Elizabeth Royte

Elizabeth Royte

Author of the acclaimed Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash, Royte addresses the staggering impact of waste and consumption on the environment and the economy. In Bottlemania, she looks beyond the ecological ramifications of the bottled water phenomenon, to the tenuous state of our public water supplies.

 
Valerie Boyd

Valerie Boyd

Award-winning author of the acclaimed biography Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston, and the forthcoming Spirits in the Dark: The Untold Story of Black Women in Hollywood — a groundbreaking study tracing the history of black women in film and TV from the 1920s to the present.

 
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Saleem H. Ali

Author of Treasures of the Earth: Need, Greed and a Sustainable Future, Saleem H. Ali is professor of environmental planning and conflict resolution at the University of Vermont. Named one of eight “Revolutionary Minds in the World” by Seed magazine, Dr. Ali is a leading advocate for cross-cultural environmental pragmatism.

 
Emily Liebert

Emily Liebert

Award-winning writer, editor and author of Facebook Fairytales: Modern-Day Miracles to Inspire the Human Spirit, Liebert examines the positive power and untapped potential of the social networking revolution, beginning with 25 true stories of hope and triumph reaching across cultures — all resulting from Facebook connections.

 
Logan Smalley

Logan Smalley

Director of the multi-award-winning documentary “Darius Goes West,” which chronicles the epic cross-country road trip he and 10 others took with Darius Weems, a friend stricken with fatal Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, Smalley is a change agent for a new generation. He and Darius prove that idealism and creativity can result in tangible progress.

 

Robert Levine

The Internet was going to move us into the “information economy” – but information is worth less than ever. In Free Ride: How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back, acclaimed journalist and former Exec. Editor of Billboard, Levine, lays out how the media business can save itself (in spite of itself).

 

Ben Hewitt

Author of the critically acclaimed The Town That Food Saved and the forthcoming Making Supper Safe, Ben Hewitt, a diversified, small-scale farmer, shows how regionalized agriculture and food production holds the potential to reinvigorate our bodies, communities, and economies.

 
Andrew Leonard

Andrew Leonard

A Senior writer at Salon.com, Leonard writes the hybrid blog/column “How the World Works” – a venue for exploring the interconnections between globalization, energy policy, economics, the environment, technology and politics; and, particularly the extent to which these inextricably linked subjects are driven by, and affect, China, India and the U.S.

 

Tom Clynes

Acclaimed journalist, photographer and author of Wild Planet, Tom Clynes, longtime Contributing Editor at National Geographic Adventure brings audiences along on assignment to the ends of the Earth, telling the stories of individuals who managed to shape once-ordinary lives into extraordinary, world-changing adventures, and how each of us can do the same.

 

Tom Philpott

Food & Agriculture blogger at Mother Jones, and co-founder of Maverick Farms, a center for sustainable-food education, Philpott was named one of Food & Wine’s “ten innovators” who will “continue to shape [America’s] culinary consciousness.” Until recently, he was Food editor at Grist.org, where his biweekly “Victual Reality” column was a must-read on food politics.

 
Michael Cohen

Michael A. Cohen

Author of Live From the Campaign Trail: The Greatest Presidential Campaign Speeches of the 20th Century and How They Shaped Modern America, Cohen, a Fellow at the Century Foundation, writes and lectures on wide-ranging political and national security issues, including the war in Afghanistan, the ongoing militarization of American foreign policy.

 
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David Zweig

A writer, scholar, musician, and documentarian, Zweig’s work delves into the connections between our culture and our experiential reality. His acclaimed novel, Swimming Inside the Sun, spawned the groundbreaking theory “Fiction Depersonalization Syndrome,” which addresses our increasing isolation, despite our being more technologically-connected than ever.

 

Liza Donnelly

Author and staff cartoonist for The New Yorker, Liza Donnelly’s personal journey to success in a field dominated by men fuels her passion to expose cultural stereotypes, working with international cartoonists as editor of World Ink, a site dedicated to political cartoons from around the world.

 
Joe Drape

Joe Drape

Award-winning New York Times journalist and author of the bestseller Our Boys: A Perfect Season on the Plains with the Smith Center Redmen, Drape paints an inspiring portrait of a small town in Kansas that actually believes it takes a village to raise a child, and how its long-undefeated football team (79 games in a row) has embodied this ideal.

