Closing by Baratunde Thurston | Bioneers 2025

Baratunde Thurston, host and Executive Producer of the PBS TV series America Outdoors, creator of the How To Citizen and Life with Machines podcasts, and author of the comedic memoir How to Be Black, summarizes three days of the 2025 Bioneers Conference in an astonishing spoken word performance.

Baratunde Thurston, a writer, communicator, and creator and host of the How To Citizen podcast, is also a founding partner and writer at Puck. His newest creation is Life With Machines, a YouTube podcast focusing on the human side of the A.I. revolution. Author of the bestselling comedic memoir, How To Be Black, Baratunde also serves on the boards of Civics Unplugged and the Brooklyn Public Library and lives in Southern California.

Learn more at baratunde.com.

EXPLORE MORE

Baratunde Thurston – From Me to We, A Story of Interdependence

While we work fervently in response to the many crises we face, we also need to pay attention to the story, because what we tell ourselves about ourselves shapes how we show up in these times. In this keynote address, Baratunde Thurston shares the stories he has been unearthing about our relationships with the natural world, our fellow humans, and even with machines, that provide strong hints of where we need to go and how to get there.

Doria Robinson – Empowering Community from the Grassroots: The Richmond, CA Model

The city of Richmond has provided an impressive example of highly effective progressive grassroots organizing that has included the building of groundbreaking citizens’ organizations, local institutions and co-operatives and successful electoral campaigns, as well as a major Environmental Justice victory in a decades-long struggle with Chevron, whose massive facilities have long polluted the region. One of the most important figures in this exemplary community is Doria Robinson whose multi-faceted activism has been a key element in its successes. She’s been the Executive Director since 2007 of Urban Tilth, a renowned urban food project building a more sustainable, healthy, and just food system and helped nurture the birth of many local initiatives from bicycle co-ops to urban “greening” projects. Now serving on Richmond’s city council, Doria shares some of what she has learned in her decades of building people’s power from the ground up.

This talk was delivered at the 2025 Bioneers Conference.

Doria Robinson, a 3rd generation resident of Richmond, California, current member of the Richmond City Council (District 3), and one of the most effective, exemplary community organizers in the nation, has been, since 2007, the Executive Director of Urban Tilth, a widely renowned community-based organization dedicated to cultivating a more sustainable, healthy, and just food system. Also co-founder of the Richmond Food Policy Council, former co-chair of the US Food Sovereignty Alliance Western Region, and member of the Climate Justice Alliance, Food Sovereignty Working Group, Doria (a Certified Permaculture Designer, Bay Friendly Gardener, Nutrition Educator and Yoga Instructor) has a strong background in farming, from working on the 350-acre Apostolic Temple of Truth Ranch on weekends in her youth to working on organic farms in Massachusetts while in college, and later at the legendary Veritable Vegetable women-owned organic produce distribution company.

EXPLORE MORE

Community Wealth Building Podcast Series

For over a decade, longtime reporter on economic and social change, Laura Flanders, has been looking for alternatives – new economic models that are different from the kind of capitalism we’ve come to know, or state socialism. What if, she asks, instead of tweaking the system to reduce the damage, we reorganized entirely so that both local and national economies produced better outcomes for people, communities and the planet in the first place?

From Scarcity to Abundance: How Collective Governance Can Transform the Climate Crisis

In this podcast episode, award-winning lawyer and climate justice organizer Colette Pichon Battle lays out a bold vision to transform the Gulf South and Appalachia away from the lethal matrix of fossil fuel extraction and extractive economics, and toward a regenerative future of clean energy democracy, and an equitable, inclusive economy.

Performance by Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company

This performance took place at the 2025 Bioneers Conference.

The Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company (DAYPC) is a diverse group of teens that collaborates with professional artists to create dynamic, original productions. Combining hip hop, modern and aerial dance, theater, song, and rap, company members take the stage to tell stories that stem from their lived experiences and express their visions for a world transformed. Since 1993, DAYPC has performed original work for up to 25,000 audience members annually, garnering critical acclaim and widespread community support for both their technical prowess and their commitment to advancing inclusivity, equity, and justice.

Learn more at destinyarts.org

EXPLORE MORE

Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company | Bioneers 2019

A performance by Oakland’s own incomparably dynamic and uplifting Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company. DAYPC’s extraordinary energy, brilliant choreography and inspired lyrics have been rocking the house at Bioneers for many years.

Making the Revolution Irresistible: an interview with Sarah Crowell of Destiny Arts

Sarah Crowell is the Artistic Director Emeritus at Destiny Arts Center, which Sarah co-founded and where she has held a variety of leadership roles for the past 30 years.

