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. Interested in learning more about Nina’s past and upcoming speaking engagements? Want to book Nina for an event or interview her for your podcast? Click here to learn more.
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.
If you’re interested in Nina’s work, please check out the Everywoman’s Leadership program at Bioneers, which she founded and curates.
Email nina [at] bioneers.org
Upcoming Events:
Available On Demand Through Jan. 15
Bioneers Virtual Annual Conference
Beyond the Great Unraveling – Weaving the World Anew
Dec 15, 2020
Via Zoom
Truth Mandala: A Community Ritual for Honoring Our Grief, Anxiety, Anger and Love for the World
Nature, Culture and the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership
Bioneers co-founder Nina Simons offers inspiration for anyone who aspires to grow into their own unique form of leadership with resilience and joy.
Informed by her extensive experience with multicultural women’s leadership development, Simons replaces the old patriarchal leadership paradigm with a more feminine-inflected style that illustrates the interconnected nature of the issues we face today. Sharing moving stories of women around the world joining together to reconnect people, nature and the land—both practically and spiritually—Nature, Culture and the Sacred is necessary reading for anyone who wants to learn from and be inspired by women who are leading the way towards transformational change by cultivating vibrant movements for social and environmental justice.
Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading from the Heart
Through a tapestry of over 30 voices and stories, Moonrise (which was published to critical acclaim) illuminates how women and men are redefining the leadership landscape across a diversity of perspectives, generations and ethnicities.
The world seems to be divided into two kinds of people—those who divide everything into two, and those who don’t. Reading Nature, Culture and the Sacred is a step toward melting this false division into “feminine” and “masculine,” and allowing each of us to become fully human again and at last.
— Gloria Steinem, co-founder of Ms. Magazine
In Nature, Culture and the Sacred Nina Simons has woven a compelling and honest tapestry of hard-earned personal and collective wisdom, honoring the earth and igniting the revolutionary ways of women. It’s a book as much about the inside as it is about the outside, exploring where and how they can meet for a sustainable future.
— V (formerly Eve Ensler), founder of V-Day and author of The Vagina Monologues
This is the time when the power of women returns to us, as we reaffirm our relationships to each other and to our Mother Earth. Together we will doula the next economy into being, re-birthing ourselves and this world. Nina’s writing explores the path forward on this journey that we will make together.
— Winona LaDuke, Executive Director, Honor the Earth
May this book filled with the words of women still connected to their heart, in fact, still driven by the passion of its thought, be a guide to others for believing we can think and feel intensely at the same time, finding our way to balance with all that exists.
— Alice Walker, author and poet, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award
Reading Moonrise--or even scanning the names of contributors and titles--will make the reader very aware that there are many important conversations, thoughts, and feelings articulated here. It is affirming to find in the words of others, our own heart-felt knowledge expressed, or echoed. Within these pages, there is feminine wisdom and collaborative ways of solving problems that the planet sorely needs now.
— Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D., author of Urgent Message From Mother
Writing
Interviews with Nina
Bioneers Talks & Other Videos
Cultivating Diversity, Intuition and Attention for Resilience
Nina’s keynote address at the 2017 Bioneers Conference.
Reclaiming Relationship & Tradition: Towards a Future that Works for All
Nina’s keynote address at the 2016 Bioneers Conference.
Shifting Guidance from Head to Heart
Nina discusses reclaiming the feminine in order to realign our personal and societal values and practices. This was her keynote address at the 2015 Bioneers Conference.
Loving Life Together Toward Wholeness
“How do we bring our best selves to loving the tattered and scarred fabric of this mysterious web of life back toward wholeness?” Nina offers her opening remarks for the Bioneers 2014 Annual Conference.
Walking While Listening
At the 2013 Bioneers Annual Conference, Nina describes her journey to discover her true self and her inner leader.
Mourning Into Daybreak
What happens when we cultivate empathic connections towards ‘others’? Listen to Bioneers co-founder Nina Simons describe her vision of a beloved community that encompasses other people, all species, and the natural world. This presentation took place at the 2010 National Bioneers Conference.
Embracing a Community of Leadership
This speech was presented at the 2010 Bioneers National Conference.
Women, Purpose and Power
In this inspiring talk from the 2009 conference, Nina shares what 20 years with Bioneers, and years co-leading Cultivating Women’s Leadership workshops has taught her: Effective women’s leadership arises from natural feminine qualities (that are also present in men). By allowing the intelligences “in our bodies, hearts and bones” to guide us – generosity, intuition, vulnerability, fear and love – we can create relationships that make leadership the province of each of us, not just the few.What happens when we cultivate empathic connections towards ‘others’? She describes her vision of a beloved community that encompasses other people, all species, and the natural world.