Gavin McIntyre co-founded Ecovative in 2007 to solve environmental challenges through biology. Ecovative employs mycelium, the root-like structure of fungi, as a rapidly growing, self-assembling alternative to the plastics used in a wide range of industries (Mushroom® Packaging). As the company’s Chief Technology Officer, Gavin oversaw all research and development during the company’s early product launches and is a listed inventor on over two dozen of the company’s issued and pending patents. He now serves as the company’s Director of Business Development and is focused on nurturing a network of international mycelium-material partnerships composed of small enterprises, large multinational organizations, and government agencies. He endeavors to foster a global community of biomaterial cultivators that can bolster local economies by transforming biomass residues into higher value products while limiting the proliferation of plastics. Collectively, Ecovative and its partners displace hundreds of tonnes of single-use plastics annually with earth-compatible products.
Gavin is a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where his dual degree in mechanical engineering and product design and innovation led to his passion for building home-spun bioreactors to cultivate organisms from oysters to orchids. He advises several start-ups and environmental non-profits, including Clean and Healthy New York.
Desirée Williams-Rajee has permanently changed the trajectory of sustainability and climate planning in government. Triple bottom line practitioners struggled for years to manifest the “third leg” of the sustainability stool, a.k.a. social equity, until Desiree supplanted the work with a new approach addressing institutional racism and centering the communities most impacted by climate. She was recognized as a “Champion of Change” by the Obama Administration for her work on the Portland Multnomah County Climate Action Plan, setting a new bar for local government to address environmental racism as a responsibility and a professional practice. Her work and thought leadership continue to have national impact through her firm, Kapwa Consulting, where she supports leaders within the Urban Sustainable Directors Network and Bloomberg Philanthropies’ American Cities Climate Challenge.
Kapwa is a Tagalog word that defines the interconnectivity between living things, in essence our shared humanity. Inspired by this, Desirée has cultivated an approach to develop “equity thinking” –a means to understand our relationship to the natural world and each other through systems of power, colonialism, and race. With this grounding philosophy, she has helped numerous leaders within government agencies and environmental nonprofits redefine themselves and their outcomes to rebalance urban ecosystems towards justice.
Bailey Farren is the CEO and co-founder of Perimeter, an organization dedicated to disaster preparedness and response. After her family had to evacuate during California’s 2017 Tubbs Fire, Bailey discovered that public safety had been using antiquated technology to contain the most devastating disasters we have seen to date. The daughter of two first responders, Bailey strives to empower citizens and public safety agencies with the tools and information necessary to prepare for, respond to, and recover from the unprecedented emergencies of our times.
After graduating from UC Berkeley in 2019, Bailey applied her background in data science and passion for climate action to create an organization whose mission considers the technological, natural, and human factors involved in living symbiotically with our rapidly changing environment.
Ankit Agarwal is the Founder of Phool, a social enterprise that has pioneered ‘flowercycling’ technologies to reduce the pollution in the Rivers Ganges by up-cycling the vast quantities of flower temple-waste in India. Every year, more than eight million metric tons of pesticide-laden temple-flowers are dumped in the Ganges, choking the river and causing severe health concerns like diarrhea, hepatitis and cholera. At Phool, over 8.4 tons of temple-waste is collected daily in Uttar Pradesh and converted into charcoal-free incense and an animal-free alternate to leather called Fleather (PETA’s Best Innovation in the Vegan World 2020).In the process, Phool employs women who were previously manual scavengers to sort the flower waste and hand roll the popular incense sticks. This transformational disease-free employment enables these women to shun lives in which they jump neck deep into clogged sewers to scrape human feces from dry toilets. Awarded the Fast company world changing ideas and recognized by Forbes, Fortune, and the Stanford Social Review, Phool is driving systematic change in a community that has been exploited for centuries by creating sustainable employment opportunities and revolutionizing the way India handles its ‘million-ton temple waste disposal’.
Ankit was named a Queens young leader in 2017 and is both an Echoing Green and Acumen Fellow. Ankit is amongst the 21 young leaders selected for extraordinary skills by the Asia Society and Recently received the prestigious United Nations Young Leader for Sustainable Development Goals Award, the Takeda Young Global Entrepreneur Award, the Unilever Young Entrepreneur Awards, and The GSG Millennial Honor.
Olivier Boiral is a professor at the Faculty of Business Administration of Universite Laval and holds the Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Development Management Standards. Recipient of a PhD from HEC Montreal, his recent research has focused on the implementation of international management standards and critical analysis of the sustainable development concept. His most important papers on ISO certification and environmental management systems have been published in Organization Science, Long Range Planning, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, International Labour Review and Quality Management Journal.
Ani was born and raised in Cleveland, OH, and attended The Ohio State University where he earned his undergraduate degree in chemistry. At OSU, his passion for research was cultivated in the laboratory of Prof. David Nagib where he worked on C-H functionalization chemistry. Currently, Ani is a PhD graduate student in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at UCLA. Ani’s research is focused on developing synthetic platforms for antibiotic drug discovery. He enjoys hiking and trying new restaurants when not in the lab.
Recently graduating North Carolina A&T State University with a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry, Stephen is seeking to pursue a doctoral degree in Chemistry with a concentration in Marine Chemistry. As a Marine Chemist, it is Stephen’s goal to analyze the chemical behavior of the world’s oceans through synthesis and characterization of marine natural products from marine organisms that will provide advancement in medicinal and energy solutions globally. Stephen received the McKnight Doctoral Fellowship and will be attending the University of South Florida under the mentorship of Dr. Bill Baker in the Department of Chemistry.
