Saba Waheed is the Director at the UCLA Labor Center. She has nearly twenty years of research experience developing projects with strong community participation. With her team at the UCLA Labor Center, she coordinated the first-ever study of domestic work employers, launched a multi-year study of workers and learners, and conducted research on the impact of the pandemic on nail salon workers and owners. She has also conducted research related to gig workers, young workers, Black workers, LGBTQ+ grocery workers and retail workers. Saba teaches the Labor Summer Research Program, guiding students through an applied research project. Previously she worked as the research director at DataCenter where she co-developed the framework of “research justice,” which aims to address the structural inequities in research. In addition to her research work, Saba is an award-winning radio producer and writer. She co-produces the radio show Re:Work, a storytelling show about worked on the animated film, I am a #youngworker. Saba strongly believes that research and media are powerful tools for community storytelling. She received an MA in Anthropology from Columbia University and a BA in English and Religious Studies from UC Berkeley. Outside of work, Saba writes short stories and takes long walks with her dog, Cinna.

Geneva E. B. Thompson (she/her/hers) is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and serves as Assistant Secretary of Tribal Affairs for the California Natural Resources Agency. Most recently, Geneva served as Associate General Counsel for the Yurok Tribe, where she practiced environmental and cultural resource law and represented the Yurok Tribe in tribal, state, and federal forums. Previously, Geneva served as Staff Attorney for the Wishtoyo Foundation. During law school she clerked with the Department of Justice Indian Resource Section, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Earthjustice, and the Tribal Law and Policy Institute.
Geneva graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, with specializations in Critical Race Studies and Public Interest Law and Policy. She has also published several law review articles and volunteers for multiple bar associations, including the National Native American Bar Association, California Indian Law Association, and the American Bar Association.

Chisato Fukuda Calvert, Ph.D. has 15 years of strategic partnership and 7+ years of business development experience across international development, nonprofits, and startups – all with a focus on advancing equitable solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges driven by climate change. She is currently Strategic Partnership Director of SINAI Technologies, where she is developing and executing the company’s strategic partnership strategy aimed to help companies build their decarbonization strategy and meet their net-zero targets.

She has served as Acting Director of OpenAQ Inc., where she managed all aspects of the company, including developing and implementing the strategic partnership strategy, partnership building, business development, and managing a growing open-source air quality platform that aggregates and harmonizes over 17 billion air quality measurements from 136 countries across the globe.

She was also Director of Strategic Partnerships at Impact Experience, where she served as an advisor and liaison between key financial partners and community leaders to channel investments into underserved communities throughout the U.S. to support climate resilience, disaster recovery, and community development. Chisato is also the Co-founder and former Director of SmartAir Mongolia, a social enterprise focused on developing and distributing affordable air purifiers to safeguard health against toxic air in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia – one of the most polluted cities in the world.

She has also led environmental governance programs at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Laos, and across Southeast Asia, building strategic partnerships with national governments across ASEAN countries, research institutions, and diverse industries to champion win-win collaborations to advance environmental sustainability. Furthermore, she held positions at Trace Foundation in New York, and National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) in Washington, D.C. In addition to her work experience, she has conducted ethnographic research extensively across Asia including in Mongolia, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

Her doctoral dissertation fieldwork focused on health disparities caused by air pollution exposure in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. She has served as a consultant on several environmental health projects and climate mitigation interventions. Chisato earned her Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and graduated from Bucknell University with a Cultural Anthropology Honors Degree.

Aimee serves as co-director of the Elemental Policy Lab, a collective of policy entrepreneurs working at the seam of technology and policy. She is also the founder and CEO of Hua Nani Partners, a consulting practice focused on seeding the next generation of climate and energy solutions, and a senior advisor at the California-China Climate Institute. In 2022, Aimee was appointed by Hawai’i’s Governor David Ige to serve on the Hawai’i State Board for Land and Natural Resources. 

Aimee served previously as Senior Advisor to California Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr., where she helped launch the US Climate Alliance, led the 2018 Global Climate Action Summit, and was responsible for Executive Order B-55-18, committing California to carbon neutrality by 2045. She also served as Deputy Secretary for Border and Intergovernmental Relations at the California Environmental Protection Agency, and was a partner at Allotrope Partners. Earlier in her career she worked on climate issues internationally, in the UK and United Arab Emirates, at the carbon markets firm EcoSecurities, and at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

Aimee co-founded Bright Spot Network, which supports parents facing cancer while raising young children, and serves on the boards of the Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society at Dartmouth College, and Independent Diplomat. She was the 2018 recipient of the Government Leadership Award for DOE’s C3E Women’s Initiative, and founded Powerwomen, a database of leading women in climate change and energy. She has an MPA in Environmental Science and Policy from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), and a BA from Dartmouth College in Environmental Studies.

