Kaushik has spent the last 10 years building scalable social enterprises serving the rural poor in India. He is the Cofounder and CEO of Kheyti, an organization helping smallholder farmers battle climate change through its “Greenhouse-in-a-Box”, a low-cost greenhouse bundled with end-to-end services that protects crops from environmental risks and grows 7 times more food using 90% less water. Along with the greenhouse, Kheyti work with partners to offer farmers financing, input linkage, training and market linkage services, creating a seamless path towards steady incomes of Rs. $100/month and out of poverty.

Before launching Kheyti, Kaushik spent five years as a leadership team member of B-ABLE, a social enterprise that connects school dropouts to mainstream careers through high quality training and placement services. He was the first employee at B-ABLE and helped the company scale from its first training center to 200 centers across 14 states training more than 70,000 school dropouts yearly. He is a graduate of IIT Kharagpur and has an MBA from Columbia Business School where he won the Nathan Gantcher Prize for Social Enterprise and the Tamer Grant for Social Ventures. Kaushik is an Acumen India Fellow 2014and a DRK Foundation Entrepreneur.

Ka’ila Farrell-Smith is a contemporary Klamath Modoc visual artist and activist based in Modoc
Point, Oregon. The conceptual framework of her practice focuses on channeling research
through a creative flow of experimentation and artistic playfulness rooted in Indigenous
aesthetics and abstract formalism. Utilizing painting and traditional Indigenous art practices, her
work explores space in-between the Indigenous and western paradigms. Ka’ila displays work in
the form of paintings, objects, and self-curated installations.

Ka’ila is a Co-director for Signal Fire artist residency program, current Fields Artist Fellow with
Oregon Humanities, and a Board Member of Rogue Climate. Her work has been exhibited at Out
of Sight, Museum of Northwest Art, Tacoma Art Museum, WA; Missoula Art Museum, MT and
Medici Fortress, Cortona, Italy; and in Oregon she has work in the permanent collection of the
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and Portland Art Museum. She is a featured artist at Scalehouse
Creative in Bend, Oregon and her work will be on view in 2021 at DITCH Projects in Springfield,
Oregon. Ka’ila has recently been selected to attend artist residencies at Djerassi, UCROSS,
Institute of American Indian Arts, and Crow’s Shadow.

Ka’ila Farrell-Smith received a BFA in Painting from Pacific Northwest College of Art and an MFA
in Contemporary Art Practices Studio from Portland State University. She is a a certified
Wilderness First Responder and has been an activist on the frontlines fighting fossil fuel pipelines
and export terminals across the Pacific Northwest.

(Profile image: original painting by Ka’ila Farrell-Smith)

Kira Sadler is an innovator in diversifying the field of conservation. With a focus on biodiversity and storytelling, Sadler works to bring voices of individuals on the front lines of conservation efforts to publication, regardless of their age, education, gender, race or abilities. She further works to create a community of individuals who are actively speaking out for other species. As Program Manager and Managing Editor of Voices for Biodiversity, Sadler works to empower individuals to conserve biodiversity by raising their voices and ensuring that they are heard. Ms. Sadler holds a master’s degree in conservation biology from the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK, and a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA. When not working on this innovative storytelling platform, she is an adjunct professor of sustainability studies at Colorado Mountain College and a part-time Pilates instructor. She enjoys hiking, camping, being in nature, and performing aerial hoop and other circus arts. 

May Boeve, 35, is the Executive Director of 350.org, a landmark grassroots campaign to engage and mobilize communities around the world in political action aimed at holding governments, corporations, and institutions accountable for addressing climate change. Boeve and several college friends co-founded 350.org in 2008 with author and climate activist Bill McKibben. In the spirit of that collaboration, 350.org has continued to foster partnerships across communities and sectors to accomplish the scale of change required to tackle the climate crisis.

Boeve has been at the forefront of the climate movement since 2007 when, as a student at Middlebury College, she helped organize a student-led proposal to make the Middlebury campus carbon-neutral by 2016. In December 2016, the college announced it had reached carbon-neutrality.

With her 350.org co-founders she is author of Fight Global Warming Now. She is recipient of the John F. Kennedy Junior New Frontier Award, and was profiled by the Guardian and Time Magazine as a Next Generation Leader.