Haley Mellin – Creativity, Courage and Conservation

Is biodiversity conservation a science, a form of stewardship, or perhaps an art? Artist and activist Haley Mellin shows how it can be all three. As the founder of Art into Acres, she uses her creative talents to support Indigenous and community-led efforts to protect wild places, weaving care into the tapestry of sustaining biodiversity. She brings her creativity from the canvas to the planet, generating a cultural tributary of philanthropy to land stewardship. In 2024 alone, this work helped preserve 6.45 million acres. Raised in Northern California surrounded by Blue Oaks, she shares how her passion inspires action and how we can all connect to the earth through the art of land preservation.

This talk was delivered at the 2025 Bioneers Conference.

Haley Mellin, PhD, is an artist focusing on painting and land conservation. In 2017, she founded Art into Acres, a non-profit supporting permanent land conservation on behalf of the arts. Indigenous-led and community-led protected areas are the focus, and the initiative has supported the designation of about 70 million acres of new protection. Haley initiated the first environmental council and carbon emissions calculations at U.S. art museums, and juried the inaugural National Endowment for the Humanities climate grants. She is the co-author of Conservation Imperatives published last year in Frontiers. Her painting is observational and done outdoors. Haley advocates for environmental justice for all life, and was mentored by Dr. Thomas Lovejoy, Chandra Pai and the South African artists rosenclaire.

EXPLORE MORE

Engaged Arts

The key role of the arts in social movements is as true today as it’s ever been, and we at Bioneers have sought to feature the work of groundbreaking socially and eco-engaged artists from across different disciplines.

Restoring the Oaks and Our Connection to the Earth: An Interview with Jolie Elan

Learn how Jolie Elan, founding Director of the Go Wild Institute, is drawing from her background in ecology and ethnobotany to conserve the ancient Oak life system.

Amira Diamond, Melinda Kramer, Kahea Pacheco of Women’s Earth Alliance – Rising Together: Women’s Leadership for a Resilient Future

As co-leaders of a global alliance working at the intersection of gender justice and environmental resilience, award-winning, groundbreaking activists and visionaries Amira Diamond, Melinda Kramer and Kahea Pacheco explore the transformative power of grassroots women’s leadership in confronting our most pressing ecological challenges. By sharing stories from their global network, they illustrate how frontline women leaders are implementing community-based solutions that protect land, water, and biodiversity as well as advancing climate resilience across diverse regions. They also delve into WEA’s unique co-directorship model—a shared leadership structure that embodies collaboration, collective visioning, and sustained impact in alliance-building work.

This talk was delivered at the 2025 Bioneers Conference.

Amira Diamond, co-founder and Co-Executive Director of the Women’s Earth Alliance (WEA), where she collaborates with frontline communities, global NGOs, investors, and philanthropists to implement environmental programs focused on nature-based solutions, clean energy, advocacy campaigns, replicable models, resilient communities and justice across environmental, health, and LGBTQ rights, is a seasoned social entrepreneur with over two decades’ experience designing and leading rights-based programs at the intersection of climate solutions, gender equity, and economic development. Previously, she served as the West Coast Director of Democracy Matters and directed organizations such as Julia Butterfly Hill’s Circle of Life.

Melinda Kramer, co-founder (in 2006) and Co-Executive Director of the Women’s Earth Alliance (inspired by the resilience of women in impacted communities around the world and the desire to bridge the resource gap for these frontline women tackling urgent climate challenges), is a passionate advocate for social justice, the environment, and women’s rights. An environmentalist and cultural anthropologist, she has worked globally, learning from grassroots leaders on the frontlines of environmental crises. Her career has spanned sustainable agriculture work in Kenya with CARE International, capacity-building initiatives in the North Pacific Rim with Pacific Environment, and co-founding the Global Women’s Water Initiative.

Kahea Pacheco (Kanaka ’Ōiwi), Co-Executive Director of the Women’s Earth Alliance (WEA), is a passionate advocate for Indigenous people’s rights and climate justice that puts aloha ʻāina at the heart of solutions. She joined WEA in 2011 after receiving her law degree with a focus on Environmental and Federal Indian Law. With WEA, Kahea has facilitated legal advocacy partnerships for Indigenous women-led environmental campaigns and co-led the development of the “Violence on the Land, Violence on our Bodies” initiative. She also serves on the Advisory Councils for the World Economic Forum’s 1t.org and Daughters for Earth.

