Majora Carter, Born, raised, and continuing to live in the South Bronx, believes you shouldn't have to move out of your neighborhood to live in a better one, and that this notion has environmental and economic implications that span the globe.

In 2001, after successfully shifting the Giuliani administration's plans from more municipal waste handling to positive economic development, she founded the non-profit environmental justice solutions corporation, Sustainable South Bronx (SSBx). Her first major project was writing a $1.25M Federal Transportation planning grant for the South Bronx Greenway with 11 miles of alternative transport, local economic development, low-impact storm-water management, and recreational space. This led to the first new South Bronx water front park in over 60 years.

While needed parks are highly visible manifestations of her work, the real focus is creating intensive urban forestation, green roofing/walls, and water permeable open spaces. This robust horticultural infrastructure cleans the air, reduces urban heat island effect, efficiently manages storm water run off, calms the soul, and creates jobs - reducing poverty.

In 2003, SSBx opened the Bronx Environmental Stewardship Training program (BEST): one of the nation's first urban green-collar job training and placement systems. After 5 years it boasts an 85% employment rate with 10% now in college. Many of these success stories were formerly incarcerated, and all of them were on some form of public assistance before completing the nationally recognized 10-week course. Her local and global environmental solutions rest on poverty alleviation through green economic development, because the local jobs they create can empower communities to resist bad environmental decisions.

Majora Carter is a 2006 MacArthur "genius" Fellow, one of Essence Magazine's 25 most influential African-Americans, one the NY Post's 50 Most Influential Women for the past 2 years, co-host of the Green on the Sundance Channel, a board member of the Widerness Society, SJF, and CERES, and host of a special national public radio series called "The Promised Land" (thepromisedland.org). She is currently president of the green-collar economic consulting company, The Majora Carter Group, LLC.

Dr. Robert W. Corell is Vice President of Programs and Policy at The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment (on leave for 2009), a Senior Policy Fellow at the Policy Program of the American Meteorological Society, and Senior Science Advisor to the Global Environment and Technology Foundation and the Climate Science Institute. He currently chairs and leads the international Climate Action Initiative (CAI), the overall goal of which is to strengthening scientific foundations for and the policy negotiating frameworks of the UNFCCC, central to which is the use of policy exercises that employs real-time climate simulations. He is the lead P.I. for the U.S. contributions to the Global Energy Assessment. Corell was the chair of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment. In 2005, he completed an appointment as a Senior

Research Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs of the Kennedy School for Government at Harvard University. Dr. Corell was one of those noted in the Nobel Peace Prize Award in 2007 for his extensive work with the IPCC assessments. Dr. Corell is actively engaged in research concerned with both the sciences of climate and global change and with the interface between science and public policy, particularly research activities that are focused on global and regional climate change and related environmental issues. Prior to January 2000, he was the Assistant Director for Geosciences at the National Science Foundation where he had responsibilities for the Atmospheric, Earth, and Ocean Sciences, the NSF's Polar Programs, and the NSF Global Change Program. While at NSF, Dr. Corell also served as the Chair of the President's National

Science and Technology Council's Committee that has oversight of the U.S. Global Change Research Program and he also chaired an international committee of government agencies (~25) funding global change research for many years. Further, he served as chair and principal U.S. delegate to many international bodies with interest in and responsibilities for climate and global change research programs. Prior to joining the NSF in 1987, he was a Professor and academic administrator at the University of New Hampshire. Dr. Corell is an oceanographer and engineer by background and training, having received Ph.D., M.S. and B.S. degrees at Case Western Reserve University and MIT. He has also held academic appointments at the Woods Hole Institution of Oceanography, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the University of Washington, and Case Western Reserve University.

Kristie L. Ebi is Executive Director of the Technical Support Unit for Working Group II (Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  Prior to this position, she was an independent consultant.  Her research focuses on the impacts of and adaptation to climate change, including on extreme events, thermal stress, foodborne safety and security, and vectorborne diseases.  She has worked with the World Health Organization, the United Nations Development Programme, USAID, and others on implementing adaptation measures in low-income countries.  She facilitated adaptation assessments for the health sector for the states of Maryland and Alaska.  She was a lead author on the "Human Health" chapter of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, and the "Human Health" chapter for the U.S. Synthesis and Assessment Product "Analyses of the Effects of Global Change on Human Health and Welfare and Human Systems."  She has edited fours books on aspects of climate change and has more than 80 publications.  Dr. Ebi's scientific training includes an M.S. in toxicology and a Ph.D. and a Masters of Public Health in epidemiology, and two years of postgraduate research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Dale Jamieson is Director of Environmental Studies at New York University, where he is also Professor of Environmental Studies and Philosophy, and Affiliated Professor of Law. Formerly he was Henry R. Luce Professor in Human Dimensions of Global Change at Carleton College, and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he was the only faculty member to have won both the Dean's award for research in the social sciences and the Chancellor's award for research in the humanities. He is also past president of the International Society for Environmental Ethics.  

Dr. Jamieson is the author of Ethics and the Environment: An Introduction (Cambridge, 2008), and Morality's Progress: Essays on Humans, Other Animals, and the Rest of Nature (Oxford, 2002). He is also the editor or co-editor of seven books, most recently A Companion to Environmental Philosophy (Blackwell, 2001), and the forthcoming Climate Ethics (with Steve Gardiner, Simon Caney, and Henry Shue). He has published nearly one hundred articles and book chapters, and is also the co-author of a major report to the US Environmental Protection Agency, Cultural Barriers to Behavioral Change: General Recommendations and Resources for State Pollution Prevention Programs. 

