Healing Becomes a Crime and related reportage were named for the Best Censored Stories award for investigative journalism. The film played in movie theaters and aired on HBO and international TV, and enjoyed a special screening for member of Congress at the Kennedy Center, reported on NPR. He later published the acclaimed book “When Healing Becomes a Crime.”

Apart from his ongoing work with Bioneers, Kenny is currently developing several film projects.

Theo Badashi is an ecologist, media strategist, film editor and producer. A former radio host and community organizer with a background in Integral psychology and philosophy, he has a lifelong dedication to justice and a unique evolutionary perspective. He lives in Santa Fe, NM with his dog Mu.

Kelli Barr
National Bioneers Conference Project Manager
Location: Santa Fe, NM
415-660-9304
Kelli@Bioneers.org
Bioneer since 1999

Kelli works with the programming team for the Bioneers Conference. She is the communications liaison with all scheduled speakers, and she manages the large work-exchange crew who work with us each year.

Kelli’s previous professional experience was at EcoWorks Multimedia (a nonprofit project of the Tides Center) as assistant to the director, where she was responsible for office management, managing an organizational outreach program, supervising staff and intern schedules and editing manuscripts. Kelli has a B.A. in History from Salem State College, and is a certified dog trainer.

When not in the office, Kelli enjoys cooking healthy meals, backpacking and hiking with her dogs, and playing ice hockey.

Favorite Causes: Wildlife Biodiversity, Organic Food and Farming, Labeling of Genetically Modified Foods, Global Warming.

Nazoshnnii Brown-Almaweri
Intercultural Conversations Program Manager – Indigeneity Program
Location: Oakland, CA
Nazoshnnii@Bioneers.org
Bioneer since 2022

Nazshonnii Brown-Almaweri is a farmer, STEM educator, and Union College Alumna (B.S Mechanical Engineering and Studio Arts, French and Francophone Studies Minor) from West Oakland. She was a STEM tutor, media educator, and youth program assistant for the American Indian Child Resource Center. She is also connected to the Gill Tract Community Farm in Albany, an volunteer-led farm that provides food, medicine, and green spaces to the community. Nazshonnii is passionate about STEAM education and advocates for exposure and opportunities for the historically excluded people, especially Black and Native youth. As an educator, Nazshonnii has provided middle and high school youth with the space to learn about STEAM at the intersection of ancestral knowledge and their lived experiences. Creating space for Oakland youth to thrive in disciplines like engineering. Outside of work, she likes spending time with her nephews on the farm, watching endless youtube with her partner, and cooking for her friends.

Alexis Bunten
Co-Director – Indigeneity
Location: San Francisco, CA
Alexis@Bioneers.org
Bioneer since 2016

Alexis Bunten, (Aleut/Yup’ik) has served as a manager, consultant and applied researcher for Indigenous, social and environmental programming for over 15 years. After receiving a BA in Art History at Dartmouth College, Alexis returned to Alaska, where she worked at the Sealaska Heritage Institute, and the Alaska Native Heritage Center in programming. Subsequently, Alexis earned a PhD in Cultural Anthropology at UCLA, and has served as the Project Ethnographer for the Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage (IPinCH) project, and as a Senior Researcher at the FrameWorks Institute.

Alexis is an accomplished researcher, writer, media-maker, and curriculum developer. She has published widely about Indigenous and environmental issues, with articles in American Indian Quarterly, the Journal of Museum Education and American Ethnologist. Her 2015 book, “So, how long have you been Native?” Life as an Alaska Native Tour Guide” won the Alaska Library Association Award for its originality, and depth. In addition to writing, Alexis has contributed to several Indigenous-themed productions, including co-producing and writing the script for a documentary nominated for the Native American Film Awards. Alexis has developed educational material for both formal and informal learning environments including university level-courses as well as lifelong learner curriculum.

Read Articles by Alexis Bunten here.

Genie Cartier
Office Manager
Location: San Francisco, CA
415-660-9301
Genie@Bioneers.org
Bioneer since 2017

Genie Cartier was born and raised in San Francisco. She graduated from UCLA with a BA in English/ Creative Writing and earned an MFA in Creative Writing/ Poetry from SFSU. When not writing in her spare time, she is also a professional performer of 23 years and recently co-created a socially conscious duo show with her sister called Yesterday is Tomorrow, which addresses issues ranging from gentrification, feminism and the dangerous intersection of capitalism and technology (find out more at http://cartiersisters.weebly.com). Genie cares deeply about issues concerning the environment and conservation, to the point where her house is filled with reused and repurposed items she didn’t want to throw away.

