Twenty-one year-old activist Vic Barrett is fighting hard for a future for all of us. Barrett witnessed the reality of climate change firsthand, as he was among the many people impacted by Hurricane Sandy. Barrett’s activism began in high school when he started working on climate justice issues. In 2015 Barrett, age 16, attended the COP21 UN Conference on Climate Change in Paris. A year later he addressed the General Assembly for the signing of the Paris Agreement.
Barrett is among 21 youth activists suing the government to take action on climate change in the case Juliana Vs. United States. The suit states that the government violated youth rights by allowing activities that harmed the climate and calls for progressive changes to current carbon dioxide emissions. Vic interrupted a US Fossil Fuel panel at COP24 in Katowice, Poland in order to bring in the voices of frontlines communities and took part in acts of protest to highlight the voices of those most vulnerable. Barrett also spoke at and led the NYC Climate Strike in September 2019, a protest with an attendance of 350,000. Barrett understands that it is his generation that will be impacted by the policies and decisions of older generations refusing to combat climate change.
Sami Tellatin will find almost any opportunity to put her hands in the soil. An entrepreneur, environmental engineer and educator, Sami finds inspiration and fulfillment in increasing the human connection to the environment.
Today, Sami is the co-founder of FarmRaise, an enterprise that unlocks funding for farmers and ranchers seeking to invest in their profitability and sustainability. After speaking with hundreds of farmers across the U.S., Sami and her co-founder were determined to eliminate the financial barrier farmers face in adopting soil health practices. Today, FarmRaise allows farmers to learn which public and private funding opportunities they’re eligible for and streamlines the application process, moving the industry toward one common application that unlocks funding to drive conservation practice adoption.
Sami started FarmRaise while earning an MBA and MS (Land Use and Agriculture) at Stanford University. She previously conducted research and education efforts at the USDA-Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program and University of Missouri Extension, focusing on the economic and environmental impacts of cover crops in Midwestern farming communities. She has worked on farms in Missouri and Costa Rica and holds a bachelor’s degree in Biological Engineering from the University of Missouri.
Rohit Kalyanpur, 22, is the Founder and CEO of Optivolt Labs, a company building a solar integration platform that enables electric machines—including sensors, devices, electric vehicles, and deployable generator—to self-charge in ambient light. Optivolt Labs has developed “Ghost”, a portable 10 kW (persistent power output) solar + battery generator which completely eliminates the need for a diesel generator. The modular system has unmatched power density, packing 70 kW of solar and a 240 kWh battery inside a standard ISU-90 container that is transportable by air and sea.
Ghost is being used by the U.S. Air Force to replace diesel generators used across Departments of Defense to save lives lost in ground energy re-supply missions, eliminate the reliance on recurring diesel shipments, and enable rapid deployment of perpetual power for forward operating bases. For every 10kW (persistent power output) diesel generator replaced, Ghost offsets 25 metric tons of annual carbon emissions.
To date, Optivolt Labs has raised $2.57M. Since dropping out of the University of Illinois after sophomore year, where was a Computer Engineering major, Rohit has gone on to become a Forbes 30 Under 30 Honoree in Energy (2020), a Thiel Fellow (2019), and the youngest founder to go through the Techstars Chicago Accelerator (2018).
Patrick Maloney is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Inspire, where he is responsible for the company’s strategic direction and execution of its mission. A lifelong entrepreneur in the energy and technology spaces, Patrick is dedicated to building world-positive businesses that align profitability with purpose. He founded Inspire with the vision to answer the call of millions of consumers demanding action on climate change by connecting them to the world’s first clean energy platform.
Patrick is a nationally recognized leader in the clean energy technology sector, having received numerous awards and recognition from the likes of Forbes, Fortune, FastCompany, and many others. In 2019, Patrick was selected as the 2018 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award Winner in the Cleantech and Renewables category for his outstanding vision and achievement.In addition to his work at Inspire, Patrick is a member of YPO, a premier global community of chief executives committed to leading the world’s most impactful organizations, and is a frequent speaker and thought leader on impact and sustainability.Prior to Inspire, Patrick worked in venture capital and served on the founding teams of two of the fastest-growing and most successful ventures in the competitive energy space.
Nikola Alexandre is a Black queer forester, land steward and social justice fighter. He was raised by the deserts of New Mexico and the mountains of Southern France. His work is grounded in the notion that climate change, ecological collapse and the continued devaluation of Black and Indigenous communities are interconnected and call for radical transformations to the environmental movement. By focusing on community-centered approaches that connect ecosystem restoration, business development, traditional knowledge and land tenure, Nikola works to uplift models of what such transformations could look like as we reimagine and usher in our shared future.
Nikola currently leads Conservation International’s Ecosystem Restoration Program and is a co-founder of the Shelterwood Center for Resilient Futures, a working forest modeling land stewardship for the 21st century. Through these roles, Nikola works to nurture a decolonial land ethic that centers Black and Indigenous people and practices. He has launched a number of technical guides on scaling up restoration across the world, developed partnerships with companies including Apple and Mastercard, provided guidance to the United Nations on restoration best practices and supported antiracist learnings across numerous environmental organizations. Nikola holds a Master of Forestry and Masters of Business Administration from Yale University.
