Theme: Planetary Stewardship: Impact this decade.

Ideas in Action invites you to TEDxBoston: Planetary Stewardship 2023. Join us for an incredible gathering of minds at MIT during this in-person event on Sat Nov 11, 2023 and Sun Nov 12, 2023. Hear 20 new TEDxBoston talks from leaders with world-changing ideas that can have impact this decade.

Solutions to planetary health and human thriving will come from across society and sectors. We are looking to amplify and build resources around these ideas. Don't miss this opportunity to be part of shaping the change we can make this decade.

Day 1: Natural Systems: What is at stake? -- TEDxBoston Talks
Day 2: Human Systems: What is required? -- TEDxBoston Talks

MIT Media Lab
77 Mass Ave
Boston, Massachusetts, 02139
United States

A.J. (Ashok) Kumar

VP of Sustainability Sciences, Indigo Ag

A.J.'s goal is to harness science and technology to address issues of human welfare ranging from affordable healthcare to sustainable agriculture. In his role as VP of Sustainability Sciences at Indigo Ag, he focuses on leveraging data and proven practices to help the agriculture industry make better decision and harness the power of the soil to capture carbon at gigaton scale.

Allen Williams

Founder, Understanding Ag

Allen Williams is a 6th generation family farmer and founding partner of Grass Fed Insights, LLC, Understanding Ag, LLC and the Soil Health Academy. He has consulted with more than 4000 farmers and ranchers in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, South America, and other countries, on operations ranging from a few acres to over 1 million acres. Allen and his colleagues specialize in whole farm & ranch planning based on the concept of regenerative agriculture. Allen pioneered many of the early regenerative grazing protocols and forage finishing techniques and now teaches those practices and principles to farmers globally. He is a “recovering academic”, having served 15 years on the faculty at Louisiana Tech University and Mississippi State University. He holds a B.S. and M.S. in Animal Science from Clemson University and a Ph.D. in Livestock Genetics from LSU and has authored more than 400 scientific and popular press articles.

Allison Wolff

CEO, Vibrant Planet

Vibrant Planet PBC, founded Nov 2020, builds platforms that help build community and landscape resilience in the face of climate change and wildfire. Prior to developing technology, we served technology leaders, helping them tilt their technologies towards good. After building the Netflix brand and digital experience, Allison Wolff, CEO of Vibrant Planet, advised corporate and nonprofit leadership teams on vision, strategy, and social and environmental innovation. Clients include Google, eBay, Facebook, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Omidyar Network, Patagonia, Nike, HP, Drawdown, Conservation International, and GlobalGiving. She is now leveraging her experience and network to develop solutions for forest and landscape resilience and carbon drawdown.

Asegun Henry

Founder & CTO, Fourth Power / MIT Professor

Asegun, founder and CTO of Fourth Power, has spent the past decade developing new industrial-scale energy technologies to mitigate climate change. An MIT professor and renowned expert in heat transfer and high-temperature energy systems, Ase’s research has led to multiple scientific breakthroughs that have redefined the limits of what’s possible. His team is commercializing a new technology developed in his laboratories at Georgia Tech and MIT over the last decade. Ase's research has led to significant advances to energy and heat transfer fields, namely: solar fuels and thermochemistry, phonon transport in disordered materials, and phonon transport at interfaces. His team developed the highest temperature pump on record, a technological breakthrough that opened the door for new high temperature energy systems concepts, such as methane cracking for CO2 free hydrogen production and a new grid level energy storage approach termed thermal batteries, known affectionately as “Sun in a Box”.

Balla Kouyaté

Born in Mali, Balla Kouyaté was raised in the Djeli tradition. His knowledge of his traditional repertoire is unparalleled. His family lineage goes back over 800 years to Balla Faséké, the first of an unbroken line of djelis in the Kouyaté clan. Djelis are the oral historians, musicians, and performers who keep alive and celebrate the history of the Mandé people of Mali, Guinea, and other West African countries. Today, the first balafon, over 1000 years old, remains in his family, guarded by his father, El Hadji Sekou Kouyaté. It is considered a UNESCO Artifact of Oral and Intangible History.

Bruce Friedrich

President, The Good Food Institute

Bruce Friedrich is founder & president of the Good Food Institute, a global network of nonprofit science-focused think tanks, with more than 200 full-time team members across affiliates in the U.S., India, Israel, Brazil, Singapore, and Europe (UK & EU). GFI works on alternative protein policy, science, and corporate engagement - to accelerate the production of plant-based and cultivated meat in order to bolster the global protein supply while protecting our environment, promoting global health, and preventing food insecurity.

