Beth Craig

Founder of Own It Economics

I educate people about the benefits of living a negative footprint life in carbon and eco-system restoration, plastics, and poverty/slavery.

Damon Connolly

California State Assembly – 12th District

Assemblymember Damon Connolly was elected to the California State Assembly in November of 2022 to represent the 12th Assembly District. Over his nearly two decades in public service, Damon Connolly has been a capable and effective leader who is thoughtful, dedicated, and focused on achieving important policy victories that improve the lives of all North Bay residents. Damon has been fighting for North Bay communities for 18 years, as a Marin County Supervisor, Vice-Mayor of San Rafael, School Board President, and California Deputy Attorney General. As a Marin County Supervisor, he protected open spaces while increasing the availability of affordable housing; set Marin County on a path toward 100 percent renewable energy while keeping the County’s fiscal house in order; and spearheaded responses to homelessness while expanding access to public transit and infrastructure for bicyclists and pedestrians. Prior to serving on the Board of Supervisors, Damon served as the Vice Mayor of San Rafael, a two-term San Rafael City Councilmember, and former School Board President. He was a founding board member of Marin Clean Energy (MCE) and served as Chair of the Board of Directors from June 2011 to November 2014. Before opening his own law practice in San Rafael, Damon was a Supervising Deputy California Attorney General, prosecuting the energy companies that gouged our state during the energy crisis of 2000-2001. Damon has served as the President of the Workforce Alliance of the North Bay. He was also a Member of the Marin County Flood Control and Water Conservation District, Marin County Housing Authority, and Marin County Open Space District. Damon also served as Marin County’s representative on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. Damon is a Bay Area native, attending college and law school at UC Berkeley. He has lived in San Rafael with his wife and their two daughters for twenty-five years.

Corinna Bellizzi

Podcaster at Care More Be Better

Corinna is a natural products industry executive who has earned a reputation for leading responsible, regenerative brands with circularity "baked in" – including her latest endeavor with Orlo Nutrition, a line of algae-based nutrition solutions that are carbon neutral and regenerative. She launched her first podcast, Care More Be Better in February 2021 to amplify the efforts of inspired individuals and conscious companies that are working to make the world a better place for all earth’s inhabitants for generations to come. It now sits comfortably in the top 2% of all podcasts globally. Her second podcast, Nutrition Without Compromise, focuses on nutrition and health without compromising your ethics, or the health of our home planet. She often covers the topic of regenerative agriculture, and the impact of soil health on climate change in these efforts. Corinna holds a BA with honors in the major of Anthropology from University of California, Santa Cruz and an MBA from Santa Clara University, where she graduated at the top of her class. She lives in Santa Cruz County with her husband, two young boys and a bunch of rescued animals including 2 dogs, a bearded dragon, and 2 guinea pigs.

Jeffrey Smith

Executive Director, Institute for Responsible Technologhy

As a global thought leader on the health dangers of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for over 27 years, Jeffrey Smith has authored 2 bestsellers, directed 5 documentaries, delivered 2,000 lectures and interviews in 45 countries, trained 1,500 speakers, and organized more than 10,000 grassroots advocates. Jeffrey has counseled world leaders on six continents, and his meticulous research presented at medical conferences inspired thousands to prescribe non-GMO and organic diets.The success of the GMO education movement he pioneered is measured in part by the 48% of world consumers who acknowledge GMOs are unhealthy. Taking on GMO 2.0 Jeffrey and IRT are now sounding the alarm about new genetic engineering techniques, such as gene editing. Unregulated, GMO 2.0 can cause health and environmental disasters. The most urgent danger comes from genetically engineered microbes. Jeffrey is stewarding a global effort to prevent their release.

Kelly Ryerson

Founded Glyphosate Facts and Ambassador for The Rodale Institute

Kelly Ryerson works at the intersection of agriculture and health. She regularly collaborates with farmers, scientists, policymakers and media to address agrochemical damage to our soil and bodies. She also started the educational platform Glyphosate Facts, which explains the link between chemical agriculture and the explosion in chronic disease. Kelly has contributed to several documentaries and news publications, co-hosts the morning show on CHDtv, and is a frequent speaker on podcasts. She is an Ambassador for The Rodale Institute. She has a BA from Dartmouth College, an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and completed training in integrative health coaching at Duke Integrative Medicine.

Michelle Perro

Pediatrician and author of What’s Making our Children Sick and CEO of GMOScience

Michelle Perro, MD, DHOM is a veteran pediatrician with four decades of experience in acute and integrative medicine. More than fifteen years ago, Dr. Perro transformed her clinical practice to include the health effects from GMOs and their associated pesticides. She co-founded and is the CEO of the non-profit website, www.gmoscience.org, created to examine the effects of genetic engineering with a lens on health. Dr. Perro has managed her own business, Down to Earth Pediatrics, creating a new field of integrative urgent care medicine. Dr. Perro has co-authored the highly acclaimed book, What’s Making our Children Sick (https:// www.chelseagreen.com/product/whats-making-our-children-sick/). She is a nationally and internationally known speaker, and has authored many publications, which can be found on the parental education section of her website, drmichelleperro.com. Making our Children well is her second book, to be released spring, 2024.

