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Lina Dolores Pohl Alfaro

Representative of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Mexico, Food and Agriculture Organization

Lina Dolores Pohl was appointed as Minister of the Environment and the Natural Resource of El Salvador (MARN) in 2014. She holds her position in the administration of the President of the Republic of El Salvador, Salvador Sánchez Cerén. Prior to joining the administration, la Lcda. Lina Dolores Pohl was the Vice-Minister of the Environment and the Natural Resources. During her time as Vice-Minister, Lina Dolores Pohl established la Presidencia del Fondo de la Iniciative par las Américas (FIAES) and la Presidencia de la Red de Comités Nacionalies MaB y Reservas de la Biosfera de Iberoamérica y El Caribe (IBEROMAB). Pohl was a member of the Consejo de Administración del Fondo de Inversión Social para el Desarrollo Local (FISDL) and an active member of the Junta Directiva del Fondo Ambiental de El Salvador (FONAES), the Junta Directiva de la Corporación Salvadoreña de Turismo (CORSATUR) and of the Comisión Política Intersectorial de CISALUD. She held the positon of Local Director for Central America of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, where she led the implementation of the Strategy of the Foundation as well as the coordination with the Mexican regional office. Pohl was also an active participant in the Movimiento por la Paz, el Desarme y la Libertad (MPDL) promoting various projects for supporting communities affected by the 1999 Mitch hurricanes. Between 1996 and 1999, she was in charge of the design and implementation of el Sistema de Información Gerencial in el Ministerio de Salud and of the Sistema de Información Geográfico. Minister Pohl Alfara holds a degree in Sociology from the Universidad Centroameicana José Simeón Cañas (UCA), a Master of Social Sciences from the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, FLACSO, Sede México, México D.F., and a Master of Economics from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.
You can find out more about her work here.

Bill McKibben

Author, Educator, Activist, and Founder, Third Act

Bill McKibben is a contributing writer to The New Yorker, and a founder of Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 to work on climate and racial justice. He founded the first global grassroots climate campaign, 350.org, and serves as the Schumann Distinguished Professor in Residence at Middlebury College in Vermont. In 2014 he was awarded the Right Livelihood Prize, sometimes called the ‘alternative Nobel,’ in the Swedish Parliament. He's also won the Gandhi Peace Award, and honorary degrees from 19 colleges and universities. He has written over a dozen books about the environment, including his first, The End of Nature, published in 1989, and his latest book is The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at his Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened.  

Xiuhtezcatl Martinez

Youth Director, Earth Guardians

Earth Guardians’ Youth Director Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, (his first name pronounced ‘Shoe-Tez-Caht’) is a 19-year-old indigenous climate activist, hip-hop artist, and powerful voice on the front lines of the global youth-led environmental movement. At the early age of 6, Xiuhtezcatl began speaking around the world, from the UN Summit in Rio de Janeiro, to addressing the General Assembly at the UN in New York. He has worked locally to get pesticides out of parks & coal ash contained, as well as initiating moratoriums on fracking in his home state of Colorado. He is currently a plaintiff in a youth-led lawsuit against the federal government for the government's inaction around the climate crisis and its failure to protect their essential public trust resources. Xiuhtezcatl has traveled around the world educating his generation about the climate and environmental crisis, and has launched Earth Guardians youth crews in 60+ countries. His work has been featured on PBS, Showtime, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Upworthy, The Guardian, Vogue, Bill Maher, The Daily Show, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, CNN, MSNBC, HBO, VICE, and more. Xiuhtezcatl‘s book “We Rise” was published by Rodale in 2017, and he has just finished writing “Imaginary Boarders” to be published and released by Penguin in the spring of 2020. Xiuhtezcatl is stirring his generation with his music and released his first EP, “Broken” and album, “Break Free” in 2018. In 2013, Xiuhtezcatl received the United States Community Service Award from President Obama, and was the youngest of 24 national change-makers chosen to serve on the President's youth council. He is the 2015 recipient of the Peace First Prize, the 2015 Nickelodeon Halo Award, 2016 Captain Planet Award, Sweden’s 2016 Children's Climate Prize , 2017 Univision Premio’s Ajente de Cambio Award, 2018 My Climate Hero, 2018 Shorty Award, Huffington Post Top 10 Movers and Shakers, Grist Top 50 Fixers, TIME Next Generation Leaders, MTV Emma Award and the 2019 Senckenberg Award.