Cady Coleman

Astronaut, Scientist, Explorer

Dr. Cady Coleman is a former NASA Astronaut and Air Force Colonel with more than 180 days in space, accumulated during two space shuttle missions and a six-month expedition to the International Space Station (ISS), where she acted as the Lead Robotics and Lead Science officer. Cady is the Global Explorer in Residence at Arizona State University and co-host of the podcast, "Mission: Interplanetary". She’s also a research affiliate at the MIT Media Lab. Cady consults on space-related work for research and for the media (including coaching actress Sandra Bullock from the ISS in preparation for Bullock’s astronaut role in “Gravity"). Cady is a vocal advocate for inclusion in STEM/STEAM fields and serves on several boards, including the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Greenfield Community College and Dent the Future.

Carl Safina

Ecologist + Award-Winning Author

Carl Safina’s lyrical non-fiction writing explores how humans are changing the living world, and what the changes mean for non-human beings and for us all. His work fuses scientific understanding, emotional connection, and a moral call to action. His writing has won a MacArthur “genius” prize; Pew, Guggenheim, and National Science Foundation Fellowships; book awards from Lannan, Orion, and the National Academies; and the John Burroughs, James Beard, and George Rabb medals. Safina is the author of ten books including the classic Song for the Blue Ocean, and his writing appears in The New York Times, TIME, The Guardian, Audubon, Yale e360, and National Geographic. Safina is now the first Endowed Professor for Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University and is founding president of the Safina Center.

Chief Sachem Larry Fisher

Chief Sachem + Physician

Larry Fisher, PhD not only serves as a wellness practitioner but also in the capacity as Council Chief Sachem for the south shore's Mattakeeset Tribe of the Massachuset Indian Nation. Dr. Fisher earned his doctorate degree in Functional Medicine at the Kingdom College of Natural Health's School of Functional Medicine and has served as an Indigenous ambassador to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Dr. Fisher descends from a long line of medicine people, referred to as Pauwaus in the Mattakeeset Culture. Dr. Fisher has termed the acronym "OCIM" (Our Culture Is Medicine) and is working toward the development of the first tribal applied functional medicine institution and indigenous practitioner licensing designation.

Chris Levesque

President and CEO at TerraPower, LLC

Chris Levesque is president and chief executive officer of TerraPower, and also serves as a member of the TerraPower Board. Levesque leads this nuclear innovation company in the pursuit of next-generation nuclear energy solutions and also oversees TerraPower’s new venture into therapeutic medical isotopes. His proven track record in scoping, planning and implementing complex projects began with his service in the U.S. Nuclear Navy and features more than 30 years of experience in the nuclear field. Levesque has extensive experience with the nuclear industrial base and nuclear component manufacturing. Prior to joining TerraPower, Levesque led major new reactor build efforts at both Westinghouse and AREVA, overseeing projects in both the U.S. and Finland. Levesque holds a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a Master of Science in mechanical engineering and a Naval Engineer degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Cody Friesen

Founder and CEO, SOURCE Global, PBC

Dr. Cody Friesen, founder and CEO of SOURCE Global, PBC, is an innovator and business leader who is passionate about using advanced technology to solve humanity’s most pressing and essential challenges. Friesen and his team developed the SOURCE® Hydropanel, a revolutionary technology that sustainably produces perfectly balanced drinking water using sunlight and air and independent of infrastructure. Friesen, a leading global thinker in technology for sustainability and social equity, is known for developing results-driven teams and cultures that are highly inventive and lead with love. He is the Fulton Engineering Professor of Innovation at Arizona State University, senior sustainability scientist at the ASU Global Institute of Sustainability, an MIT Lemelson award recipient, and a recipient of the McNulty Prize from the Aspen Institute.

Craig McLean

Fellow at WHOI, Former Head of NOAA research

Craig McLean brings over 40 of years experience in ocean science, policy and marine operations. He is a successful international leader, advocate, and visionary voice for ocean science and policy. Now retired, his career spanned service as a Commissioned Officer and ultimately as a member of the Senior Executive Service, in NOAA. McLean has extensive experience in creating, integrating, and implementing large science programs, Congressional relations, marine and climate science policy and law.

Curtis Ceballos

CEO, Invisacook Inc.

