About the Speakers
Erin Barnes
Co-Founder and CEO
ioby
ERIN BARNES is the executive director of ioby, which mobilizes neighbors who have good ideas to become powerful citizen leaders who plan, fund, and make positive change in their neighborhoods. In 2012, the Rockefeller Foundation awarded Barnes and her ioby co-founders the Jane Jacobs Medal for New Technology and Innovation. Barnes is a contributor to Al Gore’s book, Our Choice.
Austin Blackmon
Vice President of Environmental Activism
Chief of Environment, Energy, and Open Space
City of Boston
AUSTIN BLACKMON is chief of environment, energy, and open space for the city of Boston, where he leads the environment, parks and recreation, and inspectional services departments. Previously, he worked with Terraverde Renewable Partners, Booz Allen Hamilton, Wells Fargo Securities, C12 Energy, and the US Renewables Group.
Jean Case
CEO, The Case Foundation
JEAN CASE is a philanthropist, investor, and pioneer in the world of interactive technologies. After nearly two decades as a technology executive, Case created the Case Foundation with her husband Steve in 1997. She is chairman of the National Geographic Society Board of Trustees and on the advisory boards of the Harvard Business School Social Enterprise Initiative, the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, and the US National Advisory Board to the Social Impact Investing Task Force established by the G8.
John L. Gray
Director
National Museum of American History
JOHN L. GRAY is the Elizabeth MacMillan Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Under his leadership, the museum is boldly reimagining its three-floor West Wing around exhibitions and programs on the themes of Innovation, Democracy and the Peopling of America, and American Culture. He is the founding president of the Autry National Center of the American West in Los Angeles.
Brian Clark Howard
Senior Writer Covering the Environment
National Geographic
BRIAN CLARK HOWARD is senior writer, covering the environment, at National Geographic. An award-winning multimedia journalist, Howard has written and reported extensively on environmental and conservation issues. He previously served as an editor for TheDailyGreen.com and E/The Environmental Magazine, and has written for Popular Science, TheAtlantic.com, FastCompany.com, PopularMechanics.com, Yahoo!, MSN, and elsewhere. He is the co-author of six books, including Geothermal HVAC, Green Lighting, and Build Your Own Small Wind Power System.
Katherine Lorenz
President, Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation
KATHERINE LORENZ is president of the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation, a grantmaking foundation focusing on environmental sustainability. Previously, she served as deputy director for the Institute for Philanthropy and co-founded Puente a la Salud Comunitaria, a nonprofit organization working to advance food sovereignty in rural Oaxaca. Named by Forbes as one its philanthropy “Ones to Watch,” Lorenz serves on the boards of the Environmental Defense Fund, The Philanthropy Workshop (chair), the Endowment for Regional Sustainability Science, and the National Center for Family Philanthropy.
Gifford Pinchot III
CEO, Pinchot & Company
GIFFORD PINCHOT III is CEO of Pinchot & Company. He has been an organic dairy farmer, civil rights organizer, blacksmith, innovation consultant, software CEO, and angel investor. His three books include the bestselling title, Intrapreneuring, which shows how to drive innovation within organizations by liberating employees’ entrepreneurial spirit. In 2002, Pinchot co-founded Bainbridge Graduate Institute, the first school to offer an MBA in Sustainable Business. He is a fourth-generation philanthropist named after his grandfather, founding head of the U.S. Forest Service and Yale Forestry School.
Nancy Pinchot
Pinchot Family Historian
NANCY PINCHOT is the granddaughter of Amos Pinchot, Gifford Pinchot’s younger brother. As a writer and editor, she has worked on Island Press’ Conservation Classics, a reissued series of important American conservation books; From the Land, an anthology of writings from the conservation journal, The Land; and numerous other articles on the Pinchot family. She is currently writing a book on the Pinchot family.
Philip Rigdon
Yakama Nation Superintendent of the Department of Natural Resources
PHILIP RIGDON is the Yakama Nation Superintendent of the Department of Natural Resources, overseeing programs protecting and enhancing fisheries, wildlife, water resources, and cultural resources. He represents the Yakama Nation on the Yakima River Basin Water Enhancement Project Workgroup and Conservation Advisory Group, Columbia River Policy Advisory Group, and the Hanford Natural Resource Trustee Council. Rigdon is president of the Intertribal Timber Council and represents the Yakama Nation on the Tapash Sustainable Forest Collaborative.
David M. Rubenstein
Smithsonian Regent
Cofounder and Co-CEO, The Carlyle Group
DAVID M. RUBENSTEIN is a co-founder and co-CEO of The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest private equity firms. Mr. Rubenstein is chairman of the boards of trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and Duke University, chair-elect of the Smithsonian Institution’s board of regents, co-chairman of the Brookings Institution, vice-chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, a trustee of the National Gallery of Art, and president of the Economic Club of Washington.
Michael Scott
Acting Program Director of Environment, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
MICHAEL SCOTT is acting program director of environment at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. His grant-making team focuses on climate change in the US, China, India, Europe, and Latin America; conserving the North American West; and solving environmental problems facing disadvantaged communities in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Sonal Shah
Executive Director, Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation at Georgetown Universitry
SONAL SHAH is executive director at the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation at Georgetown University. As an economist and entrepreneur, Shah focuses on social innovation including impact investing, data and technology for social good, and civic engagement through government, business, philanthropy, and civil society. She has served as deputy assistant to the President and founding director of the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation.
Lisa Pike Sheehy
Vice President of Environmental Activism, Patagonia, Inc.
LISA PIKE SHEEHY is vice president of environmental activism at Patagonia, Inc. She oversees the company’s international environmental grants program which gave away $6.2 million to grassroots organizations in 2015. Sheehy leads Patagonia’s multiyear campaigns to publicize environmental problems and mobilize employees and customers. She is on the boards of the Outdoor Industry Association’s Conservation Alliance, 1% for the Planet, and the Johnson Ohana Charitable Foundation. She recently received the Outdoor Industry’s Women’s Coalition Pioneering Woman award.
David J. Skorton
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution
DAVID J. SKORTON is the 13th Secretary of the Smithsonian. He assumed his position on July 1, 2015. Secretary Skorton oversees 19 museums and galleries, 20 libraries, the National Zoo and numerous research centers. Secretary Skorton, a board-certified cardiologist, previously was the president of Cornell University, a position he held from July 2006.
Ted Steinberg
Adeline Barry Devee Distinguished Professor of History and Professor of Law
Case Western University
TED STEINBERG is Adeline Barry Davee Distinguished Professor of History and Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University. Steinberg has held fellowships from the Michigan Society of Fellows, Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, and Yale University. He has written six books in the field of environmental history, including Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America (2000), Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History (2002), and Gotham Unbound: The Ecological History of Greater New York (2014).
Mark Tercek
President and CEO, The Nature Conservancy
MARK TERCEK is president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy, the world’s largest conservation organization. He is the co-author of the best-seller Nature’s Fortune: How Business and Society Thrive by Investing in Nature. Before joining The Nature Conservancy in 2008, Tercek was a partner and managing director of Goldman Sachs where he worked for 24 years.
Darryl Young
Director, Sustainable Cities Program, The Summit Foundation
DARRYL YOUNG is the director of the Summit Foundation’s Sustainable Cities program and serves on the boards of the Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities, TransitCenter Foundation, and Main Street America. Previously, he worked in California as director of its Department of Conservation; member of its Board of Forestry; and as chief consultant to the Senate Natural Resources and Wildlife Committee in the state legislature.
