Executive Director
Solidaire Network

Rajasvini Bhansali, Executive Director of Solidaire Network and Solidaire Action, a community of donor organizers mobilizing critical resources to the frontlines of social justice, is a passionate advocate for participatory grassroots-led power building. Her wide-ranging career devoted to racial, economic and climate justice has included work in Asia, Africa and the Americas in such domains as youth development, addressing the digital divide, community organizing, research, policy analysis and strategic planning. She is co-author of Leading with Joy: Practices for Uncertain Times, and is also a poet, essayist, educator, yoga instructor and leadership coach.

Author and Activist

Aya de León, Berkeley’s current Poet Laureate, who has published ten novels and teaches creative writing UC Berkeley, co-founded Fighting Chance Books to provide a forum for writers who want to tell the story of how we can still save our planet. Aya and her work have been featured in a wide range of prominent publications, including The NY Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Ebony, and Def Poetry. Her social justice activism has spanned four decades, including working on climate, race, gender, harm reduction, and anti-nuclear issues. In 2022, she organized a groundbreaking online conference: “Black Literature vs. the Climate Emergency.”.

Founder and Executive Director
Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) International

Osprey Orielle Lake, the founder and Executive Director of the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN), works internationally with grassroots, BIPOC and Indigenous leaders, policymakers, and diverse coalitions to build climate justice, resilient communities, and a just transition to a decentralized, democratized clean-energy future. Osprey, who sits on the executive committee for the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and on the steering committee for the Fossil Free Non-Proliferation Treaty, is the author of The Story is in Our Bones: How Worldviews and Climate Justice Can Remake a World in Crisis.

Biologist and Writer
Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures

Merlin Sheldrake, Ph.D., a biologist and writer with a background in plant sciences, microbiology, ecology, and the history and philosophy of science, received his doctorate in tropical ecology from Cambridge for his work on underground fungal networks in tropical forests in Panama, where he was a predoctoral research fellow of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. He is currently a research associate of the Vrije University Amsterdam, works with the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN), and sits on the advisory board of the Fungi Foundation. Merlin’s research ranges from fungal biology, to the history of Amazonian ethnobotany, to the relationship between sound and form in resonant systems. He is also a keen brewer and fermenter fascinated by the relationships that arise between humans and more-than-human organisms, and a musician.