Highlights - LEAH THOMAS - Author of The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet

Highlights - LEAH THOMAS - Author of The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet

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Author of The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet
Founder of @greengirlleah & The Intersectional Environmentalist platform

Intersectional Environmentalism to me means prioritizing social justice in environmental movements and really thinking about what communities are most impacted by different environmental injustices. So, for example, in the United States, a lot of communities of color, Black, Indigenous communities, and also lower-income communities struggle with things like unclean air and unclean water, and those are environmental injustices. So I thought it was important to have an intersectional approach to environmental advocacy that doesn't ignore these things and these intersections of identity, but explores them to make sure that every community, especially those most impacted by environmental injustices, no longer are. And I wanted to write a really accessible introduction that was targeted at school kids or anyone who wants to learn more.

LEAH THOMAS - Author of The Intersectional Environmentalist - Founder of IE Platform & @GreenGirlLeah

LEAH THOMAS - Author of The Intersectional Environmentalist - Founder of IE Platform & @GreenGirlLeah

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Author of The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet
Founder of @greengirlleah & The Intersectional Environmentalist platform

Intersectional Environmentalism to me means prioritizing social justice in environmental movements and really thinking about what communities are most impacted by different environmental injustices. So, for example, in the United States, a lot of communities of color, Black, Indigenous communities, and also lower-income communities struggle with things like unclean air and unclean water, and those are environmental injustices. So I thought it was important to have an intersectional approach to environmental advocacy that doesn't ignore these things and these intersections of identity, but explores them to make sure that every community, especially those most impacted by environmental injustices, no longer are. And I wanted to write a really accessible introduction that was targeted at school kids or anyone who wants to learn more.

ARTHUR KLEBANOFF - President of Scott Meredith Literary Agency - Founder of Rodin Books & RosettaBooks

ARTHUR KLEBANOFF - President of Scott Meredith Literary Agency - Founder of Rodin Books & RosettaBooks

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President of Scott Meredith Literary Agency
Founder of Rodin Books & RosettaBooks

As President of Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Arthur has represented J.D. Salinger, Arthur C. Clark, several U.S. Presidents, Michael Bloomberg, Bill Bradley, Paul Krugman, among others, and has handled books with over $1 billion in sales. In 2001, Klebanoff founded RosettaBooks, an independent eBook publisher which for twenty years disrupted the publishing business. Klebanoff has published, represented or packaged over 75 thought leadership titles. He founded RodinBooks to publish books by impactful leaders.

Highlights - Dr. Jessica Hernandez - Author of “Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science"

Highlights - Dr. Jessica Hernandez - Author of “Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science"

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Transnational Indigenous Scholar, Scientist
Author of Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science

I live my life embodying the teaching my grandmother instilled in me – that no matter which lens I walked on, I had to learn how to build relationships with the land and the Indigenous peoples whose land I reside on to become a welcome guest. As a displaced Indigenous woman, my longing to return to my ancestral homelands will always be there, and this is why I continue to support my communities in the diaspora. However, my relationships are not only with my community, but also the Indigenous communities whose land I am displaced on, and this is the foundation of my work while residing in the Pacific Northwest. I strongly believe that in order to start healing Indigenous landscapes, everyone must understand their positionality as either settlers, unwanted guests, or welcomed guests, and that is ultimately determined by the Indigenous communities whose land you currently reside on or occupy. This teaching has also helped me envision my goals in life. Every day I get closer to becoming an ancestor because life is not guaranteed but rather a gift we are granted from our ancestors who are now in the spiritual world.

