Nicolas Berggruen is the Chairman of the Berggruen Institute which addresses fundamental political and cultural questions in our rapidly changing humanity with its Great Transformations work. Committed to the arts, he sits on the boards of the Museum Berggruen, Berlin, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and has built with leading architects. He is co-author with Nathan Gardels of “Intelligent Governance for the 21st Century: A Middle Way Between West and East,” and co-publisher of The WorldPost. Nicolas Berggruen is also Chairman of Berggruen Holdings, the investment vehicle of the Nicolas Berggruen Charitable Trust. 

Michael W. Twitty is the author of Afroculinaria, a food blog that serves as a forum for dialogue on race and ecology. For many native communities and people of color, the environment is deeply entwined with culture and with food. However, public discourse around climate has largely relied on data-rich messaging rather than emotional messaging and experiences. Drawing from his African-American and Jewish heritage, Michael uses gastronomy to bring Americans together, uniting cultures around food and engaging in conversations about the systems that drive them apart.  

Vien V. Truong is director of Green For All, an environmental action group that works to build an inclusive green economy that is strong enough to lift people out of poverty. Low-income communities, though disproportionally affected by climate change, currently lack power over climate policy decisions that can place them in danger. Under Vien’s leadership, Green for All uses two primary campaigns to address these social justice issues: “Carbon Price and Invest” and “Fix the Pipes.” The first urges legislators to charge polluters, using the money to uplift neighborhoods. The second raises money to help Michigan families who continue to suffer from the 2014 Flint water crisis. Vien holds a law degree from University of California, Hastings, and a Bachelor’s from UC Berkeley.  

Christine Su is CEO and co-founder of PastureMap, a technology company that is changing how grasslands are managed—in a way that benefits ranchers, grasslands and the world.  Grasslands cover one-quarter of all land and store one-third of the global carbon stocks. PastureMap’s mobile and web cloud platform brings precision agriculture to ranching, helping the industry make money, raise better beef, and maintain and improve healthy grasslands.  Christine holds three degrees from Stanford, including an MS in land use and agriculture and an MBA. Christine thrives as a young, Asian woman entrepreneur in the male-dominated Silicon Valley, and is able to successfully connect with the ranching community despite lacking a personal background in the industry.  

Katie Rowe is founder and manager of the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary in northern Kenya, the first community-owned-and-run elephant sanctuary. There is a growing consensus among biologists that best conservation practices include human communities when thinking about sustainability. Katie is largely responsible for the transformation in the way Samburu communities relate to wild animals they have long feared. While nearby regions of Laikipia experience violence rooted in an ongoing drought and a tense political situation, in the Namunyak Conservancy there is a delicate peace among humans and wildlife.  

Jennifer Moslemi is co-founder and chief of strategy at CaravanLab, a communications company that packages important information from scientific and technical entities in ways that engage people from various walks of life. Scientists often have the data necessary to determine a change is due, but lack the influential narratives that can convince target audiences. Jennifer works on the Pietho network, which connects scientific communities to the creative firepower of successful advertising firms. She founded a women and minority-owned business focused on science communication and holds a PhD in ecology from Cornell.  

Lesley Marincola is the Founder and CEO of Angaza, an organization that uses pay-as-you-go to make energy products affordable. Globally, more than 1.2 billion individuals remain off the electric grid, and sub-Saharan Africa bears a disproportionate share of this burden. Over 600 million people—nearly two-thirds of the region’s population—lack access to electricity. From locations in San Francisco and Nairobi, Lesley leads Angaza in providing local support to the global and local Kenyan communities. She holds an MS in mechanical engineering from Stanford, and was named one of Forbes’ “30 under 30” and one of Businessweek’s “Best Young Entrepreneurs.”  

Ashwin Madgavkar is founder of Ceres Imaging, an aerial spectral imagery company that helps farmers optimize their water and fertilizer application. Eighty percent of California’s total water use is for agriculture, and transporting the water from neighboring states uses 20 percent of California’s total electricity consumption. A five percent increase in agricultural water efficiency in CA could save nearly 500 billion gallons of water and over a quarter trillion BTUs of energy (~$10M/yr). Ashwin founded Ceres Imaging to improve efficiency by building modular sensor, image analytics and agricultural data modeling to put data imagery in the hands of farmers to improve efficiency. Ashwin holds an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Katharine J. Mach is a senior research scientist at Stanford University, where she serves as director of the Stanford Environment Assessment Facility (SEAF), a new initiative that tests approaches to assessment. Increasing the pace, scale and scope of near-term climate change responses is imperative for keeping people safe in a changing climate. Katharine’s work with SEAF aims to influence governments and businesses to move more quickly to reduce carbon emissions by improving understanding and communication of climate change risks and options. She has authored more than 50 publications on climate change including several in Nature and Science. She received a PhD from Stanford and an AB, summa cum laude, from Harvard.