EXPLORE MORE

Woven Liberation: How Women-Led Revolutions Will Shape Our Future

Read an edited and excerpted version of a panel discussion held at the 2023 Bioneers Conference with Azita Ardakani, Zainab Salbi, and Nina Simons.

Zainab Salbi – Daughters for Earth

In this Bioneers 2022 keynote address, Zainab Salbi, a co-founder of Daughters for Earth, explores the interconnection between our personal search for healing and how we face the challenges of climate change.

Thom Hartmann – Supreme Oligarchy at the Gates

As author, broadcaster and scholar Thom Hartmann sees it, the lines between corporate power, billionaire interests, government authority, public “knowledge,” and foreign influence have not just blurred — they’re vanishing. This is not just politics as usual; this is an emergency. When has any small group of private citizens held such sway over both domestic and foreign policy? The America we once knew — where elected officials were accountable to voters rather than billionaires — is slipping away. This erosion of democracy is largely due to five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court ruling that political bribery equals “free speech,” allowing billionaires to flood our 2024 election with money. In truth, this long-developing alliance between American oligarchs and the Supreme Court marks a climactic corporate endgame to replace American democracy with plutocratic autocracy. Do we, the American people, still possess the power and will to challenge this oligarchic takeover? Yes, says Hartmann. This is a call to action.

This talk was delivered at the 2025 Bioneers Conference.

Thom Hartmann, a best-selling author of over 30 books in print and host of the #1 progressive talk show host in America for more than a decade, has co-written and been featured in 6 documentaries with Leonardo DiCaprio about climate change. A former psychotherapist, entrepreneur and refugee worker helping the worldwide Salem group start homes for abandoned and abused children all over the world, Thom and his wife Louise live in Portland, Oregon with a small menagerie of cats, dogs, ducks & geese.

To learn more about Thom Hartmann, visit his website.

EXPLORE MORE

Democracy v. Plutocracy: Behind Every Great Fortune Lies a Great Crime

In this podcast episode, the first part of a two-part program, we travel back and forth in time to explore the battle between democracy and plutocracy. In today’s new Gilded Age of rule by the wealthy, rising anti-trust movements are challenging the stranglehold of corporate monopoly.

Democracy Means Community Engagement, Every Day

We simultaneously face two related existential crises — climate breakdown and radical threats to democracy worldwide. Can democracy withstand climate chaos? Is a reformed and stronger democracy our best hope to make it through the long emergency ahead of us? What’s needed?

Wade Crowfoot – California’s Leadership in Nature-Based Solutions: Building Climate Resilience Through Ecosystem Restoration

California is harnessing the power of nature to tackle climate change and build resilience against wildfires, droughts, floods, and extreme heat. By restoring ecosystems and integrating natural infrastructure into climate policy, we are enhancing biodiversity, improving public health, and supporting sustainable communities. Secretary Crowfoot addresses California’s commitment to Nature-Based Solutions as a cornerstone of climate action, its influence on national and global initiatives, and the importance of continued investment and collaboration to protect people, economies, and ecosystems.

This talk was delivered at the 2025 Bioneers Conference.

Wade Crowfoot, on the frontlines of environmental leadership throughout his long career in the public and non-profit sectors, California’s Natural Resources Secretary since 2019, leads efforts to conserve California’s environment and natural resources, overseeing an agency of 25,000+ employees spread across 26 departments, commissions, and conservancies charged with stewarding the state’s forests, natural lands, rivers, water supplies, coasts, wildlife and biodiversity, as well as helping oversee its world-leading clean energy transition, including a commitment to conserve 30% of its land and coastal waters by 2030. Secretary Crowfoot has led efforts to navigate California’s record-breaking droughts, floods, and wildfires and has initiated a new era of partnerships with the state’s Native American tribes.

EXPLORE MORE

Kate Lundquist and Brock Dolman: How We’re Winning the Campaign to Rehydrate the West

Great news about the Bring Back the Beaver campaign from the folks at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center’s Water Institute.

The Restorative Revolution: How Indigenous Leadership and Allyship Catalyzed the Biggest River Restoration in US History

In this podcast episode, Yurok fisherman and tribal leader Sammy Gensaw and environmental scientist-turned-activist Craig Tucker share the epic story of how Indigenous leadership and non-Indian allyship made the impossible inevitable: the biggest-ever dam removal and salmon restoration in history.

