National Geographic Explorer at Large Nalini Nadkarni interweaves her research on rainforest canopy biota with innovative public engagement. Currently a biology professor at the University of Utah, she has written 150 scientific papers and books, and has cast new insights on the importance of canopy plants in ecosystem processes—and the effects of human activities on forest diversity and function.

Nadkarni has innovated engagement with non-traditional groups, including faith-based groups, corporations, and people who are incarcerated. Her programs guide people in carceral institutions to rear endangered species for ecological restoration projects, providing them with direct ways to contribute to preserving Earth’s biodiversity even while incarcerated.

As a National Geographic Explorer, she has convened artists, slam poets, and modern dancers to disseminate their own perceptions of forest canopies to arts audiences. She has integrated her approach into what she terms ‘tapestry thinking,’ bringing together seemingly disconnected ways of knowing, and tailoring the qualities of nature through the values of others to amplify the power of nature and the need to protect it.

Her work is featured in academic journals and public media such as Science Friday, Playboy, TIME, Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, and RadioLab. Her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the AAAS Award for Public Engagement, the National Science Foundation Award for Public Service, the Wilson Award for the Advancement of Social Justice, the Archie Carr Medal for Conservation, and the Rachel Carson Award for Conservation.

Sacha Spector is the program director for the environment at the Doris Duke Foundation, where he oversees all of the foundation’s grantmaking on climate change, land conservation and stewardship, and inclusive conservation.  

Previously, Spector held positions as director of conservation science at Scenic Hudson, as manager of the Invertebrate Conservation Program at the American Museum of Natural History and as adjunct associate professor at Columbia University’s Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology. Author and co-author of more than 30 research papers, books and articles, he earned a Ph.D. in ecology from the University of Connecticut and a Bachelor of Science in environmental biology from Yale University. 

Alicia Odewale (Ware) was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She is the great grandniece of Robert Ware, who attended Dunbar Grade School in Greenwood and survived the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921. She is also a graduate of Booker T. Washington High School, a historically Black high school created during Oklahoma’s Jim Crow era and one of the few structures that survived the attack on Greenwood in 1921. She earned her college degrees at Westminster College and The University of Tulsa (TU), and in 2016 made history as the first person of African descent to receive a doctorate in anthropology at TU. She was also the first Black faculty member to join TU’s department of anthropology and today continues to work as an archaeologist and educator in Oklahoma, specializing in African Diaspora archaeology in the Caribbean and southeastern United States with a theoretical focus on community-centered, restorative justice, anti-racist and Black feminist archaeology.

Since 2014, Odewale has been researching archaeological sites related to Afro-Caribbean heritage on St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, and since 2019 has been researching sites of Black heritage in her home state of Oklahoma. Her latest research project, “Mapping Historical Trauma in Tulsa from 1921-2021,” is co-created with other Tulsans and seeks to reanalyze historical evidence from the aftermath of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, launch new community-based archaeological investigations in the Historic Greenwood District, and use radical mapping techniques to visualize the impact of the massacre through time on the landscape of Greenwood. Odewale joined the National Geographic family in 2021 as a speaker with National Geographic Live through her show entitled “Greenwood: A Century of Resilience”. She also accepted the invitation to become a community leader through National Geographic’s 2892 Miles to Go: Geographic Walk for Justice Project. Both projects provide an opportunity for her to go beyond the classroom and share her research in new and innovative ways with the world. Her research interests include the archaeology of enslavement and freedom in urban contexts, Caribbean archaeology, rural and urban comparative analyses, community-based archaeology, ceramic analysis, transferware studies, mapping historical trauma from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, restorative justice and auto-archaeology, and investigations into different forms of anti-slavery resistance.

She is also the co-creator of the Greenwood Archaeology Curriculum and the #TulsaSyllabus, an online resource guide that dives into the history and archaeology of Black enslavement, land ownership, anti-Black violence, and the rise of prosperous Black communities in Oklahoma. Her research has received awards and support from the National Geographic Society, the American Anthropological Association, the National Science Foundation, the Society of Historical Archaeology, the Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission, and the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS).

Jennie Warmouth (she/her) is an educator and researcher who explores how human-animal interactions impact children's empathy development. She holds a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Washington, specializing in learning sciences, human development, and cognition. She teaches second grade in a public elementary school and graduate-level courses at the University of Washington.

