Cari Borja

Anthropologist, clothesmaker, salonniere, writer, professor

Cari is a clothesmaker (2000-2022) and salonniere (2012-2022), 119 salon dinners after apprenticing at Chez Panisse), writer and educator who received her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology and Film from UC Berkeley in 2001. She has a keen interest in cultural identity and otherness throughout her graduate work. Her M.A. thesis from School of Oriental and African Studies in London was entitled “Hollywood in Britain: America as Other” whilst her doctoral thesis “Jamaican Art Worlds: Encounters, Transformations, Metamorphoses” also analyzed the creation, documentation and consumption of identity. Cari’s expertise ranges from the arts (Guggenheim, MOMA, Stux Gallery, Collezione Peggy Guggenheim), food + wine and film worlds (having worked as an assistant to B. Ruby Rich, Tom Luddy /Telluride Film Festival, Peter Sellars), a practicing installation artist (De Young Museum, YBCA and ArtHotel Sacramento) and to her most recent work as an anthropologist at Apple.

Since 2017, Cari has worked on projects that ranged from the Steve Jobs Theater, Apple Park and Visitors Center for Apple University (2017), on Angela Ahrendts Today at Apple team, curating programming for Apple Union Square as well as other global retail initiatives, and most recently on Lisa Jackson’s Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives team to establish a tech and creativity grants pilot. Cari also creative directs a variety of galas and salons including She-Can Global in SF and NYC and Boston Review Magazine in the Bay Area, Glide Foundation in SF, and was a Visiting Artist at Oakland-based Creative Growth. She is on the boards of National Novel Writing Month and Creative Growth, and is a professor at California College of the Arts where she teaches “Design Ethnography” + “Since Feeling is First: the Search for Desire and Eros through Culture” in their MFA Design Program. She also teaches “Creating Built Worlds” each Spring in the Anthropology Department at San Jose State University. She is working as Chief of Staff to Alice Waters, focusing on the implementation of the Alice Waters Institute at UC Davis which is part of a larger 10- campus focus on procurement and school-supported agriculture. Cari’s most recent research focuses on the ambivalent role our earliest childhood food memories play in our relationship to what and when, with whom and where, how and why we eat.

Nalleli Cobo

Environmental Activist, Goldman Prize 2022 Winner

At age nine, Nalleli Cobo engaged in community activism for the first time. Growing up across the street from AllenCo Energy, an oil well in her community, Nalleli noticed her health took a turn for the worse. What began as headaches intensified to body spasms and heart palpitations. She worked with her community to create a grassroots campaign called People Not Pozos (wells)
in hopes to permanently shut down AllenCo energy. Nalleli is a co-founder of the South Los Angeles Youth Leadership Coalition, which successfully sued the city of LA for violation of the California Environmental Quality Act and environmental racism. In early 2020 she was diagnosed with stage 2 cancer after almost a year of treatment including surgeries, chemotherapy, and radiation treatments she is officially cancer free. Cobo continues to fight to defend the health, safety, and environment for her community and generations to come.

Dr. Janet Nagamine

Owner/Farmer, Hikari Farm & Doctor at Watsonville Community Hospital

Janet started her career as a “Hospitalist doctor” working in hospitals treating patients with heart attacks, strokes, and other serious illnesses. After seeing how patients were sometimes harmed by medical errors, she got deeply involved in improving hospital systems to deliver safer care and led many national quality and safety initiatives. At the peak of her medical career, she was unexpectedly called back to her family farm to help wind down the company and lease the farm out. She planned on being away for a few months, and 8 years later, she is still there. She is still a doctor, but sees patients only one day a week. On all the other days, she is practicing Preventative Medicine on the farm. By providing fresh, beautiful, organic vegetables and fruits that taste delicious, she is helping people lead healthier lives. Most of the produce you get in grocery stores are produced for shelf life, not flavor. They are genetically engineered to look beautiful, last longer, and transport well. And this is why many children don’t eat as many fruits and vegetables as they should! Janet is delighted to be providing fresh, organic Fuji Apples to K-12 schools for the first time. The apples don’t look as perfect as the genetically engineered and pre-packaged varieties, but they taste so much better! What gives you hope in this upside down world? Courageous, thoughtful, and resilient people give me hope. My parents, at 101 and 97 years old are one example. They have endured a lot of prejudice and hardship but never gave up their dreams. People who fight for justice and do the right thing despite putting themselves at risk, i.e. whistleblowers inspire me and give me hope.

