People

Atossa Soltani is the Founder and President of Amazon Watch, a nonprofit organization founded in 1996 to protect the rainforest and advance the rights of indigenous peoples of the Amazon Basin. Atossa served as Amazon Watch’s first Executive Director for 18 years and continues to support the organization’s mission. Currently Atossa is leading the development of an Amazon Watch and Pachamama Alliance joint-initiative to secure permanent protection for the most biodiverse rainforest in the world, a vast region on the Ecuador-Peru border in the headwaters of the Amazon River. She's also the Director Global Strategy, Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative, which is building a shared vision among indigenous peoples, NGOs, the philanthropic community, social entrepreneurs and governments towards establishing a bi-national protected region – off-limits to industrial scale resource extraction, and governed in accordance with traditional indigenous principles of cooperation and harmony that foster a mutually enhancing human-Earth relationship. [More info](https://sacredheadwaters.org/)

Atul Gawande is a surgeon and writer based in Massachusetts. From 1992 to 1993 he served as senior health policy advisor to the Clinton campaign and the Clinton White House. Since 1998 he has been a staff writer for *The New Yorker*. He is on the currently faculty of Brigham and Women's Hospital as a general and endocrine surgeon, and is a staff member of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. He is also an Associate Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Research Director for the Brigham and Women's Center for Surgery and Public Health. He has written two best-selling books, *Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science* and *Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance*.

**Dr. Atyia Martin** was appointed by Mayor Martin J. Walsh as the Chief Resilience Officer for the City of Boston as part of the 100 Resilient Cities pioneered by the Rockefeller foundation. She is adjunct faculty at Northeastern University in the Master of Homeland Security program. She is the former Director of the Office of Public Health Preparedness at the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC). She has a variety of experiences working in emergency management, intelligence, and homeland security.

Audacia Ray is a media maker and activist with a focus on sexual rights. Presently, Ray is the Program Officer for Online Communications and Campaigns at the International Womens Health Coalition and an adjunct professor of Human Sexuality at Rutgers University. She is the author of Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads, and Cashing In on Internet Sexploration and is the award winning director and producer of the porn feature, The Bi Apple, as well as the producer and star of the comedic film short, Dacia's Love Machine. Ray is a former sex worker who was an executive editor at $pread magazine for three years and is now on the board of advocacy organization Sex Work Awareness, for which she edits the public education blog, Sex Work 101.

Audra Parker is Chief Operating Officer/Executive Director of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound. Audra has been with the Alliance since early 2003. She has 20 years of experience in strategy and business management, has consulted to a wide range of industries, and is active in local community affairs. She holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a Bachelor of Science in Applied Mathematics and Economics from Brown University. She lives in Osterville with her four children.

Audrey Falk is a production intern for Boston Public Radio.

Audrey Porter is the Assistant Director and the Coordinator of Survivor Services of The My Life My Choice Project (MLMC). Porter has been an integral part of MLMC since 2003 and was the first survivor in Massachusetts to begin mentoring exploited girls. Drawing from her personal experience in “the Life”, Porter seeks to help vulnerable girls avoid prostitution and/or leave exploitation behind them. She has served as a consultant to the Administrative Office of the Trial Court’s “Redesigning the Court’s Response to Prostitution” project. Porter is a 2008 recipient of the prestigious Petra Foundation Fellowship.

Audrey Schulman co-founded HEET in 2008. Featured in the Washington Post as a Climate Hero, she created the first-in-the-nation statewide zoomable public map of utility-reported gas leaks. She started the Large Volume Leak Study, which discovered a way for gas utilities to identify super-emitting gas leaks and repair them. She has helped develop HEET’s innovative solution to transition gas utilities from gas to networked geothermal, or systems of networked ground source heat pumps. Schulman is also the author of six novels, which have been translated into 12 languages and reviewed by The New Yorker, The Economist and CNN.

Augustine Conduah practices orthopedic surgery, with a specialty in sports medicine. His academic history includes a fellowship at Hughston Sports Medicine Hospital and a medical degree from the University of California at Los Angeles.

Peabody Essex Musuem's Head Curator **Austen Barron Bailly** leads talk on exhibition \_American Epics: Thomas Hart Benton and Hollywood. \_ Bailly previously worked as the Head of the American Art Department at the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art (LACMA). She also held positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Wildenstein & Co. Inc. in New York. [Photo Credit](http://www.pem.org/press/press\_release/231-pem\_appoints\_first\_curator\_of\_american\_art "")

Austin Blackmon is the Chief of the City of Boston's Environment, Energy, and Open Space cabinet. He represented Boston at the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, where the city received a C40 award for Smart Cities and Smart Community Engagement.

Austin Hoyt was a Producer and Executive Producer at WGBH Boston from March 1965 to March 2003 when he founded his own company, Austin Hoyt Productions. Hoyt won a Peabody Award for his contributions to American Experience's special series of Presidential portraits and biographies of Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower.

Austin is an analyst for GTM Research covering downstream demand for the U.S. solar market. Prior to joining GTM Research, Austin worked at The Boston Consulting Group, where he supported the energy practice as a research associate. During his undergraduate tenure at the University of New Hampshire, he spent time in Egypt and Jordan researching the potential for Islamic microfinance in poverty alleviation and established the first sustainable investment sector in the University's student-run investment group. He graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Economics and Political Science and a minor in Middle Eastern Studies.