Francia Marquez

Francia Márquez, a leading Afro-Colombian activist who is the 2018 recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize for Central and South America.  Francia Márquez organized her community of La Toma, in Colombia’s Pacific southwest region, to stop illegal gold mining by multinational corporations on their ancestral land. In 2014, Márquez led a 10-day, 350-kilometer march of 80 women to Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, that led to the removal of all illegal miners and equipment from La Toma. Despite threats from multinational corporations and paramilitaries, she continues to fight back, although she has been forced to leave her home.

Naomi Davis

Naomi Davis is an attorney, entrepreneur, activist, and granddaughter of Mississippi sharecroppers who founded Blacks in Green(TM) to remind generations of our great cultural legacy - which is our stewardship of the land - and to reinvent that legacy in the age of climate change. 

Tyrone Hayes

Dr. Tyrone Hayes, a University of California at Berkeley biologist, who links Atrazine to endocrine disruption in amphibians. Hayes specifically asserts that Atrazine interferes with the sexual development of frogs and is, therefore, a likely cause of abnormalities in humans. 

Tasha Elizarde

Tasha Elizarde, 18 year old Alasken Native Youth, has been named Ambassador for Juneau on behalf of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. State Department created the program in partnership with nonprofit Alaska Geographic. Tasha and the youth in her org have a diverse range of priorities, such as: rising sea levels and the ecological impacts of climate change on the tundra. Tasha aims to study Energy Development. In a recent interview with KTOO Public Media, Elizarde said. “I think that our state is very poised to take a new position on energy development, whether it’s through taking the lead on renewable energy or figuring out what to do about being an oil state.”

Emmanuel Pratt

Emmanuel Pratt is co-founder and Executive Director of the Sweet Water Foundation and founding member of axilL3C. Pratt earned his BArch from Cornell University, his MSAUD (Masters in Science of Architecture and Urban Design) from Columbia University, and is presently a doctoral candidate in the PhD program of Urban Planning also from Columbia University. He is also the Director of Aquaponics for Chicago State University and teaches courses within the college of Arts and Sciences.

Vandana Shiva

Dr. Vandana Shiva, Physicist, Scholar, Environmental Activist, Food Sovereignty Advocate, and Alter-Globalization Author. Founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Natural Resource Policy (RFSTN), an organization devoted to developing sustainable methods of agriculture, in 1982. Much of her work has helped to expose and spread awareness around Monsanto and the multi level destructive aspects of GMO's and mono cropping.