Neka Pasquale

Founder of Urban Remedy

Neka Pasquale L.Ac is a licensed Acupuncturist, herbalist, author, organic activist and the Founder of Urban Remedy, a certified B Corporation. She created Urban Remedy as a natural evolution of her passion for health and healing with Food is Healing ™ as her mantra. Neka has grown Urban Remedy from one storefront to national distribution to make healthy organic eating more accessible. She has balanced the dichotomy of being a female founder and board member of a growing company, while staying true to her mission of healing people and the planet. In her private practice, Neka combines acupuncture, Chinese and functional medicine with cutting-edge nutrition and lifestyle modifications to heal, balance and create optimal health.

Rebecca Burgess

Executive Director of Fibershed

Rebecca Burgess is the Executive Director of Fibershed. She has two decades of experience working at the intersection of ecology, fiber systems, and regional economic development. She is the author of the best-selling book Harvesting Color, a bioregional look into the natural dye traditions of North America, and Fibershed: Growing a Movement of Farmers, Fashion Activists, and Makers for a New Textile Economy released in 2019. She has taught at Westminster College, Harvard University, and California College of the Arts. She also holds a new board position at the Livestock Conservancy and is serving on the leadership council of the Center for Regenerative Agriculture and Resilient Systems at Chico State University.

Rick Taylor

Founder and President of Elder Creek Landscapes and Sandbox

Rick Taylor, founder and president of Elder Creek Landscapes and Sandbox, spent the last 25 years in various forms of the landscape professions, many of them in his own business. He started as a maintenance gardener and worked his way up to running his own 15-person design, build, and maintenance landscaping firm in the heart of Winde Country, Sonoma County, California. He then transitioned to running a landscape architecture and project management firm. Though his sweet spot is residential estates and sustainable rural land development, there’s hardly an area in the landscape profession that he hasn’t practiced in depth. This is the background from which he approached Sandbox. Rick developed curricula and taught students from the grassroots permaculture level all the way through university. Along with folks like Eric Olson and Ryan Johnston, they created year-long courses that merged the permaculture community with the necessary practical skillset needed to engage professionally. He also brought ecological literacy to landscape design and construction professionals through university-level courses. In Rick’s words: “Those of us at the forefront of ecological literacy in the landscape have long understood that no matter our own success and recognition, our true value will be measured in the amount of change we actually create with our knowledge. We know at our deepest level that we need all of you in order to execute true meaningful change.”

Rosie Burroughs

Rosie Burroughs

Rosie and Ward Burroughs with their children own and operate sustainable farms in California’s Central Valley. The Burroughs work hard to lower their carbon footprint, and to create nutrient rich soil that will benefit the future generations that will make a life and living from their farmland. The Burroughs family has always had a commitment to provide quality dairy products to their customers. The family’s dairy roots started out with Benjamin Burroughs, who moved from Illinois to Oakland in 1896 to start Walnut Grove Creamery. Over 120 years later, Benjamin’s grandson Ward and his family now own Burroughs Family Farms in California’s Central Valley, a flagship for marketing products that are produced by each of their family members’ individual farms, including grass-based, organic milk and cheese, pasture-raised beef and eggs, and organic almonds and olive oil. With three generations currently involved in Burroughs Family Farms, there is a deep connection between the family and the industry that has such deep ties to their heritage. As modern-day organic farmers they look at the whole system with a belief that everything has a purpose, and they embrace a responsibility to protect and nurture the environment that they rely on. They’ve integrated systems into their farm that protect not only their cows, but the entire biological cycle that is so involved in their business. On the rolling foothills of the Central Valley the Burroughs have adopted a French drain system that channels excess water into storage ponds for later use. By channeling the water in this way, they are able to side-step the topsoil erosion and drainage problems that many farmers face on their land. Not only does this process replenish the aquifers beneath the fields, it also recycles all water for irrigation so that none of it leaves the farms. Though management intensive grazing, they’ve cut down their costs of importing feed inputs from off the farm, which also reduces the greenhouse gas emissions created when transporting feed across the country. In fact, almost everything that is done on the Burroughs farms has sustainability and soil in mind, including their composting practices. By avoiding commercial and synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and using their manure and compost instead, they are also reducing their carbon footprint, building and protecting their soil and its essential microbiology to a more natural input. On their almond farm, solar panels provide 80% of the power needed to irrigate the trees during the summer, offsetting some of the rising fuel and energy costs that are plaguing farmers around the country. The almond farm is also equipped with a weather station and soil moisture meters that are able to accurately detect moisture content, a technology that helps create the optimal conditions to grow. For grandparents like Rosie and Ward, leaving their farm better off than when they got it is the single most important thing that they can accomplish for their family. Rosie and Ward are involved in several organizations including the advisory board of California Climate and Agricultural Network (CalCAN), the Leadership Council of the Center for Regenerative Agriculture & Resilient Systems at CSU Chico, the organic panel for the California Almond Board, Western Organic Dairy Producers Alliance (WODPA). These groups have brought awareness to different issues and have worked to promote climate-friendly farming and also advocate for organic production.