Yvette Lopez-Ledesma (she/her) is the Senior Director of Community-led Conservation at The Wilderness Society, a national environmental conservation organization.

She and her team work on developing programs to ensure that communities in urban and rural places can access the benefits of parks, open space and public lands. Mrs. Lopez-Ledesma most recently served as a Lecturer in the Urban Studies and Planning Department at California State University Northridge. From 2013-2018 Yvette served as Deputy Director of Pacoima Beautiful, an environmental justice organization in the Northeast San Fernando Valley.

She earned her BA in Urban Studies and Planning at CSUN and also earned her Master of Public Administration & Urban Planning at CSUN. Yvette currently serves as a member of the City of Los Angeles Planning Commission, and is a Delegate for the California Democratic Party. She has previously served on the RE:Code LA Zoning Advisory Committee, as Chair and Vice Chair of the San Fernando Valley Metro Service Council, the Sustainable Burbank Committee, and was also a Board Member of the Los Angeles League of Conservation Voters. Mrs. Lopez-Ledesma has over 18 years of work and volunteer experience focused on her purpose to advance social justice, sustainability, and inclusive community engagement.

Randall Winston’s career spans law, architecture, and public service, which collectively have shaped a career focused on advancing equitable, sustainable development.  Randall serves as Deputy Mayor of Infrastructure for the City of Los Angeles, where he leads Mayor Karen Bass’ infrastructure policy and alignment of public works and transportation investments. Previously, he was an attorney at O’Melveny & Myers where he represented government and environmental organizations facing complex litigation and state and federal investigations.

Prior to his legal practice, Randall was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to serve as Executive Director of the California Strategic Growth Council, a state agency integrating efforts to achieve the state’s climate and sustainable community goals. Under his leadership, SGC invested over $1.3 billion in transit-oriented affordable housing, land conservation, and capacity building in the most under-resourced communities throughout California.

Randall also served as an advisor to Governor Jerry Brown, where he worked across state agencies to lead implementation of Executive Orders on green buildings and electric vehicles, including development of unprecedented regulations to reduce emissions from the building and transportation sectors. He also led the planning and execution of trade missions to China and Mexico, working with foreign government officials and businesses across the state to forge international trade and environmental agreements.

Before serving in the Brown administration, Randall worked for Pritzker Prize-winning architect Norman Foster, collaborating with interdisciplinary teams on design, urban planning, and infrastructure projects throughout the world. He also spent two years working for urban development and architecture firms in Beijing, China.

Randall served as an inaugural Policy Fellow at Elemental Excelerator, a nonprofit venture fund focused on scaling equitable, market-driven solutions to climate change. He is Vice Chair of California Environmental Voters, and serves on the boards of UCLA’s Institute of the Environment & Sustainability and UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment.

Randall received a B.A. in Government from Harvard University, a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Virginia, and a Juris Doctorate degree from the U.C. Berkeley School of Law.

Ida Levine is a principal with Two Rivers Associates Limited, consulting on policy, strategy and governance. She is policy lead expert and non-executive director on the board of the UK Impact Investing Institute.  She serves on the UK Financial Markets Law Committee (FMLC) founded by the Bank of England, and on the Management Board of PRIME Finance Foundation in The Hague. Ida sits on the Advisory Board of the UCLA Institute for Carbon Management. She is also the incoming chair of the UCLA Chancellor’s Society in Europe. Previously Ida was board director, senior vice president and senior counsel for the Capital Group/American Funds (CG) in Europe. Before CG, Ida was European counsel and on the European Management Committee of JP Morgan Investment Management.  Prior to this, she was a partner at the international law firm Jones Day (London and New York) specializing in corporate, M&A and international securities law. Ida sits on arts boards in the UK, including the Royal Academy of Dance. She was a founding Board Director of the UK Investor Forum. 

Mary Creasman is California Environmental Voters’ (EnviroVoters) Chief Executive Officer. Since taking over EnviroVoters in 2018, Mary has focused the organization on building power to solve the climate crisis, advancing climate justice, and creating the global roadmap for action. Under her leadership, EnviroVoters has more than doubled in size, launching three new local league PAC entities to expand organizing efforts in battleground regions across the state. During the 2020 election cycle, EnviroVoters PAC entities and partners stopped Big Oil’s top three candidates from advancing in the primary election and unseated two anti-environmental state senators in the general election. 

