2008 KEYNOTE SPEAKER
David Korten
David Korten is co-founder of the Positive Futures Network (which includes Yes! Magazine) and author of The Great Turning - from Empire to Earth Community, president and founder of the People-Centered Development Forum, a global alliance dedicated to the creation of just, inclusive and sustainable societies through voluntary citizen action. He holds MBA and PhD degrees from the Stanford Graduate school of Business and is a former faculty member of the Harvard Graduate School of Business. He was previously a Ford Foundation project specialist in Manila and an Asia Regional Advisor on Development Management for the U.S. Agency for International Development. David is the author of 'The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community', 'When Corporations Rule the World' and 'The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism' and a frequently invited speaker at conferences around the world. He is also a Board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) and a member of Social Venture Network and the Club of Rome. More »
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PLENARY
SATELLITE PRESENTATIONS
This list contains 13 of 15 speakers. Two additional speakers, Robert Kennedy and Christine Loh, are in the final stages but are not yet officially confirmed. Once they are confirmed, they will be added. This list is not in any particular order.
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 Dune Lankard, a native Athabaskan Eyak from the Copper River Delta of Alaska, was a commercial fisherman in Prince William Sound when the Exxon Valdez disaster made him an activist and social entrepreneur, dedicating his life to protecting human rights and the environment. Selected by Time magazine as one of its "Heroes of the Planet," he is a co-founder of the RED OIL Network (Resisting Environmental Degradation of Indigenous Lands). |
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 Kavita N. Ramdas,
the president and CEO of the Global Fund for Women, is one of the most effective international leaders working to empower women around the world by increasing girls' access to education, defending women's health and reproductive rights, preventing violence against women, and advancing women's political participation at all levels. |
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 Paul Stamets is one of the world's most brilliant explorers of the fungal realm, author of six books including Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World. His work is leading to cascades of potentially world-changing nutritional, medicinal and environmental technologies. |
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 Rick Reed is a leading figure in RE-AMP, a seven-state network of nonprofits and foundations, striving for Midwest leadership in 21st century clean energy by reducing electricity sector global warming pollutants 80 percent by 2030. |
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 Ray Anderson is the most successful visionary "green business" leader in America, founder and chairman of Interface Inc., the world's largest manufacturer of modular carpet and a leading producer of commercial fabrics. |
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 David Orr, chair of the renowned Environmental Studies Program at Oberlin, is one of the nation's most important pioneers in the sustainability movement, in environmental literacy in higher education and in ecological design. He is the author of the profoundly influential books, The Nature of Design, Earth In Mind; Ecological Literacy; and The Last Refuge. |
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 Janine Benyus is dazzlingly brilliant naturalist and the author of six books, including the groundbreaking Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. She is co-founder of the Biomimicry Guild, which helps designers, engineers and community leaders "consult life's genius for more graceful ways to live on earth." |
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Rebecca Moore, an eco-activist and engineer, manages the Google Earth Outreach program, which supports activists, communities and indigenous peoples around the world in learning how to apply Google's mapping tools to the world's pressing problems in areas such as environmental justice, cultural preservation, conservation and creating a sustainable society. |
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Sandra Steingraber, dubbed "the new Rachel Carson" by the Sierra Club, is an ecologist/biologist and cancer survivor, an internationally recognized expert on the environmental links to cancer and reproductive health, and the author of several books, including the award-winning, Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment and Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood. |
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 Erica Fernandez, 18, born and raised in Michoacán, Mexico until age ten, is a remarkable young environmental activist in Oxnard, California, who, initially motivated to fight air pollution because of her asthma, helped mobilize her whole diverse community to defeat the placement of a liquefied natural gas facility just offshore. |
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 Naomi Klein, one of the most important political and economic thinkers of our time and a penetrating critic of global corporate capitalism's excesses, is a Canadian activist, investigative journalist, filmmaker and author of bestselling books such as No Logo, and, most recently, The Shock Doctrine : The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. |
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 Greg Watson, long one of the most effective, leading-edge environmental leaders on the East Coast, has gone from community organizing in Boston to leading initiatives for The Nature Conservancy and the New Alchemy Institute to becoming Commissioner of Massachussetts' Department of Agriculture to being the first Director of the Massachusetts Office of Science and Technology to now taking the helm of one of the nation's most important alternative energy projects, the Offshore Wind Collaborative. |
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Lucas Benitez, co-director of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, is helping lead one of the most important labor struggles in recent U.S. history. A farmworker from Guerrero, Mexico, he came to the U.S. on his own when he was 16 to help support his five brothers and sisters. By organizing fellow migrant farmworkers, Lucas helped secure the first wage increase for tomato pickers in 20 years and exposed and stopped two slavery rings. |
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