Star Hawk

Author, activist, permaculture designer and teacher, and author or co-author of thirteen books.

Starhawk is an author, activist, permaculture designer and teacher, and a prominent voice in modern earth-based spirituality and ecofeminism. She is the author or co-author of thirteen books, including The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess and the ecotopian novel The Fifth Sacred Thing, and its sequel City of Refuge. Her most recent non-fiction book is The Empowerment Manual: A Guide for Collaborative Groups, on group dynamics, power, conflict and communications. Starhawk founded Earth Activist Training, teaching permaculture design grounded in spirituality and with a focus on activism. She travels internationally, lecturing and teaching on earth-based spirituality, the tools of ritual, and the skills of activism. Starhawk’s Books Starhawk’s book The Spiral Dance has been continuously in print for thirty years and revised twice; in 1999 HarperSanFrancisco published the Twentieth Anniversary Edition. Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority, and Mystery won the Media Alliance Meritorious Achievement Award for nonfiction in 1988. Starhawk’s first novel, The Fifth Sacred Thing, won the Lambda award for best Gay and Lesbian Science Fiction in 1994. It was released as an audiobook in 2016. Many of Starhawk’s political essays were collected into her book Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising, which won a 2003 Nautilus Award from the trade association NAPRA. Her first picture book for children, The Last Wild Witch, won a silver Nautilus from NAPRA in 2010. Film & Video Projects In the late ’80s, Starhawk consulted on and co-wrote the popular trio of films known as the Women’s Spirituality Series, directed by Donna Read Cooper for the National Film Board of Canada: Goddess Remembered, The Burning Times, and Full Circle. The trilogy was in the top ten of sales and rentals for the Film Board for over a decade. Starhawk and Donna Read Cooper formed their own film company, Belili Productions, to make documentaries on women and the earth. Their first release was Signs Out of Time (2004), a documentary on the life of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, the scholar who made major discoveries about the Goddess cultures of Old Europe. Starhawk and Donna’s second documentary, Permaculture: The Growing Edge, was released in 2010. Starhawk has also made several short documentaries which can be found on YouTube: The Spiral Dance Ritual, Reclaiming’s Spiral Dance: Three Decades of Magic, and Permaculture Principles at Work, with nearly 200,000 views. Activism and Permaculture Projects Starhawk is a veteran of progressive movements, from anti-war to anti-nukes, and is deeply committed to bringing the techniques and creative power of spirituality to political activism. She is a founder of Earth Activist Trainings (EAT), teaching permaculture design grounded in spirit and with a focus on organizing and activism. Together with Charles Williams and others, she co-teaches EAT courses in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. She also champions ‘social permaculture’: the application of permaculture principles to social organizations, policy and strategy. Since its first course in May of 2001, Earth Activist Trainings has graduated over 1000 students who now shepherd projects that range from community power-down strategies in Iowa City to water catchment programs in Bolivia, from inner city gardens in San Francisco to programs in the West Bank of Palestine. Pagan & Goddess Starhawk is one of the prominent leaders in the revival of earth-based spirituality and Goddess religion. She is a cofounder of Reclaiming, an activist branch of modern Pagan religion, and continues to work closely with the Reclaiming Community. Her archives are maintained at the Graduate Theological Union library in Berkeley, California. Starhawk’s tapes and CDs include “Wicca for Beginners” (2002), “Wiccan Rituals and Blessings” (2003), and a four-CD set “Earth Magic” (2006), all produced by Sounds True. Early Life & Career Starhawk was born on June 17, 1951. She holds a B.A. in Fine Arts from U.C.L.A. In 1973, as a graduate student in Film at U.C.L.A, Starhawk won the prestigious Samuel Goldwyn Creative Writing Award. She received an M.A. in Psychology with a concentration in Feminist Therapy from Antioch University West in 1982. She has taught in many Bay Area colleges and universities, including John F. Kennedy University, Antioch West, the Institute of Culture and Creation Spirituality at Holy Names College, and Wisdom University. She is presently adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Follow Starhawk on Facebook and Twitter Bibliography: Starhawk’s Books The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess. San Francisco, HarperSanFrancisco, 1979, 1989, and 1999 editions. German, Danish, Portuguese, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, and Greek editions. Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics. Boston, Beacon, 1982, 1988, 1997 editions. French and German editions. Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority, and Mystery. San Francisco, HarperSanFrancisco,1988. German edition. The Fifth Sacred Thing (novel). New York, Bantam, 1993. German, Italian, Polish, and Portuguese editions. Released as an Audiobook, narrated by Maya Lilly, in 2016. Walking to Mercury (novel). New York, Bantam, 1997. City of Refuge (novel): The Sequel to The Fifth Sacred Thing. Self-published through a successful Kickstarter campaign in Winter 2015. The Pagan Book of Living and Dying.Co-written with M. Macha NightMare and the Reclaiming Collective. San Francisco, HarperSanFrancisco, 1997. Czech edition. Circle Round: Raising Children in the Goddess Tradition. Cowritten with Anne Hill and Diane Baker. Illustrated by Sara Ceres Boore. New York, Bantam, 1998. The Twelve Wild Swans: A Journey to the Realm of Magic, Healing, and Action. Cowritten with Hilary Valentine. San Francisco, HarperSanFrancisco, 2000. Dutch, Spanish, and German editions. Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising. Gabriola Island, BC; New Society Publishers, 2002. Essays translated into Burmese, French, and Italian. The Earth Path: Grounding Your Spirit in the Rhythms of Nature. San Francisco, HarperSanFrancisco, 2004. Italian edition. The Last Wild Witch. Illustrated by Lindy Kehoe. Portland, Oregon: Mother Tongue Ink. 2009. Adapted into a stage musical for children’s ensemble by EmilyKion for the Marsh Youth Theater, San Francisco, 2012. The Empowerment Manual: A Guide for Collaborative Groups. Victoria, Canada; New Society Publishers, November 2011.