 
William C. Rhoden

William C. Rhoden

Award-winning New York Times columnist, bestselling author of Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of the Black Athlete, and frequent guest on ESPN’s “The Sports Reporters,” Rhoden uses the metaphors of sports to address crucial issues and conflicts in contemporary American society.

 
Joan Garry

Joan Garry

Former Executive Director of GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), Garry is widely recognized as one of the most vocal, passionate and effective civil rights leaders in America. She is a featured blogger at The Huffington Post, and frequently contributes commentary to major news publications and TV networks.

 
Jeffrey Stibel

Jeffrey M. Stibel

In his book Wired for Thought: How the Brain Is Shaping the Future of the Internet, Stibel, a brain scientist, entrepreneur and Chairman and CEO of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp, demonstrates how the Internet has effectively replicated the human brain, and how the future of business lies in leveraging the understanding of these similarly complex networks.

 
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Gustavo Arellano

Author of the bestselling book and nationally syndicated column ¡Ask a Mexican!, and Orange County: A Personal History, Arellano, also a contributing editor to the LA Times, addresses immigration, integration and the role of stereotypes in American society, and helps organizations to better connect with Latinos.

 
Kayla Williams

Kayla Williams

Author of the memoir Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army, Williams, a former sergeant and Arabic linguist in a military intelligence unit of the 101st Airborne in Iraq, addresses the shifting role of women in society, the changing demands on today’s military, and the treatment/reintegration of veterans.

 
Robert Glennon

Robert Glennon

Author of Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What To Do About It, Glennon, the Morris K. Udall Professor of Law and Public Policy at the University of Arizona, addresses America’s onrushing water shortage, and provides a provocative solution in the form of a market-based system that values water as both a commodity and a fundamental human right.

 

Separate, But Equal

Based upon the acclaimed book he co-authored, Separate, But Equal: The Mississippi Photographs of Henry Clay Anderson, filmmaker Shawn D. Wilson’s documentary explores the all black, separate-but-equal town of Greenville, MS in the 1950s-60s, and asks a most provocative question about desegregation: “Did we lose more than we gained?”

 

John Bowe

Award-winning New Yorker journalist and author of Pulitzer Prize nominee Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy, Bowe examines how outsourcing, subcontracting, immigration fraud, and the relentless pursuit of “everyday low prices” have created a frightening new market for slavery in America.

 

James G. Workman

Award-winning journalist and author of Heart of Dryness, James G. Workman has devoted his life to helping solve the overriding paradox of our time: Water conservation is, ironically, unsustainable. But, why? A former advisor shaping national and global policy under Bruce Babbitt and Nelson Mandela, Workman addresses this riddle in a compelling multimedia program.

 

Susan Freinkel

Award-winning author of Plastic: A Toxic Love Story, in which she explores one of the most transformative inventions of the 20th century, Freinkel writes about the intersection of science, culture, and the environment, and the issues that arise from humans’ seemingly ceaseless effort to control the natural world.

 

Edward Miguel

Co-Author of Economic Gangsters: Corruption, Violence and the Poverty of Nations, and author of Africa’s Turn?, Miguel is the Director of the Center of Evaluations for Global Action at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is an associate professor in economics, with a research focus on African economic development.

 

Brandon Friedman

Author of the acclaimed memoir, The War I Always Wanted, Friedman is currently Director of New Media at the Department of Veterans Affairs. He served from ’07-’09 as Vice Chairman of VoteVets.org and as editor of the blog VetVoice, and has worked extensively across all media platforms to communicate progressive defense and foreign policy strategies

 

Raymond Fisman

Co-Author of Economic Gangsters: Corruption, Violence and the Poverty of Nations, Fisman is the Lambert Family Professor of Social Enterprise and Director of the Social Enterprise Program at the Columbia Business School. He also writes a monthly column for Slate on economics and popular culture.

 

James R. Chiles

Author of the acclaimed book Inviting Disaster: Lessons from the Edge of Technology, Chiles, a renowned technology and history writer, helps organizations assess risk and avoid catastrophe by examining the repeating patterns of historical and contemporary disasters, and applying the lessons learned to each organization’s daily processes.

 
William Lobdell

William Lobdell

Award-winning former LA Times journalist, and author of the memoir Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America, Lobdell shares his spiritual journey investigating and reconciling the many oft-conflicting facets of faith in America, which took him from evangelical Christian to reluctant atheist.