Teo Grossman
Senior Director of Programs and Research
Producer, Bioneers Radio
Location: Boulder, CO
415-660-9299
Teo@Bioneers.org
Bioneer since 2014

Born and raised in Northern New Mexico, Teo grew up hiking and fishing in the mountains and streams of the southwest. An early interest in Edward Abbey’s writing during a series of family backpacking trips in Utah combined with an odd fascination with renewable energy policy in high school kick-started his trajectory. Teo completed his graduate work at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at UC-Santa Barbara as a Doris Duke Conservation Fellow. Throughout his career, Teo has engaged in diverse efforts including managing youth and educator outreach efforts, conducting state-level assessments of long-range planning efforts, and has lead research for university labs, consultants and international NGO’s on topics including climate change adaptation, ecosystem services and ecological networks. Combining a clear-eyed approach to problem solving with a knack for identifying cutting edge trends and approaches he strives to work towards the healthy integration of natural systems and human communities at multiple scales.

Read more by Teo Grossman here.

JP Harpignies
Senior Producer, Conference and Special Projects
Bioneer since 1990

JP is a Brooklyn, NY-based consultant, conference producer, copy-editor and writer. He is the author of four books: Political Ecosystems, Double Helix Hubris, Delusions of Normality, and most recently Animal Encounters; co-author of The Magic Carpet Ride; editor of the collection, Visionary Plant Consciousness; and associate editor of the first two Bioneers books: Ecological Medicine and Nature’s Operating Instructions. A senior review team member for the Buckminster Fuller Challenge from 2009 to 2017, he was formerly a program director at the New York Open Center and founder/co-producer of the Eco-Metropolis conference in NYC. JP also taught t’ai chi chuan in Brooklyn, NY for nearly 25 years.

Emily Harris
Media Producer
Location: San Francisco, CA
Emily@Bioneers.org
Bioneer since 2014

A sound engineer and music enthusiast, Emily’s love for mixing audio tapestries helps to bring the Bioneers Radio series to life. Emily is also a documentary filmmaker and editor who has worked on productions for Al Jazeera America and PBS.

Patience Kamau
Program Director, Bioneers U
Location: Harrisonburg, VA
Bioneer Since 2022

Patience Kamau’s passion is for the earth’s “wild” creatures. She is a peacebuilder-conservationist who at heart, sees her role as a conciliatory one between humans and our global environment’s complex ecosystems. Patience is indigenous to East Africa, born and raised in central Kenya.

Arty Mangan
Director – Restorative Food Systems
Location: San Francisco, CA
831-337-4900
Arty@Bioneers.org
Bioneer since 1998

Arty Mangan, Director of the Restorative Food Systems program, whose first experience in agriculture was as a farm worker picking peaches in West Virginia and tobacco in Ontario, has worked with farmers and agriculture since the 1970’s as a partner in Live Juice, a fresh, local, organic apple juice company in Santa Cruz, CA and later with Odwalla in charge of fruit sourcing, working with farmers in the US, Mexico and Costa Rica.

He joined Bioneers in 1998 as the Project Manager for the Restorative Development Initiative, producing “Wisdom at the End of Hoe” ecological agricultural workshops, collaborated with John Mohawk and the Iroquois White Corn Project and worked with The Federation of Southern Cooperatives and African American farmers in Mississippi and Alabama.

He is a former Board president of the Ecological Farming Association, and was a member of the Santa Cruz GE Subcommittee that led to a Precautionary Moratorium on growing genetically engineered crops in Santa Cruz County. For the Dreaming New Mexico project, he conducted a series of video interviews with Indigenous and Hispano farmers and leaders in New Mexico on biocultural crops and traditional farming that were shown on community TV stations in NM.

Arty’s latest work focuses on how agriculture can be a climate solution. He produced a Carbon Farming media series illustrating the power of soil carbon sequestration to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Mangan is also the Director of the Youth Leadership program.

Brittiny Moore
Young Leaders Fellow
Location: San Marcos, TX
Bioneer since 2022

Brittiny Moore is a Bioneers Young Leaders Fellow. She is a writer, researcher, and intersectional environmentalist who is passionate about environmental justice, Black agency in environmental spaces, and storytelling for racial and social justice.