Curtis Ceballos is the founder and CEO of Invisacook Inc, a company commercializing induction cooking for home kitchens. An induction stove is 5 to 10 percent more energy-efficient than conventional electric stoves and about three times more efficient than gas stoves. And unlike gas, it's better for indoor air quality. They have a built-in safety feature because only the cooking pots heat up, reducing risk of burns.

Dan Hammer

Managing Partner, Ode | Co-founder, Clay

Dan Hammer is an environmental economist and winner of both the inaugural Pritzker Award and the Mark Bingham Award for Excellence in Achievement by Young Alumni at UC Berkeley. He is a National Geographic Fellow, and served as the Senior Policy Advisor to the U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith in the Obama Administration. Hammer was the Presidential Innovation Fellow that released the first API listing for NASA, amounting to the data infrastructure design for the space agency's public data. In addition, prior to NASA, Hammer was the Chief Data Scientist at the World Resources Institute, where he helped re-launch Global Forest Watch, an open-source project to monitor deforestation.

Dava Newman

Director, MIT Media Lab; Apollo Program Professor of Astronautics MIT

Dava Newman is the director of the MIT Media Lab. She holds the Apollo Program Professor of Astronautics chair at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is a Harvard–MIT Health, Sciences, and Technology faculty member in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was named a MacVicar Faculty Fellow (a chair for making significant contributions to undergraduate education); and was the former Director of the Technology and Policy Program at MIT (2003–2015); and Director of the MIT–Portugal Program (2011–2015, 2017-present). She has been a faculty leader in Aeronautics and Astronautics and MIT’s School of Engineering for 28 years. She holds a top-secret clearance. The Honorable Dr. Dava Newman served as NASA Deputy Administrator (2015-2017). Nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate unanimously in April 2015. Along with the NASA Administrator, she was responsible for articulating the agency’s vision, providing overall leadership and policy direction.

David Cash

Dr. David Cash serves as the appointed Regional Administrator for EPA Region 1. Dr. Cash has spent his career in public service harnessing science, innovative policy and participatory decision-making to solve challenges and seize opportunities at the intersection of environment, economy and equity. In his most recent position, Dr. Cash was the Dean of the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He spent a decade in Massachusetts state government where he held a range of senior positions. As Assistant Secretary of Policy in the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs in Governor Deval Patrick's Administration, he was an architect of nation-leading climate, clean energy and environmental justice policies.

Fiorenzo Omenetto

Director, Silklab

Fiorenzo (Fio) Omenetto is the Frank C. Doble Professor of Engineering, and a Special Advisor to the Provost. His research interests are in the convergence of technology, biologically inspired materials, and the natural sciences with an emphasis on new transformative approaches for sustainable materials for high-technology applications. He has proposed and pioneered the use of silk as a material platform for advanced technology with uses in photonics, optoelectronics, and nanotechnology applications, is co-inventor on several disclosures on the subject. He has co-founded three companies. Omenetto was formerly a J. Robert Oppenheimer Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratories, a Guggenheim Fellow, a Tällberg Foundation Fellow, and is a Fellow of Optica (formerly Optical Society of America), the National Academy of Inventors, and of the American Physical Society. His research has been featured extensively in media outlets worldwide.

Geoffrey von Maltzahn

CIO, Indigo Ag

Geoffrey von Maltzahn is an inventor, entrepreneur, and founder of life science companies solving important challenges in healthcare, nutrition, and agriculture. Geoff is an inventor on over 200 patent applications and patents, co-author of 20 peer-reviewed publications, and recipient of over 20 awards and honors, including the prestigious Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for invention and innovation. As founder, his startups that have achieved over $10 billion in public and private market capitalization. These ventures are pioneering gene writing, generative biology, plant microbiome products for crop improvement, engineered cells as medicine, cell-specific gene therapies, novel chemistries to drug the human microbiome, microbiome therapeutics, and amino acid-based drugs. Geoff's serves as CIO for Indigo, a company working across the supply chain with a mission of harnessing nature to help farmers sustainably feed the planet with natural microbiology and digital technologies.

Hans Zimmer

Award-winning film score composer and music producer

Hans Zimmer is a brilliant German film score composer and music producer. He has won two Oscars and four Grammys, and has been nominated for three Emmys and a Tony. Zimmer was also named on the list of Top 100 Living Geniuses, published by The Daily Telegraph in 2007. His work spans decades and underpins some of the most influential cinema of our time.

