Juma Inniss is the Founder and Director of the Message, a movement to empower teens to make positive life choices in a world powered by media. The Message serves U.S. and Canadian youth in middle school and beyond, equipping them with media literacy and other 21st-century skills. Juma directly engages students through media literacy concerts, workshops, and inspirational talks, and offers consulting services for parents and organizations seeking to improve their communications with youth.

Ananda Lee Tan is the Just Transition Campaign Director of the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA), a national alliance of 60+ community-based organizations, networks, and movement support groups working together to replace the “dig, burn, dump” economy with local, living solutions that serve the needs of healthy communities and ecosystems. Ananda has been organizing grassroots movements around the world since 1986, building activist coalitions, networks, and alliances for land defense, worker rights, environmental justice, energy democracy, ecological forestry and food sovereignty.

Nick Tilsen is a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation, the founding Executive Director of the Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation, and a father of four children. Nick has over 15 years of experience in working with non-profits and tribal nations on projects that have a social mission. As the founding executive director of Thunder Valley CDC, Nick has played a vital role in creating a community development organization that is working with the local grassroots people and national organizations in the development of a sustainable regenerative community that creates jobs, builds homes, and creates new opportunity on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. In 2014, Tilsen was selected as an ASHOKA Fellow, joining a global network of the world’s leading social innovators. Nick works tirelessly to bridge governmental and philanthropic partnerships that are centered around getting resources into the hands of people who are leading positive social change work on the ground in Native American Communities. Nick sits on the boards of the Indigenous Peoples Power Project and the Water Protector Legal Collective, and he helped with on-the-ground organizing in the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline in Standing Rock. Nick firmly believes that we need to defend Indigenous nations from negative resource extraction while at the same time building the sustainable and regenerative communities of tomorrow.

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap is the National Organizer and Spokesperson for Young Evangelicals for Climate Action (Y.E.C.A.). Kyle holds an undergraduate degree in religious studies from Calvin College (MI, B.A. ’12) and a master of divinity degree from Western Theological Seminary (MI, M.Div. ’16). Much of his professional experience has involved the integration of theology, science, and action toward a deeper awareness of our Christian responsibility to care for God’s earth and to love our neighbors, both at home and around the world. In 2015, Kyle was named to Midwest Energy Group’s inaugural 40 Under 40 cohort for his work on climate change education and advocacy. He has also been featured on national media outlets such as NPR and PBS. He is married to Allison and resides in Ann Arbor, MI.