Brittiny holds a bachelor degree in geology — with a minor in journalism — and master degree in geography. As a scholar, Brittiny has examined urban development practices and their ramifications on karst landscapes — namely the induction of catastrophic bedrock collapse sinkholes into underlying cave systems. She has also mobilized Black geographic thought and the concept of fugitivity to conceptualize an anti-racist and decolonized environmental education pedagogy.

With several years experience as a community organizer, Brittiny has worked with activist groups including the Black Lives Matter Movement, the Kentucky Fairness Campaign, and Communities of Color United. Motivated by community and the imagination, she seeks to combine her unique knowledge and skill set to mobilize the literary arts to advance Black liberation and to celebrate Black life.

Brittiny is a proud cat mom. She is a tarot and caving enthusiast and loves science fiction.

Cara Romero
Program Director – Indigeneity
Location: Santa Fe, NM
505-395-2746
Cara@Bioneers.org
Bioneer since 2011

Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), Director, possesses a background rich in Indigenous cultural studies, fine art and documentary photography and videography, traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) workshops, protection of indigenous intellectual property, conservation of indigenous cultural resources, fundraising, grantwriting, marketing, and the formalization of the Bioneers Indigeneity Program. Cara’s earned degrees in Cultural Anthropology (University of Houston), Fine Art Photography (Institute of American Indian Arts) and Photography Technology (Oklahoma State University). Prior to coming on board with Bioneers, Cara served as the first Executive Director of the Chemehuevi Cultural Center. She was an elected member of the Chemehuevi Tribal Council from 2007-2010, and became the Chairman of the Chemehuevi Education Board and Chairman of the Chemehuevi Early Education Policy Council.

Tyson Russell
IT/Media Administrator
Location: Santa Fe, NM
415-660-9303
Tyson@Bioneers.org
Bioneer since 2013

As the IT/Media Administrator, Tyson is responsible for defining, developing and curating online content for web properties and social media. He is responsible for full cycle content acquisition and website development processes. As well as the ongoing maintenance and management of the digital properties.

Tyson holds a bachelor degree in Business and Technology as well as a minor in History. He is a firm supporter of the Bioneers core mission and is proud to be part of their team.

Tyson is an avid mountain biker, with a deep appreciation for nature. He is a devoted husband and proud father of three beautiful children.

Favorite Causes: Animal Rights, Conservation, Equality and Veganism.

Nina Simons

Secretary Board of Directors
Co-Founder & Chief Relationship Strategist
Location: Santa Fe, NM
Bioneer since 1990

Nina Simons is co-founder of Bioneers and serves as its Chief Relationship Strategist. She is a social entrepreneur who is passionate about the power of women to transform the world, reaching racial and gender justice, indigeneity and rekindling a sacred relationship to nature, while co-creating a just transition that’s regenerative, loving and peaceful.

She speaks internationally and co-facilitates transformative leadership offerings that integrate Relational Mindfulness, Restoring the Deep Feminine and The Work That Reconnects.

Nina co-edited Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading from the Heart, and recently wrote the award-winning book Nature, Culture & the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership. She was named a recipient of the Goi Peace Award in recognition of her pioneering work through Bioneers to promote nature-inspired innovations for restoring (reciprocal relationships among) the Earth and our human community.

Nikki Spangenburg
Chief Administrative Officer
Location: Santa Fe, NM
505-395-2792
Nikki@Bioneers.org
Bioneer since 2008

Nikki has worked for Bioneers since 2008 starting with the award winning Dreaming New Mexico project and the Resilient Communities Network that works to build resilience from the ground up at local and regional levels. As Chief Administrative Officer, her work is focused on developing operational systems and processes that supports and delivers Bioneers mission, strategic plan and goals.

Jeffrey Vasterling
VP of Finance
Location: Santa Fe, NM
505-395-2744
JeffreyV@Bioneers.org
Bioneer since 2000

Jeffrey Vasterling spent his youth in the Midwest and moved to the Southwest in 1987. Naturally drawn to Mathematics, Physics and Business Theory from an early age, he used his years at Luther College to earn degrees in Anthropology and Psychology. He has also been a professional in the alternative health field.

Jeffrey is partnered with his best friend, Susan. He’s a gardening and outdoor enthusiast and is an avid supporter of the film industry.

Stephanie Welch
Bioneers Radio Producer
Location: San Francisco, CA
505-395-2800
Stephanie@Bioneers.org
Bioneer since 2017

Sharon Zetter is an artist, writer, and mama living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has been working at Bioneers since 2015 and currently serves as the Development Coordinator and Executive Assistant to Nina Simons, Co-Founder and Chief Relationship Strategist of Bioneers.