World Hope Forum Earth Day
photo @ocefoundation
Curated by Tiffany Schauer, Annie Beaman & Ivy Yin of Our Children’s Earth Foundation, WHF Ambassadors for the Environment
PROGRAM
Welcome with Tiffany Schauer & Annie Beaman WHF Ambassadors, OCE Foundation Donate
Dr. Sylvia Earle, President & Chairman, Mission Blue Donate
Andrea Marshall, Co-Founder / Principal Scientist, Marine Megafauna Foundation Donate
Damien Mander, Founder & CEO, IAPF Environmentalist Donate
David Brooks, Conservationist & Builder, Art Science Conservation with a special viewing of the Art of the Expedition
Dr. Nathan Lujan, Associate Curator of Fishes at the Royal Ontario Museum Donate
Melissa Lesh Director, Producer, Editor & Trevor Frost, Photographer & Filmmaker, Wild Cat Donate
Grant Wilson, Executive Director, Earth Law Center, Rights of Nature Movement Donate
Jill Tidman, Redford Center, Hope for the Future of the Environment Donate
SPEAKERS
Tiffany Schauer
Founder & President OCE
Tiffany founded Our Children’s Earth Foundation (OCE) in 1998 after many years in various environmental justice and litigation positions specializing in enforcement and compliance. In addition to her private sector attorney experience with Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison, which represented the industry in environmental litigation, she was appointed to the Hearing Board of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD). Prior to her work in the Bay Area, Tiffany worked at the Federal Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, DC in a variety of key legal roles. Tiffany is admitted to practice law as a member of the State Bars of California, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia.
Tiffany served in various environmental regulatory roles prior to founding OCE in 1998. Her varied positions, include serving as an enforcement attorney at the Environmental Protection Agency, working as a Senior Attorney at a major environmental law firm, and adjudicating Clean Air Act permit disputes at the Bay Area Air Quality Management District Hearing Board. During the course of her career, she discovered that the attacks on environmental regulatory standards and enforcement program funding decisions are not occurring in statehouses and legislative sessions, where the glare of public attention would be too great. Instead, the attacks most often occur in bureaucratic backrooms, out of the public eye, in obscure government departments where polluting industries can influence the decision-making process without risking the wrath of public opposition. The form of the threat is as basic as it is destructive — our environmental laws simply are not being enforced adequately to ensure public safety and basic environmental protections. Since 1998, Tiffany has led OCE to enforce some of the largest environmental law violation actions in the United States.
Over the past 20 plus years, Tiffany has expanded OCE’s efforts beyond regulatory citizen enforcement to include communicating the issues of government corruption, abuse of power, and needed transparency by addressing these issues in documentary film. Tiffany spearheaded the initiative to bring OCE’s message to the storytelling genre of film through collaborating on dozens of breakthrough documentaries including, Total Denial, Garbage Dreams, Island President, The C Word, Death by Design, How to Change the World, Sempre Fi, Last Animals, The Devil We Know, Youth v. Gov, and Deep Rising.
Annie Beaman
Annie is the Director of Advocacy and Outreach for Our Children’s Earth Foundation. She focuses on helping grassroots groups to implement strategic advocacy campaigns around environmental justice and policy change. Annie is also a gardener and a member of a multigenerational farming family that emphasizes regenerative land stewardship. Annie is an organizer, communicator, and advocate who is dedicated to preserving and protecting our interconnected ecosystems. During the past several years, Annie has redoubled her efforts in support of local initiatives aimed at community health and resiliency during this time of unprecedented climate chaos.
Ivy Yin
Swell Connections, Activist & Explorer
Ivy Yin of Swell Connections is an activist and explorer. His expedition experience includes being a photographer on an Explorers' Club Marine Expedition in Marie Galante, assisting humanitarian projects in Zambia, and filming all types of wildlife – from the Critically Endangered Pink River Dolphins in the Amazon, the most pristine reefs on the planet in the Coral Triangle, to nearly-extinct mountain gorillas in the war zones of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Most recently, Ivy led an Explorers’ Club Expedition in Argentina with four scientists performing an ecological survey in an attempt to preserve 72,000 acres of wildlife and forestry, documented small cat conservation endeavors of Global Wildlife Conservation Scientist Dr. Jim Sanderson in Mongolia and Russia, and chronicled the conservation achievements of Marine Megafauna Foundation Scientist Dr. Andrea Marshall in Mozambique and Indonesia. Ivy completed his Master’s Degree in Global Sustainability at the University of South Florida. As a passionate surfer, dive master, yoga instructor, nature photographer, videographer, and conservationist, Ivy is dedicated to learning and educating others about our planet’s natural and spiritual wonders.