He is on the editorial advisory boards of several journals including Environmental Values; Environmental Ethics; Science, Technology, and Human Values; Science and Engineering Ethics; Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science; The Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics; and the Journal of Applied Philosophy. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Office of Global Programs in the National Atmospheric and Aeronautics Administration. He is currently writing a book on the moral and political challenges of climate change, a topic on which he has worked for more than twenty-five years.

Robert Kuhn is Senior Director and Principal Advisor of Kuhn Associates Sustainability Advisors, LLC, a boutique New York-based sustainability consultancy focusing on advancing environmental, social and economic outcomes in the business context. Robert is a respected corporate sustainability and social responsibility expert who combines extensive business leadership, strategy development and process re-engineering experience with superior sustainability insights to design and implement sustainability initiatives. Robert’s consulting firm, Kuhn Associates Sustainability Advisors, LLC, focuses primarily on the intersection between sustainability and complex supply chain operations. The firm’s corporate clients all have global operations and span many industry sectors, from logistics to apparel. The firm’s non-corporate clients include Accenture LLP and the University of Michigan’s Erb Institute for the Sustainable Global Enterprise.

Mr. Kuhn serves as Chair of the Institute for Supply Management’s Sustainability and Social Responsibility Committee. ISM is the world’s largest professional association of supply management professionals, with almost 45,000 members worldwide. Robert has overseen the development and publication of revised Principles of Sustainability and Social Responsibility and accompanying Guide to Adoption and Implementation, created strategic collaborations with other leaders in corporate sustainability, championed the effort to increase coverage of sustainability in ISM’s educational offerings and grown and diversified the Committee. Mr. Kuhn also serves on the Strategic Advisory Committee of the Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council, a Washington, DC-based collaborative nonprofit of 150+ organizations representing over US$1 trillion in annual spending created to develop principles, strategies and guidance in sustainable purchasing.  

Mr. Kuhn is a frequent speaker and published writer about sustainable business practices. Articles featuring or authored by Robert have appeared in numerous trade journals as well as SmartCEO and other magazines.

Prior to founding his consultancy, Robert served a decade as COO and then CEO of a privately-held manufacturing firm creating B2B and B2C products in the electronics and electrical markets. Prior to his business leadership roles, Robert was an associate in the corporate finance department of New York-based Breed, Abbott and Morgan.

Robert was raised in suburban Detroit, Michigan, and graduated from The Hotchkiss School (Lakeville, CT). Robert earned his B.A. degree cum laude from Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT) and obtained his J.D. from Georgetown University (Washington, DC). At Georgetown, Robert was Managing Editor of the law review, Law and Policy in International Business.

Liz Lerman is a choreographer, performer, writer, educator, and speaker. Described by the Washington Post as "the source of an epochal revolution in the scope and purposes of dance art," her dance/theater works have been seen throughout the United States and abroad. Her aesthetic approach spans the range from abstract to personal to political, while her working process emphasizes research, translation between artistic media, and intensive collaboration with dancers and com­munities. She founded Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in 1976 and has cul­tivated the company's uniquxe multi-generational ensemble, with dancers ranging in ages spanning six decades, into a leading force in contempo­rary dance. Liz has been the recipient of numerous honors, including the American Choreographer Award, the American Jewish Congress "Golda" Award, an honorary doctorate from Williams College, and Washingtonian magazine's 1988 Washingtonian of the Year. In 2002 her work was recog­nized with a MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship, and she was recently honored at the Jewish Cultural Achievement Awards and inducted into the University of Maryland's Alumni Hall of Fame. Liz's work has been com­missioned by Lincoln Center, American Dance Festival, BalletMet, and the Kennedy Center, among many others. From 1994 to 1996, in collaboration with the Music Hall of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Liz directed the Ship­yard Project, which has been widely noted as an example of the power of art to enhance such values as social capital and civic dialogue. From 1999 to 2002 she led Hallelujah, which engaged people in 15 cities throughout the United States in the creation of a series of dances "in praise of" topics vital to their communities. In addition to Ferocious Beauty: Genome, her recent projects include Man/Chair Dances and Small Dances About Big Ideas, the latter commissioned by the Harvard Law School to help observe the human rights legacy of the post-WWII Nuremberg Trials. As a frequent keynote speaker and panelist, Liz addresses arts, community, and busi­ness organizations both nationally and internationally. She consults regu­larly with the Mellon Orchestra Forum and Synagogue 3000, and partici­pated in Harvard University's Saguaro Seminar, which gathered thinkers to promote the growth of civic connectedness in the United States. She is the author of Teaching Dance to Senior Adults (1983) and the co-author of Liz Lerman's Critical Response Process (2003), and has written articles and essays for such publications as Reconstructionism Today, Faith and Form, Movement Research, the Washington Post Book World, and the Rocke­feller Foundation's Community, Culture, and Globalization. Current artistic projects and professional consultations encompass such diverse topics as nuclear physics, prayer, sustainability, art/science collaboration, and the nature of beginnings. Born in Los Angeles and raised in Milwaukee, Liz at­tended Bennington College and Brandeis University, received her B.A. in dance from the University of Maryland, and an M.A. in dance from George Washington University. She is married to storyteller Jon Spelman.