Dr. Jessica Hernandez - Transnational Indigenous Scholar, Scientist, Author of “Fresh Banana Leaves”

Dr. Jessica Hernandez - Transnational Indigenous Scholar, Scientist, Author of “Fresh Banana Leaves”

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Transnational Indigenous Scholar, Scientist
Author of Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science

I live my life embodying the teaching my grandmother instilled in me – that no matter which lens I walked on, I had to learn how to build relationships with the land and the Indigenous peoples whose land I reside on to become a welcome guest. As a displaced Indigenous woman, my longing to return to my ancestral homelands will always be there, and this is why I continue to support my communities in the diaspora. However, my relationships are not only with my community, but also the Indigenous communities whose land I am displaced on, and this is the foundation of my work while residing in the Pacific Northwest. I strongly believe that in order to start healing Indigenous landscapes, everyone must understand their positionality as either settlers, unwanted guests, or welcomed guests, and that is ultimately determined by the Indigenous communities whose land you currently reside on or occupy. This teaching has also helped me envision my goals in life. Every day I get closer to becoming an ancestor because life is not guaranteed but rather a gift we are granted from our ancestors who are now in the spiritual world.

Chris Coulter - CEO of GlobeScan - Co-author of “All In: The Future of Business Leadership”

Chris Coulter - CEO of GlobeScan - Co-author of “All In: The Future of Business Leadership”

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My intention was to become a doctor because my parents were quite civic-minded and old hippies who wanted to, you know, change the world in the sixties. And so those values were instilled. I thought medicine would be a great place. I ended up shifting to international development and wanting to focus on that part of what was transpiring in the world.

I ended up working for the Canadian government in CIDA, which is the former USAID equivalent in Ottawa. And then I saw a poster to volunteer in Ukraine, and my mother's side of the family is Ukrainian, so I thought that what a great thing to do. So I ended up being the guy who could speak English and write proposals for NATO, ironically, in 1996, for this really interesting organic organization called Democratic Initiatives Foundation, which continues to exist by this fantastic founder Ilko Kucheriv, who's passed away, sadly. He was a democratic reformer. Ukraine became independent in '91. He wanted to bring tools from the West that were important to develop civil society, which included public opinion polling.

Bill Novelli · Founder, Business for Impact Program, Georgetown · Co-founder Porter Novelli

Bill Novelli · Founder, Business for Impact Program, Georgetown · Co-founder Porter Novelli

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Founder Business for Impact Program at Georgetown University
Co-founder Porter Novelli Global PR Agency · Former CEO of AARP

This is one of the biggest problems that we have in this country. So, on the one hand, we know that we have to take personal responsibility for ourselves, our own health, our families – it's up to us. As some people like to say, you're on your own. And we have to balance that against the concept that we're all in this together. You know, the idea that it takes a village and both sides essentially disrespect the other side. They criticize the other side. No, we're not in this together. It's your own responsibility, and vice versa. If we're going to be good citizens, and we're going to make progress, we have to see both sides of that equation. That's not easy to do.

Daniel Sherrell · Author of "Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World”

Daniel Sherrell · Author of "Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World”

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Author of Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World
Organizer · Campaign Director Climate Jobs National Resource Center

It felt to me that if I wasn't able to figure out a way to orchestrate a genuine emotional encounter for myself with the enormity of this thing I was meant to be taking action on, then something in me was going to break, and I just wouldn't be able to keep doing the work. So, there was never a point where it's like, I'm going to write a book, but I did turn to the written word, almost little diary entries, to make psychological and spiritual sense of the crisis that I was dealing with in a thin way every day.

James & Deborah Fallows · Co-authors of “Our Towns” · Founders of Our Towns Civic Foundation

James & Deborah Fallows · Co-authors of “Our Towns” · Founders of Our Towns Civic Foundation

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Journalists
Co-authors of Our Towns · Founders of Our Towns Civic Foundation

It was the accumulation of a month or two of travel in South Dakota and then in rural Vermont, and rural Michigan. We thought, we're seeing things that we never read about, that just by following the newspapers, we know all about New York and D.C., but we don't know anything about Sioux Falls.

We don't know anything about Howell, Michigan, and it's so interesting. And I think what I'm building to on the timeliness, it was and is, I think, a moment in American history where people have a sort of caricatured view of the America that's not directly in their experience. They think, okay, where I am is all right, but those people out there are crazy. Those people out there are extreme. Those people out there, we don't understand them.