Yolanda Kakabadse was Minister of Environment for Ecuador. She served as NGO Liaison Officer for the United Nations Conference for Environment and Development (the Rio Earth Summit) in 1992 and is Former President of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) (1996 – 2004)and former President of WWF International (2010 – 2017). Ms. Kakabadse was the first Executive Director of Fundacion Natura in Ecuador and in 1993 she founded Fundacion Futuro Latinoamericano. She is a Member of the Board of several national and international organizations of Civil Society and the Private Sector.

M. Sanjayan is a global conservation scientist whose work spans from genetics to wildlife migration to nature’s impacts on human well-being. He has served as Conservation International’s chief executive officer since 2017. Sanjayan holds a master’s degree from the University of Oregon and a doctorate from the University of California-Santa Cruz, and his peer-reviewed scientific work has been published in journals including Science, Nature and Conservation Biology. He is a visiting researcher at UCLA and a distinguished professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is also a Catto Fellow at the Aspen Institute.

Winona LaDuke is a rural development economist working on issues of economic, food, and energy sovereignty. She lives and works on the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota, and leads several organizations including Honor the Earth, Anishinaabe Agriculture Institute, Akiing, and Winona’s Hemp. These organizations develop and model cultural-based sustainable development strategies utilizing renewable energy and sustainable food systems. She is an international thought leader in the areas of climate justice, renewable energy, and environmental justice. She is also a leader in the work of protecting Indigenous plants and heritage foods from patenting and genetic engineering. She has authored six books including; Recovering the Sacred, All our Relations, Last Standing Woman, The Winona LaDuke Chronicles, and her newest work To Be a Water Protector.

A Public Health Physician and urban epidemiologist, Tolullal Oni’s work supports a coordinated approach between science, policy and societal role players, identifying creative and long-term strategies to address complex urban health challenges in rapidly growing cities. She has served as scientific adviser for several organisations including Future Earth and the International Science Council and is an editorial board member of Lancet Planetary Health, Cities and Health, and the Journal of Urban Health. In recognition of her work, she has been profiled in the Lancet journal, Science magazine, and the British Medical Journal, and is a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences, Next Einstein Forum Fellow and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader.

Her decades of experience span academia, science-policy and the non-profit and international development sectors. She is a Professor of Practice for Public-Private Sector Partnerships at McGill University’s Institute for the Study of International Development, where her research interests focus on innovation, gender and sustainable development for prosperity creation. Her teaching over the last decade has focused on facilitating leadership development. She is a member of Rwanda’s National Science and Technology Council and has been a member of the Presidential Advisory Council for Rwandan President Paul Kagame since its inception in September 2007. She is a member of the Expert Consultation Group on the Post COVID-19 Implications on Collaborative Governance of Genomics Research, Innovation, and Genetic Diversity. Éliane is a member of the African Development Bank’s Expert Global Community of Practice on COVID-19 Response Strategies in Africa. She is a member of the newly created Capitals Coalition Supervisory Board. Éliane teaches and advises in Leadership programs to help equip executives in science, innovation and international development with tools that support inner and outer sustainable transformation towards global prosperity.