Dr. Sylvia Earle
President & Chairman of Mission Blue and National Geographic Society Explorer in Residence
Called“Her Deepness” by the New Yorker and the New York Times, “Living Legend” by the Library of Congress, and“FirstHero for the Planet” by Time Magazine. Dr.Sylvia Earle is an oceanographer, explorer, author, and lecturer with a lifetime of experience as a field research scientist, government official, and director for corporate and non-profit organizations. She is also the founder of Deep Ocean Exploration and Research Inc. (DOER), Chair of the Advisory Council for the Harte Research Institute, and former Chief Scientist of NOAA. Author of more than 225 publications and leader of more than 100 expeditions with over 7,500 hours underwater, Dr. Earle is a graduate of Florida State University withM.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Duke University and 32honorarydegrees. Her research concerns the ecology and conservation of marine ecosystems and the development of technology for access to the deep sea. She is the subject of the Emmy® Award Winning Netflix documentary, Mission Blue, and the recipient of more than 100 national and international honors and awards including being named Time Magazine’s first Hero for the Planet, a Living Legend by the Library of Congress, 2014 UNEP Champion of the Earth, Glamour Magazine’s 2014Woman of the Year, member of the Netherlands Order of the Golden Ark, and winner of the 2009 TED Prize, the Walter Cronkite Award, the 1996 Explorers Club Medal, theRoyal Geographic Society 2011 Patron’s Medal, and the National Geographic 2013Hubbard Medal.
missionblue.org/ocean-stories/ Donate: mission-blue.networkforgood.com/donation-drive
Dr. Andrea Denise Marshall
Co-Founder / Principal Scientist Marine Megafauna Foundation
After stumbling on the largest population of manta rays in Africa, Andrea became the first person to complete a PhD on the ecology of manta rays in the wild. After completing her thesis in 2008, Andrea stayed on in Mozambique to spearhead conservation efforts on manta rays along the eastern coast of Africa. Along the way, she co-founded the Marine Megafauna Foundation, an organization dedicated to saving ocean giants from extinction. She has since dedicated her life to safeguarding vulnerable populations of manta rays, campaigning globally for their protection and helping countries develop science-based management plans to protect their local manta ray populations. Overseeing the global manta ray research program for the Marine Megafauna Foundation, Andrea and her team focus their work predominately on questions related to the effective management and conservation of these threatened rays, examining aspects of their biology, reproductive ecology, habitat use, migrations, and social behavior. Aside from dramatically increasing the level of knowledge on manta rays themselves, Andrea’s discovery of a new giant species of manta rays in 2009 was one of the largest new marine species to have been described by any scientist in the last 50 years. A passionate field researcher, Andrea has always been interested in using technology to push the limits of our knowledge. Over the years she has used everything from technical diving technology to specialized scientific equipment to explore the environments used by MMF’s flagship species. On an expedition, this technology allows her and her team to go deeper, spend long periods of time underwater, work in otherwise hazardous conditions, and survey remote locations in an effort to gain a better understanding of their daily habits, habitat use, and examine the anthropogenic threats they face. Even as a mother to a young daughter, Andrea continues to travel the globe, her family in tow, spending months on the road each year as she travels from one field site to another. She maintains that living in the field year-round keeps her close to her research subjects and in touch with their conservation needs as well as the needs of the local communities that invariably are charged with protecting them. bio via national geographic
www.marinemegafauna.org Donate: marinemegafauna.org/make-a-donation
Damien Mander
Founder & CEO, IAPF Environmentalist