Nadia Nazar is an 18-year old artist and climate justice organizer located in Baltimore, MD. Nadia is a Founder, Co-Executive Director, and Art Director of the youth led Climate Organization Zero Hour. She is currently a high school senior and is working toward implementing climate action in her school county and community. She was one of the lead organizers for the March 15th DC Climate Strike and the September 20th DC Climate Strike. Nadia uses art as an outlet and tool for awareness on the climate crisis. She designed the Zero Hour Logo, various artworks for actions, and continues to lead creative spaces in the Youth Climate Movement.
In October of 2018, Nadia spoke at the United Nations Headquarters about the impact the climate crisis is currently having on girls around the world. In February of 2019, she testified in Congress at the House Natural Resources Committee’s first hearing on climate change in the 116th Congress. Nadia was named one of the 2018 Top 25 Women Changing the World by People Magazine.
Nadia plans on continuing her artful climate activist work in order to hold corrupt corporations and elected officials accountable against her generation.
Leah Penniman (li/she/ya/elle) is a Black Kreyol farmer/peyizan, mother, soil nerd, author, and food justice activist from Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, NY. She co-founded Soul Fire Farm in 2010 with the mission to end racism in the food system and reclaim our ancestral connection to land. Leah is part of a team that facilitates powerful food sovereignty programs – including farmer training for Black and Brown growers, reparations and land return initiatives for northeast farmers, food justice workshops for urban youth, home gardens for city-dwellers living under food apartheid, doorstep harvest delivery for food insecure households, and systems and policy education for public decision-makers.
Leah has been farming since 1996, holds an MA in Science Education and a BA in Environmental Science and International Development from Clark University, and is a Manye (Queen Mother) in Vodun. Leah trained at Many Hands Organic Farm, Farm School MA, and internationally with farmers in Ghana, Haiti, and Mexico. She also served as a high school biology and environmental science teacher for 17 years. The work of Leah and Soul Fire Farm has been recognized by the Soros Racial Justice Fellowship, Fulbright Program, Grist 50, and James Beard Leadership Award, among others. Her book, Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land is a love song for the land and her people.
Dr. Joleah Lamb is an Assistant Professor at the University of California Irvine where she leads the Healthy Oceans and People (HOPE) Laboratory -an innovative research program with a solutions-driven vision at the interface between public health and ecosystem function.
A new field of study was ignited by Dr. Lamb’s discovery that plastic waste is a novel 21st century vessel for disease transmission in the ocean. This finding brought significant attention to plastic as an emerging threat and sparked an entirely new field bridging the fields of medicine and human health, biosecurity, conservation, engineering and materials science. Her research provides timely evidence and the numbers needed to inform critical environmental policy decisions, particularly after she uncovered a groundbreaking new ecosystem function of seagrass and revealing its use as a natural buffer for human pathogen removal for vulnerable coastal communities with limited wastewater infrastructure.
Worldwide media associated with her research has generated over 1,200 articles with an estimated reach of over 2.5 billion people, including interviews in The New York Times, BBC, New Scientist, National Geographic,The Atlantic, The Economist, Newsweek, Time, The Guardian, and Scientific American. For her transformative research and outstanding contributions to science communication, Dr. Lamb has been awarded with several prestigious honors, including recent recognition as an Early Career Fellow at the Ecological Society of America –the largest society on the topic in the world.
Haydée Rodríguez-Romero, 38, is Costa Rica’s Viceminister for Water and the Ocean. Haydée is an environmental lawyer specialized in science and public policy. Her passion is to translate scientific evidence into sound policies to protect people and nature.
Since 2001, she has worked with NGOs and communities promoting integrated water management, the recognition of the human right to water and sanitation, and participatory processes in environmental decision making. In 2008 she dove into marine topics and the ocean has been an essential part of her life ever since. In the past 10 years she has devoted her experience and knowledge to promote innovative actions to ensure a productive, healthy, and resilient ocean.
From her government office she has worked with coastal communities and the public sector to establish the first effective governance mechanism for marine spatial planning, promotion of the blue economy, and successful marine protected areas. She has led international negotiations for protecting biodiversity beyond national jurisdictions and the inclusion of ocean-based solutions into climate change actions. Living in a country with a marine territory ten times bigger than its land, Haydée is an enthusiastic diver and admits that her heart is captive under the water of Coco’s Island
Hal Holmes is the Chief Engineer of Conservation X Labs and is currently leading the technical development of Conservation X Labs’ Nucleic Acid Barcode Identification Tool. This system democratizes genetic testing with a robust, easy-to-use screening tool that can be deployed and used by non-scientists at the front lines of conservation. Hal developed and built the first proof-of-concept prototype of this system while still a graduate student. Resulting from these efforts, he was named a Moore Inventor Fellow, becoming the first recipient of this award from a not-for-profit institution.
Hal was also selected to the inaugural class of Schmidt Science Fellows for his vision of repurposing therapeutic focused ultrasound technologies for applications in conservation and continues to serve as a Research Scientist at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University to further this work.
Hal received bachelor’s degrees in Biomedical Engineering and Electrical Engineering from Michigan Technological University and a PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Washington. Hal is currently based in Seattle, Washington.