Trathen Heckman

Founder and Director of Daily Acts Organization and author of Take Heart, Take Action

Trathen Heckman is the founder and Director of Daily Acts Organization and author of Take Heart, Take Action. Trathen works at a range of scales helping people and groups reclaim the power of their actions to regenerate self, nature and community. He lives in the Petaluma River Watershed with his wife and daughter where he grows food, medicine and wonder while working to compost apathy and lack.

D’Lynda Fischer

Council Member, City of Petaluma

D’Lynda grew up in the wilds of Alaska in a very politically active family. She left Alaska at 17 to attend college on the East Coast, which ultimately led her to Los Angeles and a 25-year career as an urban planner with a Master’s degree in Urban Planning. In 2013, she moved to Petaluma to begin the next chapter of her life in a quieter place at what I thought would be a slower pace. Her first job was operations manager for Daily Acts, a local sustainability nonprofit. Not only did this organization teach her about responsible water management practice and the power of individual actions, it also introduced her to a network of people that would become the core of her community. To understand the nuances of her new world, she obtained a Sustainability Certificate from Dominican University, a Permaculture Design Certificate, and became a graduate of the Leadership Institute for Ecology and Economy. She successfully ran for Petaluma City Council in 2018 and during her four years in office was instrumental in leading the community’s stance on climate. And knowing that it takes more than policy to achieve aggressive climate goals, she seized the opportunity to help Petaluma win the $1 million Cool City Challenge grant. Creating beautiful and vibrant outdoor living spaces has always provided her with the grounding needed to achieve her personal goals and be of service to her community.

Pamm Larry

Director of The Butte County Local Food Network

Pamm Larry has been working on food sovereignty and security issues since 2011, addressing policy at the national, state and local level. She started that path as the Initial Instigator and Chief Rabble Rouser of California's Prop 37 to label GMOs foods. After the Camp Fire devastated her community in 2018, she decided to come home and focus on creating a strong local food system via The Butte County Local Food Network. She invites all who care about the future of healthy food, to come join the Network or to start one in their community so, together, we recreate the food system, one tasty bite at a time.

Stacy Malkan

Co-founder, Managing Editor of U.S. Right to Know,

Stacy Malkan is co-founder and managing editor of U.S. Right to Know, a nonprofit investigative research group working globally to expose corporate wrongdoing and government failures that threaten our health, environment and food system. She investigates and reports on pesticide and food industry PR and lobbying operations. Stacy is author of the award-winning book, Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry (New Society Publishers, 2007), and co-founder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, a national coalition of health groups that exposed hazardous chemicals in personal care and baby products, and pressured companies to reformulate to safer products. Her work has been featured in Time magazine, the New York Times, Washington Post, Nature Biotechnology, Good Morning America, Wall Street Journal, and many other media outlets. She has appeared in several documentary films including The Human Experiment produced by Sean Penn, Pink Skies, Stink Movie, and Not so Pretty now airing on HBO Max.