Autumn Peltier

Chief Water Commissioner, The Anishinabek Nation

Autumn Peltier is a Canadian water activist who advocates for clean drinking water in First Nations communities and across Mother Earth. Autumn lives on the Unceded Anishinaabe Territory on Manitoulin Island in northern Ontario and began her advocacy work at the age of eight, inspired by her great aunt, Josephine Mandamin, who was a founding member of the water protectors movement. Autumn is Anishinaabe-kwe and a member of the Wikwemikong First Nation, is a water protector and has been called a “water warrior”. Peltier addressed world leaders at the UN General Assembly on the issue of water protection at the age of thirteen in 2018. Autumn was also invited by the UN as a keynote speaker for World Water Week that year in Stockholm, Sweden. She has been honoured by the Canadian Assembly of First Nations as a water protector.

Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim

Coordinator, Indigenous Women and Peoples Association of Chad, Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee

Environmental activist and member of Chad’s pastoralist Mbororo community, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim began advocating for Indigenous rights and environmental protection at age 16, founding the Association for Indigenous Women and Peoples of Chad (AFPAT) to introduce new income revenue activities for women and collaborative tools such as 3D participatory mapping to build sustainable ecosystems management and reduction of nature-based resource conflicts. Her vision is to grow support for both traditional knowledge and science to improve resilience to climate change especially for rural communities. She is a member of the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee and served as co-chair of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change during the historic UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris. She is dedicated to the protection of all Indigenous peoples, from the Congo to the Arctic, and the value of their knowledge in the fight against climate change. She advances environmental protection for Indigenous peoples by participating in international policy dialogues held around the three Rio Conventions; Climate Change (UNFCCC), Biodiversity (CBD), and Desertification (UNCCD) pressuring governments to recognize land rights of Indigenous peoples and advance their solutions for climate adaptation and mitigation. Ibrahim’s work with indigenous communities at the local and global level has achieved recognition and support including, the Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award, Hindou’s TED talk on how Indigenous knowledge meets science to solve climate change, appointment as a UN Sustainable Development Goals Advocate, Daniel Mitterrand Prize, Lui-Walton Conservation International Senior Indigenous Fellow and National Geographic Explorer.

Renan Ozturk

Filmmaker

Renan lives to tell stories about our connection to the natural world, often set within the most challenging environments on Earth. He’s constantly searching for projects that move him -- films that have a strong visual identity matched with some deeply compelling human element. He began his career as an expedition climber and landscape artist, spending years living in a tent beneath the big walls of U.S. National Parks and in the snowy Himalayan mountains. All of his paintings were created on expedition, carrying large cotton canvases on his back, sometimes even using natural pigments pulled straight from the earth to capture these wildly beautiful landscapes. He received National Geographic Adventurer of the Year in 2013 for his combination of cutting-edge first ascents and visual storytelling. Currently, Renan works as a commercial and documentary filmmaker, an expedition climber for The North Face, and a photojournalist for Sony and National Geographic. The films he’s made over the years have had a global presence; he’s probably best known for MERU (cinematographer/subject), which won the 2015 Audience Choice Award at Sundance, and the critically acclaimed Sherpa (cinematographer/co-director), which screened at TIFF and Telluride. He’s directed and shot commercial work for major international brands such as Apple, Google, DJI and Nike.