She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

 

Nik’s passion and mission is to provide coastal communities with the tools they need to be effective in valuing, protecting and managing their own natural resources. During his tenure as Executive Director at Save The Waves Coalition, he has taken the organization from a two-person operation with a $300,000 budget to a team of ten with over $1M, with projects protecting surf ecosystems in 11 countries. He was responsible for creating strategic partnerships with groups like Conservation International, and was recently recognized by the Mulago Foundation as a Henry Arnhold Conservation Fellow for 2019. Before joining Save The Waves, Nik created a professional training program in conservation leadership with the Middlebury Institute, worked as a consultant in ecotourism development in coastal communities and built innovative programs focused on water resource issues  with partners like Driscoll’s Berries and Sustainable Conservation. In addition to his role as Executive Director of Save The Waves, he is an adjunct professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, teaching environmental non-profit management. Growing up as the son of a fisherman and a teacher in Washington State, the coast has always played an important role in his life and path. 

Sahithi Pingali is the founder of WaterInsights, an innovative crowdsourcing platform which generates water monitoring data at a scale and frequency never seen before and gathers it in a web-based Water Health Map of the World. By making data centralized, accessible, and interactive, WaterInsights aims to improve pollution remediation across the globe. Sahithi has worked in environmental research and activism, specifically around water pollution, since the age of 15. She has collaborated with interdisciplinary stakeholders ranging from scientists to social workers, businessmen, and politicians. Having grown up in Bangalore, India surrounded by water crisis, she is incredibly passionate about this issue. She has won several international awards for her work, including a Minor Planet named after her (for winning a Grand Award at Intel ISEF in Los Angeles, USA); a Gold Medal at the International Sustainable World Environment-Engineering-Energy Project (ISWEEEP) Olympiad in Houston, USA; the USAID Global Development Innovation Award; the Arizona State University Walton Sustainability Solutions Award; and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdul Aziz Award for Outstanding Performance in Water Technology. She was also featured as a lead cast member in the environmental documentary film “Inventing Tomorrow.” Sahithi is currently a sophomore at Stanford University.

Sarah Bellos, CEO and Founder of Stony Creek Colors, has been working with indigo and natural dyes since 2006, having previously managed a textile dye house offering garment and piece dyeing with plant based color. A graduate of the Cornell University Agriculture School with a degree in Natural Resources Management, she has managed small farms and worked across the food and agriculture sector.  Sarah developed Stony Creek Colors to build a new future for natural color harnessing advancements in sustainable agriculture, crop development, and chemical and process engineering. Sarah has been a recognized leader in research efforts to bring bio-based colorant production to farmers in the Southeastern U.S. In 2015, Bellos was awarded the Young Entrepreneur Award by the AATCC, American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists, the world’s leading not-for-profit association serving textile professionals. Stony Creek was a Martha Stewart American Made Awardee in 2016 and the Tennessee feature for Fast Company Magazine’s United States of Innovation in 2017. Sarah was named an Inc Magazine Top 100 Female Founder in 2018.  

Sara Eckhouse is Executive Director of FoodShot Global, an innovative, collaborative platform of investors, industry leaders, innovators, and advocates who are working together to create scalable, impactful, and inspired solutions – MoonShots for Better Food.  With the $525,000 GroundBreaker Prize, up to $10 million in equity investment, and up to $20 million in debt financing, FoodShot Global empowers bold ideas and innovative companies to accelerate the transformation to a healthy, sustainable, and equitable food system. 

Previously, Sara worked as a consultant with S2G Ventures, where she provided insights to over 30 portfolio companies in order to support effective business strategies, develop new supply chain partnerships, and help them utilize relevant USDA programs and resources.  Prior to that, Sara served as Senior Advisor to Secretary Tom Vilsack at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where she focused on local and regional food systems, organic agriculture, and healthy food access.  At USDA, Sara worked with a range of stakeholders to identify existing programs and develop new tools to support local, organic, and sustainable agriculture.  Sara also worked in the Obama White House in the Office of Legislative Affairs, and as a Field Organizer on the 2008 Obama Presidential Campaign.  She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College.

Sofia is the Co-founder and COO of Brightseed, a company that is bringing nature’s intelligence to life. She co-founded Brightseed on the belief that food should nourish, that plants have the answers, and that we now have the advanced machine-learning technology to find them. Brightseed has built a first-of-its-kind technology that can predict what kind of specialized metabolites plants are likely to produce as well as what health benefits these natural bioactive compounds can unlock. With this approach, Brightseed has found leads 10x faster than traditional medicinal chemistry research. Brightseed will make these bioactives available in their original whole plant source, as well as in an extract for the food and beverage industry. As it re-discovers nature’s wisdom, Brightseed seeks to promote diverse plant sources, and in doing so, promote all the benefits that these overlooked but highly important crops can bring to soil health and farmland sustainability. Prior to founding Brightseed, Sofia worked in food tech company Hampton Creek, was a member of the BCG Henderson Institute, and was a special advisor to the United Nations Global Compact.