Damien Mander is a 43-year-old Australian-born and Zimbabwean-based environmentalist. In 2009 while traveling through Africa post-military service, he was inspired by the dedication of rangers and the plight of wildlife. Liquidating his life savings, the International Anti-Poaching Foundation (IAPF) was established to protect nature. Today, IAPF delivers ecological stability and long-term protection of large-scale wilderness landscapes by supporting and empowering women and local communities. The IAPF has scaled to work in more than a dozen countries with a collective annual income of USD 9 million. The organization has trained or supported rangers who now help protect over 20 million acres of the African wilderness. In 2017 Damien and IAPF founded ‘Akashinga - Nature Protected by Women’. Having grown to 580+ staff and contractors with a portfolio totaling 9.1 million acres across four countries, the goal is to protect 30 million acres of wilderness in Africa by 2030. Damien is also the co-founder of LEAD Ranger, an innovative, ISO 9001-certified, internationally recognized leadership training program for rangers operating in 8 African countries. In 2021, Damien co-founded the Conservation Landscape Alliance (CLA). A collective of organizations working together to achieve landscape-scale conservation in the community-owned wilderness areas of Africa. The Alliance is scaling towards a portfolio of 60 million acres under protection by the end of the decade. He is the winner of the 2019 Winsome Constance Kindness Gold Medal for services to animals and humans. Past recipients include Sir David Attenborough and Dr. Jane Goodall. He was featured in the James Cameron documentaries ‘The Game Changers’ and National Geographic’s ‘Akashinga - The Brave Ones’, about his work with the women of Akashinga. His TEDx talk at the Sydney Oprah House on speciesism has been translated into 27 languages. He is a resident of the National Geographic Live Speakers Bureau, has lectured at the UN, and Harvard University, featured in June 2019’s National Geographic Magazine, three times on 60 Minutes, and recognized by the Dutch Government as a Gender Champion.
David Brooks
Artist & Builder
David Brooks is an artist whose work considers the relationship between the individual and the built and natural environment. His work investigates how cultural concerns cannot be divorced from the natural world, while also questioning the terms under which nature is perceived and utilized. Brooks has had solo exhibitions and major projects at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum; Storm King Art Center; MoMA/PS1; deCordova Museum; the Dallas Contemporary; Tang Museum; deCordova Museum, MA; Nouveau Musée National de Monaco; Galerie für Landschaftskunst, Hamburg; Nevada Museum of Art; Ballroom Marfa; the Sculpture Center, NYC; The Visual Arts Center, Austin; Cass Sculpture Foundation, UK; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha; ASU Art Museum, AZ; and the American Academy in Rome, among others. From 2011 to 2012 Brooks had Desert Rooftops on view in Times Square, a 5000-sq. ft. earthwork commissioned by Art Production Fund; from 2017 to 2018 a large-scale geologic installation on Governors Island as the inaugural commission by the Trust for Governors Island; as well as a growing earthwork, Budding Bird Blind, as the inaugural commission by Planting Fields Foundation, Oyster Bay, NY in 2020. He is the recipient of the Rome Prize, a research grant to the Ecuadorian Amazon from the Coypu Foundation, and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. Brooks lives and works in New York, and is a professor at NYU Gallatin.
Dr. Nathan Lujan
Nathan Lujan combines advanced methods for anatomical visualization and DNA sequencing with remote fieldwork throughout Amazonia to better understand the scope, evolutionary origins and ecological maintenance of Neotropical freshwater biodiversity. He is the Associate Curator of Fishes at the Royal Ontario Museum, where he oversees a century-old collection of over 1.5 million fish specimens, and an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, where he lectures on fish diversity and supervises graduate students.
Jill Tidman
Executive Director of The Redford Center
Since 2012, Jill has led the organization’s vision, strategy, and operations, including the production of three feature films and impact campaigns in partnership with Redford Center co-founder, James Redford. Jill draws on her experience as a writer, filmmaker, and activist, as well as her passion for sustainability and environmental justice, to create a new way forward for impactful storytelling by frontline communities. Prior to The Redford Center, Jill consulted and led projects for Business for Social Responsibility, the Social Venture Network, the Natural Step, and the Ecological Design Network, and she serves on the board of the KindHumans Foundations. Jill was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2011 for her short fiction. She lives in San Francisco with her husband Wil and her two children.