Hayley Reardon + Ivana Ustariz

Artist Collective

Hayley Reardon is a singer-songwriter with an innate gift for capturing the essence of people and personal history through song. In 2019 Hayley was honored by the city of Dachau, Germany with the Ruckteschell-Villa Scholarship--an artist residency program. Returning to the north shore of Massachusetts, she continues to write music, tour, and perform. She is part of an arts collaborative called Ocean School Collective, along with producer and musician Ivana Ustariz and artists looking to tap into the natural world for inspiration. The collective is hosted by the Ocean Alliance in Gloucester, continuing a long tradition of inspiring people to engage with science through art and inspiring engaging art through science.

Irina Gerry

CMO, Change Foods

Irina Gerry is a a purpose-driven entrepreneur on a mission to transform the food system and drive widespread adoption of sustainable ways to feed the world. She has deep expertise in plant-based food and beverage space, now working on commercializing innovation in precision fermentation to significantly improve sustainability of our most beloved dairy foods, animal-free. She is CMO of Change Foods, a company that (re)creates real dairy foods that delight the taste buds, nourish people, and sustain the planet, by using the magic of microbes instead of animals.

John Macomber

HBS Faculty, Investor, Builder

John Macomber is a Senior Lecturer in the Finance unit at Harvard Business School. His professional background includes leadership of real estate, construction, and information technology businesses. At HBS, Mr. Macomber's work focuses on the future of cities, particularly as aided by the private finance and delivery of public infrastructure projects in both the developed and emerging worlds. His teaching combines infrastructure finance (including public-private partnerships), investing in resilience (notably in the face of sea rise in some areas and drought in others), economic development, and the impact of new technologies in delivering new infrastructure and making old infrastructure more efficient. He serves or has served on the boards of Young Presidents Organization International (YPO), Boston Private Bank, Mount Auburn Hospital, and the WGBH Educational Foundation.

Josh Simpson

Glass artist

Josh Simpson is a glass artist whose vibrantly colored vessels and sculpture are often inspired by astrophysical themes. A pioneer of the studio glass movement, Simpson has spent half a century inventing new formulas and making glass objects that combine his fascination with color, form, pattern and complexity, with his interest in the workings of the universe. His iconic Planets evoke imaginary worlds that might exist in distant galaxies, while New Mexico Glass resembles swirling seas or the starry night sky, and Corona Glass evokes deep space phenomena. Simpson’s glass has been displayed in the White House and numerous museums including the permanent collection of the Corning Museum of Glass, Yale University Art Gallery, and Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian.

Juan Enriquez

Futurist + author

An active investor in early stage private companies in the life sciences and big data sectors, Juan Enriquez is one of the world’s leading authorities on the uses and benefits of genomic code. Juan writes, speaks, and teaches about the profound changes that genomics and other life sciences will cause in business, technology, politics, and society. He is the co-author of the book “Evolving ourselves: How Unnatural Selection and Nonrandom Mutation Are Shaping Life on Earth”, exploring how humans increasingly shape the environment, themselves, and other living species. He is the managing director of Excel Venture Management, a life sciences VC firm. He also served as founding director of the Harvard Business School Life Sciences Project and is on the Genetics Advisory Council for the Harvard Medical School. Juan has published papers and articles in a variety of forums including The Harvard Business Review, Foreign Policy, Science, Nature, and The New York Times.

Kari Nadeau

Chair of the Department of Environmental Health, Harvard School of Public Health

Kari Nadeau is the Chair of the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard School of Public Health and John Rock Professor of Climate and Population Studies. She practices Allergy, Asthma, Immunology in children and adults. She has published over 400+ papers, many in the field of climate change and health. Dr. Nadeau, with a team of individuals and patients and families, has been able to help major progress and impact in the clinical fields of immunology, infection, asthma and allergy. Dr. Nadeau is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the U.S. EPA Children’s Health Protection Committee. For more than 30 years, she has devoted herself to understanding how environmental and genetic factors affect the risk of developing allergies and asthma, especially wildfire-induced air pollution.

Kate Slaughter

Marine biologist

Kate Slaughter is a California-raised marine biologist living in Australia. Her work on the Great Barrier Reef centers on an innovative program that pairs tourism with research. She is replanting coral reefs using a device called a CoralClip that reattaches broken coral pieces to reef structures to also them to regrow, propagate, and thrive.