A Fulbright alumna (Scotland and Ghana) and published children's book author, Warmouth has traveled to Arctic Svalbard (2019) and the Galápagos Islands (2021) as a Grosvenor Teacher Fellow with National Geographic. Her current National Geographic-funded project centers on wildlife rehabilitation work at the Progressive Animal Welfare Society (PAWS), where she has partnered for two decades and currently serves as Board Director. The project focuses on developing educational curricula around the rehabilitation and wild release of injured and orphaned American black bear cubs.

Warmouth's problem-based learning pedagogy and more-than-human approach to empathy development have been featured by the National Geographic Society, the Seattle Times, and the University of Washington. She is an innovative instructional designer who believes wholeheartedly in the power of storytelling to inspire the next generation of wildlife conservationists and environmental advocates..

I make environmental science accessible to non-scientists. I write about forests, climate, and our complex relationships with nature. My craft blends science communications and reporting through narrative.

I earned my Ph.D. from the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program for Environment and Resources at Stanford University. By training, I’m an ecologist and land change scientist, committed to facilitating more sustainable land use practices in communities across the world. I have always been intrigued by our human footprint on the natural world and concerned about the ways environmental degradation affects the lives of people and other species.

My writing has appeared in The New York Times, Scientific American, Emergence Magazine, Nautilus and other media outlets. My first book, In Search of the Canary Tree, was selected as one of Science Friday’s Best Science Books of 2018. In 2019, it won second place for the Rachel Carson Environment Book Award and was a finalist for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Communication Award. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation supported research and reporting for Treekeepers, my most recent book about the global reforestation movement.

I live in a little forested canyon, which has farms and llamas, just outside Bozeman, Montana.

I am founder of the startup GOLD Comedy, the comedy school, creative network, and content studio centering women/non-binary folks. Our classes, celeb Q&As, sketch teams, community, and more build expertise, creativity, confidence, and careers for women pursuing showbiz dreams or the comedy skills that are life skills. Think: Chief + Coursera + comedy. We are the talent/content/power pipeline for funny women. BOOYAH.

I am an award-winning journalist/novelist whose writing has measurably shifted perceptions of violence against young women and led to new federal protections for them. I am author of six humorous fiction and non-fiction books, including Death By Chick Lit and Breakup Girl to the Rescue! My writing—on gender, culture, and a range of social issues—has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Salon, Glamour, and a 25-year career’s worth of national newspapers, magazines, and anthologies.

I am co-creator, with Chris Kalb, of the award-winning Breakup Girl, the superhero who saves the world by saving your love life, and who appeared online (debuting in 1997!), on TV, in books, and on stage. Chris and I (and “Team BG”) built the brand from a character we developed for a book into a multimedia entity with a massive cult following that was acquired by Oxygen (with us as executive producers), where it became the first animated series ever to launch simultaneously online and on TV.

I am former VP of Communications at the global human rights organization Breakthrough; my blend of humor and advocacy drove some of the U.S. program’s most visible and effective programming, including “Be That Guy” animations screened by NASCAR and the Indy 500. I conceived and continue to lead creative strategy and curate talent for Breakthrough’s Dudes Against Violence Against Women: Because DUH, the annual live comedy series that has reached more than 38 million and increased revenue 400% by year three.

I am a co-founder of Persisticon, a venture leveraging comedy, art, and community to raise money to elect progressive women. Our events have raised more than $50K for EMILY’s List, She The People, and Supermajority; have reached thousands via social/earned media; and have featured comedy luminaries including Janeane Garofalo, Bridget Everett, Murray Hill, Aparna Nancherla, Ophira Eisenberg, and more.

A standup comic and storyteller who performed all over the city (and beyond) for more than a decade, I co-produced and starred in Gotham Comedy Club’s longest-running, always sold-out variety show, Breakup Girl LIVE. My two-woman show (with Betsy Fast), Lynn Harris on Ice, sold out its off-off-Broadway run in 2002.

I founded and taught Mediabistro’s class in Humor Writing for Journalists. I have appeared on TV and radio a jillion times, including as a Tonya Harding lookalike, which is a long story.

In my spare time, I serve as a mentor editor for the Op-Ed Project, and raise two legit funny kids, Bee and Sam, with my legit funny husband, Rabbi Dean David Adelson.