http://www.davidsuzuki.org/

David Suzuki, Chair of the David Suzuki Foundation, is an award-winning scientist, environmentalist and broadcaster.  He is renowned for his radio and television programs that explain the complexities of the natural sciences in a compelling, easily understood way.

Dr. Suzuki is a geneticist.  He graduated from Amherst College (Massachusetts) in 1958 with an Honors BA in Biology, followed by a Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Chicago.  He held a research associateship in the Biology Division of Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Lab (1961 – 1962), was an Assistant Professor in Genetics at the University of Alberta (1962 – 1963), and since then has been a faculty member of the University of British Columbia.  He is now Professor Emeritus of The University of British Columbia, Sustainable Development Research Institute.

In 1972, he was awarded the E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship for the outstanding research scientist in Canada under the age of 35.  He has won numerous academic awards and holds 18 honorary degrees in Canada, the U.S. and Australia. A member of the Royal Society of Canada and the Order of Canada, Dr. Suzuki has written 43 books, including 17 for children.  His 1976 textbook An Introduction to Genetic Analysis (with A.J.F. Griffiths), remains the most widely used genetics text book in the U.S. and has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Greek, Indonesian, Arabic, French and German.

Dr. Suzuki has received consistently high acclaim for his thirty years of award-winning work in broadcasting.  In 1974, he developed and hosted the long running popular science program Quirks and Quarks on CBC Radio.  He has since presented two influential documentary CBC radio series on the environment, It’s a Matter of Survival and From Naked Ape to Superspecies.  His television career began with CBC in 1971 when he wrote and hosted Suzuki on Science.  He then created and hosted a number of television specials, and in 1979 became the host of the award-winning The Nature of Things with David Suzuki.  He has won four Gemini Awards as best host of a Canadian television series for The Nature of Things, which he has been with for 26 of the 46 seasons they have been on air.  His eight part television series, A Planet for the Taking, won an award from the United Nations.  His eight part PBS series, The Secret of Life, was praised internationally, as was his five part series The Brain for the Discovery Channel. On June 10, 2002 he received the John Drainie Award for broadcasting excellence.

http://www.conserveindia.org/main.php
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/03/eveningnews/main1369212.shtml

Anita Ahuja is the president of Conserve, a Delhi-based non-governmental organization (NGO) working on waste management was formed in 1998. In 2002, Conserve started working on developing an alternative recycling process that uses abundant and freely available waste plastic bags as a resource for income generation for the urban poor while being more eco-friendly than the conventional plastic recycling process. Their efforts bore fruit and they were successful in developing a wide range of products with great market appeal. Conserve chose to export these products and received an encouraging response from foreign buyers. As a result, Conserve HRP was created as a commercial vehicle to process these orders. Anita is also a writer, designer and the creative head of Conserve HRP. Her approach to slum development focuses on market opportunities as the driving force for poverty reduction. This has led to the “Recycling of waste polythene bag” project which has allowed many marginalized people to escape income poverty.

http://www.gijsbakker.com/
http://www.droogdesign.nl/

Trained as a jewellery- and industrial designer in Amsterdam and Stockholm, Bakker designs jewellery, home accessories and household appliances, furniture, interiors, public spaces and exhibitions. His design work has won numerous international awards in a wide range of fields including furniture, jewelry, applied arts and architecture, and is represented in museum and private collections worldwide.
Bakker has held positions as a lecturer at the Design Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Arnhem and the Delft University of Technology, and is currently a professor at The Design Academy in Eindhoven. He lectures, serves on juries, conducts workshops and exhibits all over the world. Bakker is also design advisor to several organizations, including Cor Unum and the American Craft Museum.
Bakker cofounded the Dutch design collective, Droog Design, in 1993, and the concept-driven Chi ha paura...? foundation in 1996.

http://www.knickerbockerdesign.com
http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/001958.html

