Gavin Bridge is Professor of Economic Geography at Durham University and a Fellow of the Durham Energy Institute. His research addresses questions of property, access, and control associated with emergent geographies of resource production and consumption, including the political ecologies of resource scarcity and security. Recent work includes research on raw material production networks associated with old and new carbon economies; and a continuing interest in how the materiality of resources shapes their appropriation and capitalisation. He is the author of Oil (Polity, 2017) with P. Le Billon; co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology (2015) with T. Perreault and J. McCarthy; and co-author of Energy and Society: A Critical Perspective (Routledge, 2018) with S. Barr, S. Bouzarovski, M. Bradshaw, E. Brown, H. Bulkeley, and G. Walker.

William Maxfield Denevan was born in San Diego in 1931. He has B.A, M.A., and Ph.D degrees in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley. He is Professor Emeritus of Geography and also Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research interests are in the historical ecology of the native peoples of the Americas. Field work has primarily been conducted in Nicaragua, Bolivia, Peru, and Venezuela, especially in western Amazonia and the Central Andes. Innovative research includes prehistoric earthworks, the size of the Indian population in 1492, causes of terrace abandonment, tropical deforestation, and the “pristine myth” of environmental impacts prior to European arrival. Previous honors include elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Michelle Dunstan is AllianceBernstein’s Chief Responsibility Officer and a member of the firm’s Operating Committee. She oversees AB’s corporate responsibility practices and responsible investing strategy, including integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations throughout the firm’s research, engagement and investment processes. Ms. Dunstan also oversees the firm’s ESG thought leadership and product development. She manages AB’s Global ESG Improvers Strategy, which focuses on engaging with and investing in companies that are advancing along ESG dimensions. Ms. Dunstan was AB’s global head of responsible investing from 2020 to 2021. From 2012 to 2020, she was a portfolio manager for the Global Commodity Equity Fund. She joined AB in 2004 as a research analyst and covered commodities in emerging markets and North America for several years. Prior to joining the firm, Ms. Dunstan was an engagement manager at the Monitor Group (now Monitor Deloitte). She holds a BCom from Queen’s University in Canada and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she graduated with high distinction as a Baker Scholar.

Diego Gonzalez Ferreiro is currently the Data Lead and Unite Maps Product Manager at the United Nations Global service Centre (UNGSC) based in Brindisi, Italy. He manages a team of GIS professionals delivering geospatial services and products to end users at United Nations Peacekeeping and Political missions. For the last ten years, he has worked as a GIS Officer in various UN missions, such as Somalia, Kenya and DR Congo. Previously he worked in a environmental consultancy in Madrid, Spain, where he studied. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Geography and a Masters degree in Geodesy and Cartography.

Kenan Fikri is a scholar of geographic inequality and Research Director at the Economic Innovation Group (EIG), a DC-based think tank dedicated to forging a more dynamic and inclusive U.S. economy. Kenan has cultivated a passion for place and economic development as a proud alum of the Brookings Institution, The World Bank, London School of Economics, and American University.

Siobhan Finnerty recently completed her Master of Arts in International Relations at the University of Chicago, where her research investigated the dynamic intersection between development, conflict, and political stability. Siobhan currently works as a GIS Analyst for HIP Consult, a boutique international consulting firm, where she leverages geospatial data insights to inform investment into digital infrastructure in emerging markets.

She completed her undergraduate at the George Washington University in Washington, DC with degrees in International Affairs and Geography. During her undergraduate, Siobhan also studied at the University of Vienna and earned a summer-term fellowship to study in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

Carolyn Finney, PhD is a storyteller, author and a cultural geographer who is grounded in both artistic and intellectual ways of knowing - she pursued an acting career for eleven years, but five years of backpacking trips through Africa and Asia, and living in Nepal changed the course of her life. Motivated by these experiences, Carolyn returned to school after a 15-year absence to complete a B.A., M.A. (gender and environmental issues in Kenya and Nepal) and a PhD (where she was a Fulbright and a Canon National Science Scholar Fellow). Along with public speaking, writing, media engagements, consulting & teaching, she served on the U.S. National Parks Advisory Board for eight years. Her first book, Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors was released in 2014. Recent publications include Self-Evident: Reflections on the Invisibility of Black Bodies in Environmental Histories (BESIDE Magazine, Montreal Spring 2020), and The Perils of Being Black in Public: We are all Christian Cooper and George Floyd (The Guardian, June 3rd 2020). She is currently working on a performance piece about John Muir (The N Word: Nature Revisited) as part of an Andrew W. Mellon residency at the New York Botanical Gardens Humanities Institute and is the new columnist at the Earth Island Journal. She is also an artist-in-residence in the Franklin Environmental Center at Middlebury College.

Alex Flachsbart is the Founder and CEO of Opportunity Alabama, a nationally recognized nonprofit organization focused on generating economic development in Alabama’s distressed communities. Prior to OPAL, Alex’s professional career spanned from practicing tax and economic development law at Balch & Bingham LLP – to teaching high school geometry in Mosses, Alabama through Teach for America. A native of Northern California (but a naturalized Alabamian), Alex received undergraduate and masters degrees in economics from The University of Alabama and a J.D. from Washington and Lee University School of Law. Alex serves on the board of Main Street Alabama and the PARCA Roundtable, is a fellow in the Blackburn Institute and the Alabama Leadership Initiative, is a member of the Birmingham Rotary Club, and was recently named one of the Top 100 national influencers in Commercial Real Estate by the Business Journals of America.

Denae King, PhD is an Associate Director in the Robert D. Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice at Texas Southern University. She enjoys working with community leaders on environmental justice projects designed to address community-identified environmental health concerns in underserved people of color communities in Houston and along the Gulf Coast. Dr. King is a graduate of Texas Southern University, and she received a Ph.D. in environmental science/toxicology from the University of Texas Health Science Center - Houston, School of Public Health.

Chitra Kumar is a public policy and planning expert at the US Environmental Protection Agency. Throughout her nearly 20-year federal career, she has held various roles creating partnerships with federal, state and local organizations to develop more equitable strategies for environmental protection, land use and infrastructure, particularly in economically distressed small towns, rural areas, and urban neighborhoods. Currently, Ms. Kumar is Assistant Director for EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice. From March 2020-2021 Ms. Kumar was Senior Fellow with the Aspen Institute’s Community Strategies Group and Thrive Rural, focused on bridging the fields of health, environment, and economic development to improve rural well-being. From 2015-2019 she directed the Federal and State Division of EPA’s Office of Community Revitalization. From 2013-2014, she served at the White House Council on Environmental Quality as the Deputy Associate Director for Water, where she contributed to high-profile water-related federal policies. Ms. Kumar holds a Master in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Arts from Boston University.