Tess is the Operations Manager at Mind & Life Institute. She has a bachelor’s degree in Finance from Virginia Tech. She brings varied skills to the organization gained through her work in the Real Estate field and volunteer positions at different nonprofits in the Charlottesville area. In her free time she enjoys reading, sewing, hanging out with her family and walks with her dog.
Dr. Perovich’s research interest is understanding the Arctic system and its role in global climate change. The central focus of his research is simple to state: where does all the sunlight go? More precisely, how does the incident solar radiation interact with sea ice and snow? This simple statement belies the rich complexity and importance of the topic. The interaction of solar radiation with snow and sea ice is intimately interrelated with the physical and morphological properties of snow and ice and forcing from the atmosphere and ocean. Through the positive ice-albedo feedback, solar partitioning affects not only the Arctic system, but global climate as well.
Edward Maibach is a Mason Distinguished University Professor and Director of the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. His research and practice focus on enhancing public and policymaker engagement in climate change by activating trusted groups of professionals—including health professionals, TV weathercasters and other journalists—and climate educators. Ed previously served as the Associate Director of the National Cancer Institute, and Worldwide Director of Social Marketing at Porter Novelli. He is currently a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and serves on the Board of Directors of the Global Climate and Health Alliance.
Karen O’Brien is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo, Norway. She is also co-founder of cCHANGE, a social enterprise that promotes a conscious and collaborative approach to sustainability transformations. Her research focuses on the human and social dimensions of environmental change. She is committed to understanding and engaging with equitable transformations for a thriving world. She promotes integrative approaches to sustainability that recognize how beliefs, values, worldviews, and paradigms influence systems change and social change. Karen’s research focuses on fractal approaches to scaling transformative change and explores the potential for quantum social change in theory and practice.
Her recent books include You Matter More Than You Think: Quantum Social Change for a Thriving World and Climate and Society: Transforming the Future (with Robin Leichenko). She has participated in four IPCC reports, and was co-chair of the International Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Transformative Change Assessment. In 2021 she was co-recipient of the BBVA Foundations Frontiers of Knowledge Award for Climate Change. She is a member of Academia Europea and in 2025 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Fred Bahnson is an award-winning writer and author of Soil & Sacrament (Simon & Schuster). “This book is profoundly, beautifully down to earth,” wrote Bill McKibben, “which is almost certainly where we all need to spend more time on a planet in crisis.” Bahnson’s essays and journalism have appeared in Harper’s, Oxford American, Orion, Notre Dame Magazine, Emergence, Image, The Sun, and Best American Spiritual Writing. His essay “On the Road with Thomas Merton” won a Wilbur Award for Best Magazine Article from the Religion Communicators Council and was selected by nature writer Robert MacFarlane for the anthology Best American Travel Writing 2020.
Bahnson’s writing awards include a Pilgrimage Essay Award, a W.K. Kellogg Food & Society Policy fellowship, and a North Carolina Artist fellowship in creative nonfiction from the NC Arts Council. He has given keynotes at places like Yale, Duke, Georgetown, TEDx Manhattan’s “Changing the Way We Eat,” and most recently at the 2019 Halki Summit in Istanbul, where he spoke on faith and climate change for an international gathering of environmental leaders convened by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. In 2012, Fred became founding director of the Food, Health, and Ecological Well-being Program, a national leadership development program at the Wake Forest University School of Divinity that trains and equips faith leaders, environmental advocates, and contemplative activists. He now lives and writes from his home in southwest Montana.
Essays:
https://emergencemagazine.org/feature/on-the-road-with-thomas-merton/
https://harpers.org/archive/2021/01/the-gate-of-heaven-is-everywhere-contemplative-christianity/
Interview:
https://www.spiritualityhealth.com/articles/2018/06/27/how-an-earthier-christianity-might-save-us
Book: Soil & Sacrament
Bonnie Waltch is a producer, director, and writer for documentaries and museum exhibit media. Most recently, she produced and wrote the one-hour international television documentary, Earth Emergency, and series of five short films, Climate Emergency: Feedback Loops. Other work includes Super Reefs: The Future of Coral for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and exhibit media for the Pikes Peak Visitor Center, the Tennessee State Museum, the Mob Museum, and the National World War II Museum, among others. She has produced and written television programs for Nova/BBC, Scientific American Frontiers, and Discovery Channel. She also served as Executive Director of Filmmakers Collaborative, a non-profit fiscal sponsor. She holds a B.A. in Semiotics from Brown University.
Jonathan F.P. Rose’s business, public policy, teaching, writing and not-for-profit work focuses on creating more environmentally, socially and economically resilient cities. In 1989, Mr. Rose founded Jonathan Rose Companies LLC, a multi-disciplinary real estate development, planning, project management, and investment firm, to address the challenges of the 21st century. Jonathan has led the firm’s vision, program and growth, developing award winning new projects, investment funds and city plans to model solutions integrating the issues of affordable housing, community development, culture and the environment. The firm is one of the largest acquirers of affordable and mixed income housing in the nation.
He has received the MIT’s Visionary Leadership Award, The Urban Land Institute’s global award for Excellence and many other awards for his work. Mr. Rose’s book on how to create resilient cities, The Well-Tempered City: What Modern Science, Ancient Civilizations and Human Nature Teach Us About the Future of Urban Life, was published by Harper Wave in 2016, and won the 2017 PROSE Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work by a Trade Publisher. Inspired by the book, Bhutan is now re-planning its capital city, Thimphu as a Well-Tempered City.
Mr. Rose and his wife Diana Calthorpe Rose are the co-founders of the Garrison Institute, serves on its Board and leads its Pathways to Planetary Health program. The Institute connects inner transformation with outer solutions to relieve suffering in the fields of trauma, education and the environment.
Mr. Rose is a Trustee of Enterprise Community Partners and serves on the New York Federal Reserves’ Regional Advisory Board. He is an Honorary Member of the American Institute of Architects and Honorary Trustee of the American Museum of Natural History and Jazz at Lincoln Center.
Mr. Rose graduated from Yale University in 1974 with a B.A. in Psychology and
Philosophy, and received a Masters in Regional Planning from the University of
Pennsylvania in 1980.
Mr. Rose plays bass and blues harp in the Raga/Jazz/ Blues Band Jog Blues.