Colette Pichon Battle – The 20th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina

The passionate, long-time, award-winning Environmental Justice litigator and activist from Bayou Liberty, Louisiana, reminds us of the powerful lessons Hurricane Katrina delivered by laying bare the nation’s racism, neglect of disenfranchised communities and environmental mismanagement. She also encourages us all to participate in whatever way we can in the major events commemorating Katrina’s 20th Anniversary this August to help mobilize and redouble our efforts for Climate Justice.

This talk was delivered at the 2025 Bioneers Conference.

Colette Pichon Battle, a generational native of Bayou Liberty, Louisiana, is an award-winning lawyer and prominent climate justice organizer. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when Black and Indigenous communities were largely left out of federal recovery systems, Colette led the Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy (GCCLP) to provide relief and legal assistance to Gulf South communities of color. After 17 years at GCCLP’s helm, as frontline communities from the Gulf South to the Global South face ever more devastating storms, droughts, wildfires, heat, and land loss, she co-founded Taproot Earth to create connections and power across issues, movements, and geographies.

EXPLORE MORE

From Scarcity to Abundance: How Collective Governance Can Transform the Climate Crisis

In this podcast episode, award-winning lawyer and climate justice organizer Colette Pichon Battle lays out a bold vision to transform the Gulf South and Appalachia away from the lethal matrix of fossil fuel extraction and extractive economics, and toward a regenerative future of clean energy democracy, and an equitable, inclusive economy.

Democracy Means Community Engagement, Every Day

We simultaneously face two related existential crises — climate breakdown and radical threats to democracy worldwide. Can democracy withstand climate chaos? Is a reformed and stronger democracy our best hope to make it through the long emergency ahead of us? What’s needed?

Ben Jealous – A Green Economy Lifts All Boats

The renowned civil rights and environmental leader Ben Jealous, former (youngest ever!) President of the NAACP and then of People for the American Way, and now, since 2022, Executive Director of the Sierra Club (founded in 1892, one of the very first large-scale environmental preservation organizations in the world) examines how the green economy is driving job creation and transforming industries, including renewable energy and electric vehicles. He debunks myths that the transition will lead to job losses or take too long, instead showcasing how innovation is fueling economic growth. Jealous also highlights the health benefits tied to cleaner air and reduced pollution, including lower rates of asthma and heart disease. He underscores how the green economy is reshaping industries, improving workforce opportunities, and enhancing public health outcomes.

This talk was delivered at the 2025 Bioneers Conference.

Ben Jealous, named the seventh Executive Director of the Sierra Club in 2022, has served in roles from organizer to investigative journalist to president of two of the nation’s most influential groups pursuing equity and justice and protecting democracy and the environment. From 2008 to 2013, he led the NAACP as the youngest-ever president and CEO of the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization and launched the NAACP’s Climate Justice Program. More recently Ben was President of People for the American Way (PFAW). Ben began his professional trajectory as a reporter and managing editor at the black-owned community newspaper, the Jackson Advocate, exposing “cancer clusters” in Mississippi’s rural communities caused by industrial pollution. He has also been a partner at one of the nation’s premier ESG venture capital firms, has won many awards, served on the boards of the Environmental Defense Fund, the Trust for Public Lands and the Wilderness Society, taught at Princeton (and currently at the University of Pennsylvania), and is a best-selling author, including most recently of: Never Forget Our People Were Always Free: A Parable of American Healing.

EXPLORE MORE

From Scarcity to Abundance: How Collective Governance Can Transform the Climate Crisis

In this podcast episode, award-winning lawyer and climate justice organizer Colette Pichon Battle lays out a bold vision to transform the Gulf South and Appalachia away from the lethal matrix of fossil fuel extraction and extractive economics, and toward a regenerative future of clean energy democracy, and an equitable, inclusive economy.

The Charging Twenties: Now is the Time to Build a Solar-Powered Civilization

In this podcast episode, visionary clean energy entrepreneur Danny Kennedy explores the promise and challenges of the epic civilizational transition to renewable energy.

César Rodríguez-Garavito – More-Than-Human Rights: Pushing the Boundaries of Legal Imagination to Re-Animate the World

César Rodríguez-Garavito, an Earth Rights scholar, lawyer, and founding Director of the MOTH (More-Than-Human) Rights Program at NYU School of Law, has advanced new ideas and legal actions worldwide on issues such as climate justice, Indigenous rights, and what he proposes to call “more-than-human rights,” which are as much a legal proposition as they are a story about our relationship with the more-than-human world. Drawing on his fieldwork and participation in legal actions advancing the rights of nature around the world, César tells a renewed story about the living world: one in which all of nature is alive; where human and nonhuman animals, plants, fungi, rivers, forests, oceans, and other ecosystems are all animate, subjects of moral and legal consideration, and entangled in the planetary web of life.