Charles Orgbon III

Sustainability & Social Impact Strategist, EY

Charles Orgbon III’s journey as an environmentalist began in 2008 — he was only 12-years-old. Charles noticed his school’s littered campus, and wanted to organize an effort to resolve the problem. He later developed Greening Forward, which would become a leading organization in the United States devoted to training and funding environmental leaders, ages 5-25. Greening Forward has distributed tens of thousands of dollars in funding to youth environmental projects that plant trees, build compost bins, install rain barrels, monitor streams, recycle tons of waste, and advocate for a number of other environmental issues. Today, Charles continues to serve on the Board of Directors for Greening Forward, and he has expanded his impact to working with the corporate sector. As a consultant at EY, he helps his clients identify climate risks, mitigate climate risks, and prepare for a more sustainable, equitable future. Creatively, Charles is an accomplished writer, having written children’s literature, comics, articles, and songs. He is represented by Bookends Literary Agency.

Dr. Chandler Puritty

Lecturer at University of California, San Diego

Chandler is a graduate of Howard University in Washington DC where she majored in biology. She then went on to complete her doctorate in Biology at UC San Diego. She studied how our ever changing climate affects the interactions of native and invasive plant species in Southern California. While at UCSD, she found a passion for equity and inclusion efforts and published a paper entitled “Without inclusion, diversity initiatives may not be enough.” in Science. Currently, Chandler is a doctoral lecturer in the African American Studies and Environmental Studies, and Culture, Art, and Technology departments at UCSD, at Scripps Institute of Oceanography and has taught in the Biology department at Howard University. She is also a professional artist and tarot card reader.

Arianne Teherani

Co-Founder/Co-Director, University of California Center for Climate Health & Equity

Arianne Teherani, PhD is Professor of Medicine and Co-Founder and Co-Director of the University of California, Center for Climate Health and Equity. Arianne also serves Director for Program Evaluation and Education Continuous Quality Improvement and Education Scientist in the Center for Faculty Educators at the UCSF School of Medicine. Arianne’s research has informed local and global conversations, research agendas and policies in educational equity and education for climate change and health. She studies the role of educational practices in perpetuating disparities and evaluates interventions aimed at creating equity during health professions education. She launched and co-leads the Equity and Justice in Education Initiative. Arianne’s research also focuses on education as a core solution to the climate change and health crisis. She examines practices and interventions that emphasize local and community-engaged education to learning, clinical practice, and sustainable thinking. work examines outcomes of successful endeavors to train health professionals and practicing clinicians to educate their students and patients about climate-health impacts, the role of health systems science education in prompting decarbonization, and the carbon footprint of ongoing, often unquestioned education practices. She was the co-led for Climate Change and Health course for medical and pharmacy students for many years. She developed and led the University of California-wide Climate and Health Education Faculty Development Initiative which trained faculty members in health science schools to integrate climate and health into their ongoing courses. She currently serves on the Global Climate Leadership Council Faculty Engagement tam and chairs the UC Sustainability and Diversity, Justice, and Equity Advisory Council. Arianne’s research has been featured in venues such as National Public Radio, KTVU, and the Huffington Post. She was the recipient of the UCSF Faculty Sustainability Award and the UC Sustainability Champion Award. Dr Teherani was named the University of California Faculty Climate Action Champion – an award given to one faculty member at each University of California campus in recognition of their contribution to the mission of sustainability and carbon neutrality.