Michael is a former 5th grade teacher, author of the children’s book, Composting for Community, father to Ezra and Diego, and the founder and Executive Director of LA Compost.
As a community composter he supports, schools, churches, community gardens, farmers markets, libraries, and parks to create compost systems to support soil health. He was exposed to soil health at an early age from the time he spent in his grandfather’s garden turning over rocks and logs to see the life that thrived underground, and how plants responded beautifully to growing in soil that was full of life. The seeds of LA Compost sprouted while he was working as a teacher. Excited to create more connections around food, soil, and community, he organized an after-school garden club to facilitate knowledge sharing opportunities across campus, and was transformed by the ways in which his students engaged with food and soil related topics. The early days of LA Compost included picking up food scraps from juice bars, coffee shops, and taco shops, and composting this collected material in friends and family members backyards. LA Compost has supported over 50 community compost locations across the county, ensuring that both the soil and souls who engage with it, are cared for. Michael cofounded the California Alliance for Community Composting, currently sits on the Board of Directors for the U.S Composting Council, and Food Exploration and Discovery, and was appointed by the Mayor of Los Angeles to become a Commissioner for the Climate Emergency Mobilization Office.
Dr. Ben Strong is the Science and Machine Learning Lead at Earth Genome. In this role, he leads the development of the Earth Index platform, which allows anyone on the planet to quickly search and fine tune models across terabytes of Earth Observation data to monitor relevant environmental trends. He also leads the application of Earth Index in several downstream applications, including Amazon Mining Watch, a cross-sector, multi-institution collaboration exposing illicit and environmentally destructive gold mining within the Amazon. He advocates for nature-centered approaches for AI through his role as XPrize Brain Trust member and other public roles, and he was recently named an inaugural recipient of the Boundless Fellowship in support of “breakthrough leadership for nature.” Prior to his work at Earth Genome, Dr. Strong was a Research Scientist at Google X. He obtained his doctorate in geophysics from Stanford, where he was a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, after earlier receiving a BS in Physics from Yale.
Ali recently joined Conservation International as the Director of Technology Initiatives to build out CI’s institutional conservation technology strategy and portfolio of conservation tech initiatives. An ecologist by background, Ali has spent the last 15 years working across conservation, technology, and international environmental policy. As part of her research into patterns of carnivore coexistence in Tanzania, she launched the novel Snapshot Serengeti.org camera trap survey and citizen-science platform, which engaged hundreds of thousands of volunteers worldwide in interpreting millions of camera trap images. She then joined the University of Oxford-based Zooniverse citizen science group to generalize this approach for ecologists broadly, leading the expansion of Zooniverse’s ecology program and a building out a generalized tool enabling researchers to leverage citizen science for expert-quality data interpretation. Ali left the Zooniverse in 2017 to work on international environmental policy issues at the U.S. Department of State (originally as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) science and technology policy fellow), leading a variety of bilateral, regional, and multilateral efforts on combating wildlife trafficking and zoonotic disease. She is thrilled to be stepping back into the conservation and technology nexus in this new role at CI, working broadly to advance technology solutions in the biodiversity, climate and ocean conservation domains.
Stephany has more than 15 years of experience in the public and nonprofit sectors and has been with Homeless Health Care Los Angeles (HHCLA) since 2015, after receiving a master’s degree in public administration. She serves as the Director of Strategic Planning & Special Projects, where she helps oversee programming, implement new projects, serves as a grant writer, and is the media contact for the agency. She is also the director of the ReFresh Spot, a 24/7 hygiene center in Skid Row funded by the Mayor’s Office, and oversees the Climate Stations in Skid Row, which she helped pilot in the summer of 2021.
Additionally, Stephany is involved with various community and advocacy efforts, including chairing the Los Angeles Central Providers Collaborative, an alliance of organizations committed to addressing issues of poverty and homelessness in the Skid Row and Central City areas of DTLA through service coordination and advocacy. She is also a community board member for USC’s Institute for Addiction Science. The board represents a group of community stakeholders from various roles, including treatment providers, community organizers, medical clinicians, and substance use survivors, to review IAS activities and provide ongoing feedback based on their breadth of experience and expertise.
Ryan Reed is from the Karuk, Hupa, and Yurok tribes in Northern California. He is an Indigenous fire practitioner, co-founder and program director of the FireGeneration Collaborative, and a wildland firefighter. Reed takes pride in his role as a Karuk medicine person, maintaining a strong connection to his cultural practices and Pikyavish (World Renewal) ceremonies. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree, Cum Laude, in Environmental Studies from the University of Oregon and is pursuing a master’s degree in Forestry at UC Berkeley. Additionally, he serves on the USDA Forest Service Northwest Forest Plan Federal Advisory Committee as one of the youngest members. Reed’s ultimate goal is to restore Indigenous land management practices and leadership, aiming to create a more fire-resilient and fire-dependent society.
Trisos is trained as an ecologist and serves as the Director of the African Synthesis Centre for Climate Change, Environment and Development (ASCEND) and the Climate Risk Lab at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.
Originally from Cape Town, he is deeply committed to reducing the impacts of climate change on people and ecosystems in Africa, particularly vulnerable and marginalized communities.