Melissa Lesh
Director, Producer, Editor
Melissa Lesh founded Emerging Earth Films in 2014 as a way to bridge the arts and sciences, focusing on wildlife and conservation stories. As a director, editor, and cinematographer, her work has been screened at festivals around the world as well as on platforms such as National Geographic, PBS, Discovery, and Amazon Prime. Her 2017 film, Person of the Forest, was a partnership with National Geographic depicting newly discovered cultural behaviors in wild orangutans in Borneo. More recently, Lesh contributed cinematography to the Emmy-winning film The Story of Plastic which aired on Discovery for Earth Day in 2020. Her feature-length directorial debut and the most recent film, Wildcat, premiered at The Telluride Film Festival in the fall of 2022 and was acquired by Amazon Studios. The film is currently streaming globally on Prime Video. Lesh is a Sundance Documentary Film Program grantee and Artist-in-Residence at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York. Born in Mumbai, India, she now calls Richmond, Virginia home.
Trevor Frost
Photographer & Filmmaker
Trevor Frost is a photographer and filmmaker whose work focuses on the human relationship with wildlife and wild places. Trevor has always had an adventurous spirit—he has crisscrossed Alaska and northern British Columbia in bush planes followed the Serengeti migration, researched indigenous navigation in Polynesian culture in Micronesia, swum with humpback whales in Tonga, and embarked on numerous projects around the globe. He has received grants from National Geographic for work ranging from mapping and photographing caves in Central Africa to documenting saltwater crocodiles in Northern Australia using specially designed remote cameras. Frost is particularly interested in telling stories that illuminate the intelligence of animals, and he shot his first feature story as a photographer for National Geographic magazine on gelada monkeys in the highlands of Ethiopia. Trevor has won various awards, including Pictures of the Year International, and has images featured in National Geographic, The Washington Post, and Wired, among other publications. His film credits include half a dozen television documentaries, as well as Person of the Forest, a documentary short about the unique cultural behaviors of wild orangutans in the rainforests of Borneo. Trevor also works with non-profit organizations that support global conservation projects, including Focused on Nature and Global Wildlife Conservation. bio via national geographic
Grant Wilson
Executive Director, Earth Law Center
Grant Wilson is the Executive Director of Earth Law Center. He is a leading expert on the Rights of Nature, ecocentric law, and international environmental law. For the last decade, he has defended the rights and interests of Nature all over the world, including by writing new Rights of Nature laws throughout the Americas and winning courtroom victories for rivers and other ecosystems. He is a lead editor of the first law school coursebook on Earth law, entitled 'Earth Law: Emerging Ecocentric Law--A Guide for Practitioners (Wolters Kluwer, 2021). Grant earned a J.D. with a Certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources Law from Lewis & Clark Law School.
www.earthlawcenter.org Donate: www.earthlawcenter.org/donate
@earthlawcenter
Li Edelkoort
Co-Founder World Hope Forum
One of the world’s most renowned trend forecasters and colorists, Li is an intuitive thinker who constantly tracks how socio-cultural trends evolve. She is also a publisher, humanitarian, educator and exhibition curator. From 2015 to 2020 she was the Dean of Hybrid Studies at Parsons and she also founded New York Textile Month each September. She wrote the Anti_Fashion Manifesto in 2014 and is the co-author of A Labour of Love (Lecturis, 2020), presenting the work of a very new generation of conscious designers and makers. Her most recent endeavor is the World Hope Forum, dedicated to spreading hope across the globe through design in a post-pandemic landscape.
Philip Fimmano
Co-Founder World Hope Forum
A trend analyst, design curator and writer, contributing to Trend Union’s forecasting books, magazines and strategic studies for international companies in fashion, interiors and lifestyle. Fimmano along with his partner Lidewij Edelkoort, has co-created exhibitions for museums and institutions around the world, including Tokyo's 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT, Design Museum Holon and the Gaîté Lyrique in Paris. In 2011, he co-founded Talking Textiles; an ongoing initiative to promote awareness and innovation in textiles through touring exhibitions, a trend publication, a design prize and free educational programmes – including New York Textile Month, a citywide festival celebrating textile creativity each September. Fimmano teaches a forecasting masters at Polimoda in Florence and is on the board of directors for the International Folk Art Market in Santa Fe.