Gail Whiteman has a PhD in Management from Queen’s University in Canada and is an Associate Professor of Business-Society Management at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University in the Netherlands. Her research and teaching are take a provocative deep ecology or systems approach to sustainability with climate as a critical theme. Her approach to teaching climate to undergraduate and masters students has been recently covered by the Wall Street Journal Europe. Together with Dr. Bettina Wittneben, she is co-founder of the Sustainability and Climate Research Network at Erasmus University. She has published academic research in top management and ecology journals including the Academy of Management Journal, Ecology & Society, Ambio, Human Relations, Journal of Business Ethics, Organization and Environment, and several book chapters. She has also written numerous popular magazine articles for Elle Canada, European Business Forum, Juno, Today’s Parent, etc. In the past she lived for nearly two years with the James Bay Cree (an Indigenous group in subarctic Canada), researching sustainable livelihoods. Gail has long-standing ties with a number of civil society activists and organizations in North America and Europe. Most importantly, she is the mother of two boys, Max (6) and Brix (3), and she is attempting to live a carbon-friendly lifestyle.

Katy Mamen is an environmental consultant, writer and educator based in Sonoma County, California. She holds a BSc in Physical Geography from McGill University in Montreal, and an MSc in Holistic Science from Schumacher College in the UK, a groundbreaking international program that focuses on understanding and working with complex systems. Katy’s expertise is in the areas of sustainable food systems, global biogeochemistry, Gaia Theory, and social change strategies. She has created popular environmental educational tools used by communities across North America and has published several environmental works including Ripe for Change: Rethinking California’s Food Economy, Wetting California’s Appetite: The Water Challenge for Sustainable Agriculture, and the Oakland Institute policy brief Facing Goliath: Challenging the Impacts of Supermarket Consolidation on our Local Economies, Communities, and Food Security. Katy has coordinated the groundbreaking Ag Futures Alliance roundtable project and the Local Food Program of the International Society for Ecology and Culture. Katy also speaks widely on a range of environmental issues and has worked with traditional farmers in Europe, Latin America and Asia to promote their viability in increasingly globalizing markets. Katy lives in a rural intentional community in Occidental, California, that practices a low-carbon lifestyle.