Nicholas Blechman is principle of Knickerbocker Design, an award winning graphic design and illustration studio in New York. His clients have included the New York Times, Random House, The Nation, Parsons, Saturday Night, Audubon Society, Greenpeace, Harper Collins, Little Brown & Co., Penguin Books, Simon and Schuster and the United Nations. Blechman's illustrations have appeared in numerous publications including Newsweek, the New York Times magazine, Oprah, GQ and Dwell.
He is the founder and editor of the award-winning magazine NOZONE - a forum for social critique through art - which explores themes such as "The Idea of Nature" , "Special Destruction Dispatch", "Utopia/Dystopia", "Poverty", "Work" and "Empire".
Blechman also copublishes a series of limited edition illustration books and is the author of “Fresh Dialogue One: New Voices in Graphic Design” and "100% EVIL". Former art director for the New York Times Op-Ed page, Blechman currently teaches design at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

http://www.alabamachanin.com/

Natalie “Alabama” Chanin creates projects that reflect a wide range of disciplines, from sustainable clothing and home furnishings to a limited edition jewelry line.  Additionally, she has been involved in visual documentations such as the Kitchen Project, a collection of recipes, stories and photographs from local kitchen aficionados. Natalie is currently developing an archive of oral histories entitled, “The History of Textiles,” which is a collection of oral histories from textile workers including farmers and their wives, displaced factory workers and home sewers.  Her documentary film, “Stitch,” is like a road map through rural America as told through the eyes of those who made quilts, as well as those who used them. Natalie Chanin is best known for her work as co-founder and designer of Project Alabama, which became known for elaborately embellished and completely hand-sewn garments, made from recycled materials by local artisans and sold in stores around the world.  Today, Natalie runs Alabama Chanin, a company which continues to enlist the craftsmanship of local artisans and strives to bring a contemporary context to age-old techniques. Natalie sees herself as a perpetuator of what she calls the “Living Arts”.  These Living Arts consist of craft and traditions that have been passed down through generations of women and men – connecting us to our roots, our past, our community, and consequently to our present.  Natalie works towards preserving the Living Arts as an integral part of the social fabric of communities.  She feels that such traditions are the backbone of what makes a community, a home.  By preserving these integral crafts and traditions we work towards ensuring sustainability of product and eventually providing the basis for truly sustainable contemporary communities. Natalie has a Degree in Environmental Design from North Carolina State University and works simultaneously as designer, manufacturer, stylist, filmmaker, mother, artisan, cook and collector of stories from her home in Florence, Alabama.

http://www.croxtonarc.com/home.cfm

After working with a number of distinguished architectural firms including Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Richard Meier Associates, Kirsten Childs, ASID, joined Croxton Collaborative Architects as director of interior design in 1985 where she played a key role in developing the company's sustainable agenda. Childs has received national recognition from several professional organizations including ASID, which she represented at the „Greening of the White House.‰ She continues to represent ASID at sustainable symposia across the country and has published numerous articles in professional publications. In 1989, she directed a team of professionals in the design of the NRDC, which was acknowledged as the first recipient of Interiors magazine's Award for Socially Conscious Design in 1990, and subsequently received the AIA National Award for Environmentally Sensitive Design in 1991. Childs has taken an active role in the development of LEED® and chaired the USGBC's LEED Environmental Quality Technical Advisory Group for four years, stepping down in 2005.  During that period, she served on the LEED Steering Committee, as well as the ASID's Sustainable Design Council, and continues to participate with the LEED Corporate Interiors Core Committee.

http://www.elupton.com/index.php?id=28

Sheila Levrant de Bretteville created the first Women's Design program at Cal Arts in 1971 and became the first tenured professor and director of studies in graphic design at Yale University School of Art in 1991. During the two decades between she pioneered a new form of graphic designer-historian on both coasts of the United States and most recently in Russia. Through her deep research into the neighborhoods where her works are sited, her respect for the everyday life and memories of a community, de Bretteville has produced more than a dozen projects that are significant and sustain their local populations. For having authored and designed innovative and feminist print graphics, as well as creating more than a dozen aesthetically rich, metaphoric projects embedding typography and images in the material fabric of public sites - sidewalks, stairways, railings, light fixtures, stairs - her work was featured in the Cooper Heiwitt's 2000 Tiennial and she was awarded the golden medal for leadership by The American Institute of Graphic Arts in 2005.