In addition, EnviroVoters led efforts in 2020 to expand mail ballots to every voter, protect in-person and drop box polling options, and lower the voting age. While passing numerous climate policies statewide, EnviroVoters led accountability efforts to oust pro-oil and gas legislators and helped push California’s congressional delegation to deliver a historic win federally by securing permanent conservation funding through the Great American Outdoors Act. 

Prior to EnviroVoters, Mary served as the California Director of Government Affairs for The Trust for Public Land where she led the effort to pass the largest parks tax measure in the nation, spearheaded the state’s biggest single investment in underserved communities in California’s history, and created an urban greening program marking the first-time green infrastructure was included in California’s climate policy. 

Mary has a long and successful track record of leading campaigns and initiatives at regional, statewide, and national levels as the Chief Strategy Officer of Green For All, the Associate Director of the Partnership for Children & Youth, and the Political and Organizing Director of the AFL-CIO Labor Council in Silicon Valley. She has advised organizations across the country as an organizational development and effectiveness consultant. Mary has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, The Hill, Politico, the Sacramento Bee, San Francisco Chronicle, and more. 

Thematic photo by Element5 Digital

Dr. Chakraborty is a globally recognized risk and behavioral scientist and expert on global risks ranging from climate change to COVID-19. She is a trusted authority on proactive preparedness to mitigate against the impacts of climate change, motivated by the need for clear, credible, evidence-based communication.

Sweta is the president of U.S. operations for We Don’t Have Time, a partner at Pioneer Public Affairs, and serves on the steering committee of the Global Commons Alliance alongside Johan Rockstrom. She is also an independent director at Lightbridge Corp. (NASDAQ: LTBR), where she chairs their environmental, social and governance (ESG) committee.

She is the key behavioral scientist at Resilience Action Partners (an Ogilvy and Michael Baker joint enterprise) for a $250 million (CERC 2.0) FEMA contract to address US-wide adaptation to climate change impacts. She is also the founder and principal of Adapt to Thrive, a venture that seeks to better inform entities on the complex, interconnected challenges already existing and emerging from a warming planet. She has worked in the private sector as chief scientist for a risk management-consulting firm, has taught at Columbia University as an adjunct professor, and is the head of Top Tier Impact’s Policy Action Unit.

Sweta is a TEDx and SXSW featured speaker, most recently alongside Nikolaj Coster-Waldau for the UNDP’s #dontchooseextinction campaign, and is regularly interviewed on major, international news media outlets including CNN, the NYT, the BBC, Forbes, Fox News Channel, Sky News, CBS, NowThis, MSNBC to name a few. She has appeared on networks like Nickelodeon and Discovery+, where she was featured alongside Kamala Harris for an Earth Day 2021 special.

Sweta has written extensively in peer-reviewed journals, is a book author from her time as a postdoc at Oxford University, and is currently working on her second book on adaptation to global risks. She has built her career around how to connect science, media and policy to change attitudes, empower audiences, and inspire action alongside celebrities like Questlove and Joaquin Phoenix.

She is a 2019/2020 Millennium Fellow at The Atlantic Council, and serves on the boards of the New York Academy of Sciences, Climate Power, Earth HQ, Serendipity Foundation, America Adapts and We Don’t Have Time.

In 2022, she launched “House of Scientista” a not-for-profit with the purpose to empower women and underrepresented groups to pursue careers in STEM. House of Scientista is where fashion and science come together to support the next generation of women scientists.

Thematic Photo by Austin Distel

Maria Fujihara is founder and CEO of SINAI Technologies, the world’s leading decarbonization-as-a-service platform to measure, analyze, reduce and price emissions using science-based methodologies. An architecture graduate, Maria worked as technical coordinator at Brazil’s Green Building Council (GBC) before founding Sinai. At GBC, she disseminated sustainable construction concepts through courses and lectures of the LEED Certification and Homes Referential at the national and international levels. Maria moved to California after finishing her work at GBC where she enrolled in Singularity University. Maria experienced her “a-ha” moment when as a student, she realized that technology and environmentalism go hand in hand. Maria is passionate about changing people’s minds and hearts through hope and empathy in order to achieve sustainability.

Thematic photo by Bryan Williams