Frank Mars

Board Member, Mars Incorporated

Frank Mars is a Member of the Board of Directors of Mars, Incorporated, and was, until recently, the Global President of Mars Symbioscience. Pioneering some of the most innovative and breakthrough fundamental scientific research, and with sustained funding from Mars, Incorporated, Frank led the creation of Mars Symbioscience in 2005 as an internal technology based health and life sciences venture area to develop and commercialize new products and services supported by evidence-based science. Through June 2017, he and his team successfully incubated, introduced, and transitioned five technology platforms in the areas of food, plant, biomedical, and life sciences, including Wisdom Panel®, a range of complex canine genetic tests, and CocoaVia®, a revolutionary new cocoa flavanol extract-based dietary supplement that promotes healthy blood flow and thus supports cardiovascular health. In addition to his time leading Mars Symbioscience, Frank has held a variety of senior positions within Mars, Incorporated for over his 28 years in the Electronics, Snack Food, Pet Care and Food segments across the United States, Europe, and Asia. He has a solid understanding of many of Mars’ raw material supply chains, including cocoa, from seedling to finished product. Frank passionately believes that nature-based solutions offer the best option to dramatically improve the livelihoods of small holder farmers and fisherman and create long term sustainable economies and food supply chains. As part of his new role as Vice President, Mars Sustainable Solutions, he and his new team will be building upon the work started in Mars Symbioscience, including developing next generation agroforestry-based, sustainable cocoa farming models and solutions. In addition, recognizing the critical role that healthy coral/marine ecosystems play locally (protein) and globally (climate) in both the nurturing and production of blue biomass and coastal protection, Mr. Mars will be working to expand the use globally of a novel, low-cost, and successful method of coral reef rehabilitation method developed by Mars over the past five years. Mr. Mars is also Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board of Heliae® Development, an applied life sciences and technology company located just outside of Phoenix, Arizona. Heliae is focused on researching and developing algae-based commercial scale production platforms, which sustainably produce renewable raw materials from existing carbon-based waste streams, with a current focus on high value nutraceutical ingredients and specialty products for agriculture and aquaculture. Finally, Frank and his wife Susan are dedicated supporters of several local and international humanitarian/conservation organizations including CARE, Médecins Sans Frontières, World Wildlife Fund, the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institutes (where Mrs. Mars is presently the Vice-Chair of the Advisory Board), as well as the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Frank and his wife have been instrumental in supporting (via SCBI) the efforts of the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation project along with IUCN/SSC Conservation Breeding Specialist Group (CBSG), and the IUCN/SSC Amphibian Specialist Group (ASG).

Mette Løyche Wilkie

Director, Forestry Division, FAO

Mette Wilkie is the Director of the Forestry Division within the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), having a background in Forestry and Environmental Management. With over 30 years of experience, she has provided scientific evidence and policy advice to governments, partner organizations and international conventions on issues related to the environment and development nexus with a focus on the sustainable management of forests and other natural resources, biodiversity conservation and nature-based solutions to climate change.

Ibrahim Assane Mayaki

Christiane Paulus

Director General, Nature Conservation and Sustainable Use of Natural Resources, German Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMUV)

Christiane Paulus began her studies in 1987 at Bonn University where she majored in biology and later received her PhD. Since 1990, she has worked in the federal and international sectors with a focus on the environment and climate change. She had held positions at German Federal Parliament, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. Her work centers around international climate policy, protected areas, the environmental impact of biotechnology and genetic engineering, equal rights and nature conservation. She currently serves as the Director General for Nature Conservation and Sustainable Use of Natural Resources and Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety at the German Ministry (BMUV).    

Walter Willett

Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition, Harvard University

Dr. Walter Willett is Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. He served as Chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health for 25 years. Dr. Willett has published over 1,900 articles, primarily on lifestyle risk factors for heart disease and cancer, and has written the textbook, Nutritional Epidemiology, published by Oxford University Press. He also has four books for the general public, Eat, Drink and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating, just recently revised and released, Eat, Drink, and Weigh Less, co-authored with Mollie Katzen, The Fertility Diet, co-authored with Jorge Chavarro and Pat Skerrett and Thinfluence, co-authored with Malissa Wood and Dan Childs. Dr. Willett is among the top three most cited persons in all areas of science. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the recipient of many national and international awards for his research.