Rebecca Earley

http://www.beckyearley.com/
http://www.tedresearch.net/

Rebecca Earley is a London based textile designer, and Senior Research Fellow at the University of the Arts London. She currently produces hand and digitally printed textiles for her own label, undertakes public art projects and commissions, and is an educator, facilitator and curator. Earley graduated from Central St Martin’s in 1994 and set up her label ‘B.Earley’ the following year. Earley became a Senior Research Fellow at Chelsea in 2002 and has continued to investigate new techniques and theoretical approaches to textile design. Recent projects include the curation of Well Fashioned, an exhibition dedicated to eco fashion, at the Crafts Council Gallery in March 2006. Included in the exhibition is the Earley’s recent design work, the Top 100 Project, which explores the benefits of using recycled synthetics. The blouse collections have been exhibited in France, China and London, and were seen on the catwalk in Paris in November 2004. Earley was nominated by the public for the Great Briton 2006 award in the category of the creative industries.

http://www.carboymobility.com
http://powerofdesign.aiga.org/content.cfm/sturges_bio_page


As President of Intrago, a community mobility company, Dan Sturges looks at how transportation is evolving and what new possibilities for personal mobility are likely to emerge. He is especially interested with efforts to rethink mobility for the information age. Trained at the Art Center College as an automotive designer, Sturges left his job at General Motors in 1988 to create small vehicles to fill the gap between the motor scooter and the automobile. By the age of 29, he had started his own car company (rans2) to build Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (over 30,000 now built).  Today his company is owned by DaimlerChrysler and is the most popular battery-operated electric vehicle on U.S. streets. Sturges has been widely recognized by the media for his pioneering efforts; he was selected as one of the top 40 designers in the U.S. by I.D. magazine and featured in Automobile magazine and The Wall Street Journal. In 1998, Wired took Dan around the United States for a week to observe the future of transportation, resulting in a 10-page story. In the April 2006, 20th-anniversary issue of Automobile magazine, Sturges presented his ideas on the future of the automobile.

http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/


Susan S. Szenasy is Editor in Chief of Metropolis, the award-winning, New York City-based magazine of architecture, culture and design. Since 1986 she has lead the magazine through 20 years of landmark design journalism, achieving domestic and international recognition. Szenasy’s training was on the job—beginning with Interiors magazine she rose quickly from editorial assistant to senior editor until being named chief editor of Residential Interiors. Today she is recognized as a preeminent authority on design. In choosing experts for their new documentary, design: e2, on the economics of environmental consciousness, PBS chose to interview Szenasy extensively as a keystone authority on sustainability. Believing that design and architecture are humanist activities, she is committed to education. As professor of Design Ethics at New York’s Parsons School of Design, she works to instill the values of responsible sustainability on the next generation. Professionals in the field also benefit from Szenasy frequent lecturing at conferences around the world. She is the guiding light behind Metropolis’ own events, such as the Tropical Green Conference on sustainable building in tropical zones, which succeeded in large part due to her tremendous efforts in bringing a vital topic to the fore. Szenasy has authored several books, including The Home and Light, and sits on the boards of the Coalition for Interior Design Accreditation (formerly FIDER), Fashion Institute of Technology and the Landscape Architecture Foundation. She has been honored with the International Interior Design Association’s
(IIDA) Presidential Commendation and as an American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) distinguished speaker on the topic of ethics in design. As co-founder of Rebuild Downtown Our Town, Susan worked with a coalition of city organizations and individuals to join together expertise on building the 21st century metropolis on the site of the former World Trade Center.