Kelly Levin

Chief of Science, Data and Systems Change for the Bezos Earth Fund

Kelly is Chief of Science, Data and Systems Change for the Bezos Earth Fund. In this role, she brings data, analysis and evidence to inform the Fund’s strategic direction. Kelly is also Co-Director of the Systems Change Lab, which monitors, learns from and accelerates the transformational change required to protect people and the planet. ‍Before her time at the Earth Fund, Kelly spent 12 years at the World Resources Institute, where she was the Director of Tracking and Strengthening Climate Action in WRI’s global climate program. Kelly holds a PhD and Master of Environmental Management from Yale’s School of Environment and a B.A. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Yale College.

Kenneth Lacovara

Paleontologist

Kenneth Lacovara is an American paleontologist and geologist at Rowan University and fellow of the Explorers Club, known for the discovery of the titanosaurian dinosaur Dreadnoughtus and his involvement in the discovery and naming of the giant sauropod dinosaur Paralititan, as well as his work applying 3D printing technology to paleontology. Lacovara is the founder of the Edelman Fossil Park & Museum of Rowan University and the author of the general-audience book, Why Dinosaurs Matter (2017), for which he received a Nautilus Book Award. Additionally, he serves as Paleontology Fellow of the Academy of Natural Sciences. He is a recipient of the Explorers Club Medal, the highest honor bestowed by The Explorers Club.

Mark Vins

Emmy Award winning wildlife, adventure filmmaker

Mark Vins is an Emmy Award winning wildlife and adventure filmmaker, and the CEO and co-founder of Brave Wilderness. The Brave Wilderness YouTube channel launched in 2014 focused on wildlife education and immersive outdoor adventures. As the largest digital wildlife content company, Brave Wilderness has become a global sensation growing to nearly 20 million subscribers with over 4 billion views. Along with the company's commercial success, Mark's passion for conservation inspires him to use the platform to make an environmental impact. Connecting his global audience of nature enthusiasts to conservation and sustainability efforts, Mark has supported organizations like Re:wild.org, World Wildlife Fund, Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, The Nature Conservancy, Explore.org, and many others to help inspire Brave Wilderness viewers to take action and make a difference.

Masami Hayashi

Global Strategy Director, Clean Planet Inc

Masami Hayashi serves as Global Strategy Director for Clean Planet, a Japan-based company leading the QHe IKAROS engineering project. The project mission is to use unifying cutting-edge science to invent a new energy source for us all.

Mason Grimshaw

Data scientist + Indigenous advocate

Mason was raised on the Rosebud Reservation as Sicangu Lakota in South Dakota and is the grandson of a rancher and a mechanic. He graduated from MIT with a Bachelors and Masters in business analytics. In addition to his work at Earth Genome, he helps to run the Lakota AI Code Camp, with the intention of expanding knowledge of artificial intelligence and data science in Native American communities. He was featured in the NY Times article “Training the Next Generation of Indigenous Data Scientists” about the 2021 IndigiData workshop focused on Indigenous data sovereignty. In previous work, he has delivered successful projects in several industries including healthcare for MIT Medical, logistics for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, and financial sales at MFS Investment Management.

Mike Block

Mike Block is a pioneering cello player, singer, composer, and educator, passionate about cross-cultural collaboration through music, and committed to inspiring individuals and connecting communities. Since 2005, Mike has been a member of Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble, with which he has been featured as a cello and vocal soloist, contributed arrangements and compositions, and earned a Grammy Award in 2017 for their album Sing Me Home.

Okalo Ikhena

Director of Product, Head of Delve at Google

Okalo Ikhena is a Director of Product Management at Google, and Head of Delve by Sidewalk Labs. Delve is a generative design platform empowering urban development teams to design better, healthier, happier, and more sustainable cities and communities. At Alphabet, Okalo has spent nearly a decade launching new products and businesses. As a Product Lead at YouTube TV, he led product launches across tablet, TV, and Google Assistant platforms. At the Google Store, he led the product launch and growth of its new e-commerce platform across 25 countries and 50 languages. Within Google’s Area 120 incubator, he led product management and user experience design at Ally, a startup focused on connecting emerging markets startups with expertise and funding. He has spent the last 5 years building Delve to design over a billion sqft in 17+ countries through intelligent geospatial design.

Peter de Menocal

Director, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)

A marine geologist and paleoclimatologist, Peter de Menocal’s research uses deep-sea ocean sediments as archives of how and why Earth’s ocean and climate have changed in the past in order to predict how they may change in the future. Prior to assuming leadership of WHOI, de Menocal was the Thomas Alva Edison/Con Edison Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. He served as Columbia’s Dean of Science for the Faculty of Arts & Sciences and founded Columbia’s Center for Climate & Life, a climate solutions research accelerator. He has received numerous awards and distinctions, including Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, AGU Emiliani lecturer, a Columbia Lenfest Distinguished Faculty award, and a Distinguished Brooksian award. He earned a doctorate in geology from Columbia University and a master’s degree in oceanography from the University of Rhode Island, and was awarded an honorary doctorate from St. Lawrence University.