This talk was delivered at the 2025 Bioneers Conference.

César Rodríguez-Garavito, a Professor of Clinical Law, Chair of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, and founding Director of the More Than Human Life (MOTH) Program and the Earth Rights Advocacy Program (all based at NYU School of Law), is a human rights and environmental justice scholar and practitioner whose work and publications focus on climate change, Indigenous peoples’ rights, and the human rights movement. Editor-in-Chief of Open Global Rights, César has been an expert witness of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, an Adjunct Judge of the Constitutional Court of Colombia, a member of the Science Panel for the Amazon, and a lead litigator in climate change, socio-economic and Indigenous rights cases. He has conducted field research and environmental and human rights investigations around the world.

EXPLORE MORE

Rights of Nature Email Series

While the Rights of Nature movement has made incredible strides in recent years, obstacles loom large. Where is this movement headed, and how can you get involved? This email series offers an accessible crash course, featuring stories, interviews, and resources that provide context and real-world examples from this movement’s groundbreaking leaders..

Rights of Nature in Indian Country

Honoring the Rights of Nature has always been essential to the worldview and cultures of First Peoples. The Rights of Nature movement simply puts into law what has always been a part of traditional laws: that the natural world must thrive if our Peoples and cultures are to survive.

As a coalition of Native and Native-descended authors, the Bioneers Indigeneity Program team wrote a guide by and for American Indian/Alaska Native community members who are interested in learning about how the Rights of Nature can bring Tribal values into contemporary law.

Kenny Ausubel – Hostile Takeover

In his eagerly anticipated yearly inimitably biting yet droll take on the zeitgeist, Bioneers founder Kenny Ausubel dissects the madness or our current politics and the incredibly high stakes at play, while passionately reminding us that we have no choice but to fight for the survival of the biosphere, and that if we work with “Nature’s Operating Instructions” in mind, we will ultimately prevail.

This talk was delivered at the 2025 Bioneers Conference. Read a written version of this talk here.

Kenny Ausubel, CEO and founder of Bioneers, is an award-winning social entrepreneur, journalist, author and filmmaker. Co-founder and first CEO of the organic seed company, Seeds of Change, his film (and companion book) Hoxsey: When Healing Becomes a Crime helped influence national alternative medicine policy. He has edited several books and written four, including, most recently, Dreaming the Future: Reimagining Civilization in the Age of Nature.

EXPLORE MORE

Thom Hartmann – Supreme Oligarchy at the Gates

As Thom Hartmann sees it, the lines between corporate power, billionaire interests, government authority, public “knowledge,” and foreign influence have not just blurred — they’re vanishing. This is not just politics as usual; this is an emergency. Do we, the American people, still possess the power and will to challenge this oligarchic takeover? Yes, says Hartmann. This is a call to action.

The Power of Community: How Citizens Can Be the Change They Want to See in the World

Community action allows citizens from all walks of life to confront systemic challenges and build change through grassroots organizing. Across the country, activists are harnessing “We the People” power to make breakthrough systemic change at the intersection of climate, justice, and beyond. This article highlights just a few of these leaders and how they’re using equity-based community action to realize a better future for all.

Joy Harjo Keynote – Bioneers 2025

The world-renowned, multiple prestigious award-winning Muscogee poet, writer, and musician Joy Harjo, the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States, author of ten books of poetry as well as plays, memoirs, children’s books, non-fiction, and seven albums, shares stories, perspectives and select readings from powerfully relevant poems.

This talk was delivered at the 2025 Bioneers Conference.

Joy Harjo, the 23rd U.S. Poet Laureate and member of the Muscogee Nation, is the author of ten books of poetry, several plays, children’s books, two memoirs, and seven music albums. Her honors include Yale’s 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the Ruth Lily Prize from the Poetry Foundation, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Tulsa Artist Fellowship. She is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and Chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, and is the inaugural Artist-in-Residence for the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she lives.

EXPLORE MORE

Robin Wall Kimmerer | Becoming Earth: Experimental Theology

In this moving personal essay, Robin Wall Kimmerer explores the rich afterlife of a fallen cedar, contemplating what its gradual return to the soil means for the forest and all who walk among the trees.

A Return to Wholeness: Storytelling as a Healing Art | Rachel Naomi Remen

This podcast episode features doctor and healer Rachel Naomi Remen, who has cultivated a new generation of doctors practicing whole-person medicine, with an unlikely message: Bless others out loud. The wholeness of the world is restored one heart at a time.