He completed his Ph.D. in zoology at Oxford University and was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the National Socio-environmental Synthesis Centre (SESYNC) at the University of Maryland. He chose SESYNC to learn how to run a synthesis center, with the goal of launching Africa’s first synthesis center focused on climate change solutions.
In 2019, he was awarded a Future Leaders Africa Research Fellowship by the UK Royal Society and the African Academy of Sciences, which enabled him to return to the University of Cape Town.
He has served as an IPCC Coordinating Lead Author, negotiated for South Africa at UN climate change negotiations, and worked to enhance evidence-based policymaking on climate change across Africa, including within the African Union and the African Group of Negotiators. Recently, he submitted an evidence statement to the International Court of Justice as part of the African Union’s submission regarding the Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change. He is a Schmidt Sciences Polymath award holder and will take up the position of AXA Research Chair in African Climate Risk in July.
Born and raised in northeast Iran, Rezaie-Atagholipour spent his childhood exploring nature and reading about animals. Despite being far from the ocean, marine life fascinated him, and illustrated books about marine creatures fueled his imagination. The depictions of electric fish, whale sharks, mudskippers, and flying fish captivated him, sparking a lifelong dream to see these creatures in person.
At 18, he moved to the southern Iranian coast to pursue his dream of becoming a marine biologist. He earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in marine biology, initially focusing on marine reptiles. However, witnessing the capture and killing of sharks and rays by fishing nets shifted his focus to marine conservation. While he continues to cherish observing marine life through diving and beach walks, much of his fieldwork now involves working at fish landing sites and on fishing boats.
In 2018, he founded the Qeshm Environmental Conservation Institute (QECI), Iran’s first NGO focused on marine biodiversity. Currently, as a Ph.D. student in Environmental Biology at the University of Manchester, he researches how overfishing and climate change affect sharks and rays, the second most threatened vertebrate group after amphibians.
His journey from a child fascinated by marine life to a dedicated marine conservation scientist demonstrates his unwavering commitment to protecting the ocean’s biodiversity. His experiences and dedication position him as a strong advocate for marine conservation, bridging scientific research with practical, impactful initiatives to safeguard marine ecosystems and support coastal communities.
Francisco Javier Vera Manzanares is a 14-year-old Colombian human rights defender and activist. At the age of 9, he founded the Guardianes por la Vida Collective, a platform for children to advocate for climate justice and environmental peace, as well as the rights of children. He is also the creator and promoter of the Ecoesperanza concept.
He has been appointed as Goodwill Ambassador of the European Union Delegation in Colombia, First Defender of Climate Action for Latin America and the Caribbean for UNICEF, and Young Champion of the OurVoiceOurFuture Campaign by the European External Action Service.
Vera Manzanares has served as a Children’s Advisor to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child for General Comment No. 26 on Climate Change and the Environment. He is also an advisor to the Climate Council of Demoslab in Spain.
In 2023, he was recognized by the UN in Geneva at the Young Activists Summit for his efforts in protecting the planet and the future.
In 2022, Editorial Planeta published his first book, “Ask Francisco: What is Climate Change?” which was translated into Arabic in 2023.
He has participated in high-level forums defending the human right to a healthy, clean, and dignified environment. Since 2022, he has been advocating politically through the Ecohope Declaration, a manifesto signed by children and adolescents calling on governments worldwide to prioritize life and decarbonize economies. He has also developed environmental, climate, and civic education programs in more than a dozen regions across Colombia.
Daniel is a Sri Lankan marine biologist and the co-founder of Blue Resources Trust; a marine research and conservation organisation, where he leads the Fisheries and Policy Programme. In addition to establishing and leading several research projects, he has been serving as an expert advisor for elasmobranch policy at multilateral environmental agreements such as CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) and CMS (The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals) for over a decade, helping bridge the gap between science and policy and advancing a shift toward sustainable fisheries. He has served as a ministerial advisor, is currently the Vice Chair of the Sessional Committee to the CMS Scientific Council, Regional Co-Vice Chair of the IUCN SSC (Species Survival Commission) Shark Specialist Group for the Indian Ocean, and a New England Aquarium MCAF (Marine Conservation Action Fund) Fellow.
Ah-Hyung “Alissa” Park is a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and the Ronald and Valerie Sugar Dean of the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering.
Prior to beginning her role at UCLA September 1, 2023, Park was a faculty member for 16 years at Columbia University in New York, where she served as the Lenfest Earth Institute Professor of Climate Change and the director of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy. She was also the chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering and an executive committee member of The Earth Institute and Columbia Climate School.
Park’s research focuses on sustainable energy and materials conversion pathways with an emphasis on using integrated carbon capture, utilization and storage technologies to address climate change. She has co-founded GreenOre CleanTech, a startup spun out of her research at Columbia University that transforms the hard-to-decarbonize industrial sector’s solid wastes and carbon emissions into value-added products, such as carbon-negative building materials, while recovering energy-relevant critical minerals.
Born in Seoul, South Korea, Park received both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemical and biological engineering from the University of British Columbia in Canada. She also earned a doctorate in chemical and biomolecular engineering at the Ohio State University.