Randy Preston

Songwriter + performer

Randy Preston is a singer-songwriter, educator and storyteller, who grew up on 3 different continents. Raised in England and Kenya, he gained a deep appreciation for the lore, the myths and the legends of the places he has lived. This love of words and storytelling led to reams of bad poetry, a degree in English Literature, a mildly successful Christian rock band, and culminated in an 18 year teaching career, from the high school classroom to the university lecture hall. Most recently, Preston has been fascinated with stories and songs of his grandmother’s tribe, the Piscataway people, a Native American tribe local to Maryland, and Northern VA.

Richard Swartwout

Founder + Chief Technology Officer, Active Surfaces

An MIT PhD in Solar R&D and Printed Electronics, Dr. Richard Swartwout has over a decade of experience in energy innovation. As a Tata Center Fellow, Richard recognized the potential of flexible solar panels in powering remote areas, which led him to co-develop MIT's GridEdge program. Richard brings his deep technical expertise to Active Surfaces, a startup that unlocks terawatts of solar applications through an MIT patented, ultra thin-film flexible solar technology.

Sampriti Bhattacharyya

Co-founder & CEO, Navier

Sampriti Bhattacharyya is an MIT grad student who has developed underwater drones that are capable of autonomously communicating and working together to scan the ocean to look for lost planes, or measure oil spills or radiation under the sea. Her company, Hydroswarm, was awarded a top prize at MassChallenge accelerator program. As co-founder of Navier, Sampriti is working with hydrofoil tech to deploy affordable and efficient water taxis to urban centers to reinvent mass transit.

Sean DeWitt

Director, World Resources Institute

Sean DeWitt is the Director of the Global Restoration Initiative at World Resources Institute (WRI). Sean loves restoration: the art of bringing people together to make things better in our natural and built environments. He is on a mission to help restore forests, farms, pastures, hillsides, riparian areas, jobs, livelihoods, culture and hope. Sean leads a talented team of restoration experts who drive coordination among governments, civil society, companies and communities to restore ecosystems and deliver benefits to communities, climate and nature. He is dedicated to unlocking the economic, intellectual and creative potential of people and communities.

Sylvia Earle

"Her Deepness", Explorer

Sylvia Earle is an American marine biologist, oceanographer, explorer, author, and lecturer. She has been a National Geographic Explorer at Large since 1998. Earle was the first female chief scientist of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and was named by Time Magazine as its first Hero for the Planet in 1998. She also founded Mission Blue, which aims to establish marine protected areas (dubbed "Hope Spots") around the globe. Mission Blue's vision is to achieve 30% protection of the ocean by 2030.

Tod Hynes

Serial climate + energy founder

Tod Hynes has been working, investing, volunteering, and advising in climate and clean energy since 2002. He has co-founded several organizations and companies and has raised over $500 million. He has also helped hundreds of teams of students launch their own climate and energy companies through the MIT Climate & Energy Ventures class and MIT Climate & Energy Prize. He is committed to helping innovative organizations and people focus their efforts, resources and talents on building the companies and solutions we need to stabilize the climate.

Una Joy Hornick

Student + Advocate

Una Joy Hornick is a 13-year-old student dedicated to protecting the environment. After realizing many of her actions (like organizing a recycling club) were more performative than effective, she set out to make real change. Her approach starts with a Civics education.

Yaniv Altshuler

Founder and CEO, metha.ai

Dr. Yaniv Altshuler is an experienced entrepreneur and an industry-leading expert on Artificial Intelligence and Data Analysis. Yaniv has published three books on the theory and applications of Artificial Intelligence, over 70 scientific papers, and filed 17 patents. His research has been covered by Harvard Business Review, Financial Times, Davos World Economic Forum, Communications of the ACM, IEEE Spectrum, and others. After receiving his PhD in Computer Science, Yaniv worked with MIT Prof. Alex "Sandy" Pentland on the development of the new field of Social Physics. Over the past decade Yaniv used his expertise to advise leading financial institutes and government agencies worldwide. He is Founder and CEO of Metha.ai, a company applying AI for climate change mitigation in agri-food by reducing Methane emissions from cow burps.