To Bear and Nurture Council

Jane Androski

Jane is a designer and brand strategist based in Providence RI. As co-principal of the studio Design Agency for ten years, she collaborated with non-profit and educational institutions to elevate issues from food system enterprise, to cultural heritage, to prison reform. She has a background in teaching and community youth arts engagement. Prior to graduate school at the Rhode Island School of Design, Jane served as Assistant Director of the Difficult Dialogues initiative at Clark University, her alma mater. As part of her ongoing design practice, she serves as Communications Consultant for the Council on the Uncertain Human Future.

Leia Barnett

Leia is the Greater Gila New Mexico Advocate for WildEarth Guardians. She brings her love and deep reverence for the high desert country of the Southwest to the Greater Gila campaign. Leia graduated from the University of New Mexico’s cultural anthropology program, where she focused on the ways the more-than-human world can be reimagined through anthropological theory and practice.

Sarah Buie, convener

Sarah is a designer / educator who, through council practice, encourages presence, listening, collaboration and compassion in this time of polycrisis. She is Professor Emerita and Research Scholar at Clark University, and served for nine years as Director of the Higgins School of Humanities and its Difficult Dialogues initiative. She is Founding Convener of the Council on the Uncertain Human Future, and co-founded the campus-wide curriculum initiative A new Earth conversation at Clark. Sarah was an award-winning museum exhibition designer for 25 years.

Esha Chiocchio

Esha is a photographer, filmmaker, artist, and National Geographic Explorer who uses her combined knowledge of visual storytelling, anthropology, and sustainable communities to weave narratives about land, culture, and climate solutions. Chiocchio has photographed for publications, non-profits, and commercial clients, including National Geographic Magazine, High Country News, Edible, Newsweek, and Bonefish Grill. Her work has been exhibited in France, South Korea, Mali, Spain, Washington, DC, North Carolina, and New Mexico, where she is represented by EVOKE Contemporary.

Meehan Crist

Meehan is writer in residence in biological sciences at Columbia University. Her work has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, the London Review of Books, The Atlantic, The Nation, Scientific American, and Science, and was selected for Best American Science and Nature Writing 2021. Awards include the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, the Climate Narratives Prize and book grants from the Sloan Foundation and the Robert B. Silvers Foundation. She is co-editor of What Future 2018 (Unnamed Press) and her nonfiction book about the climate crisis, Is It OK to Have a Child?, is forthcoming from Random House in the US and Chatto & Windus in the UK.

Alison Hawthorne Deming

A poet and essayist, Alison is the author of five nonfiction books, including A Woven World: On Fashion, Fishermen, and the Sardine Dress from Counterpoint Press and Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit from Milkweed. She is also author of five poetry collections including Stairway to Heaven and Science and Other Poems, winner of the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her work centers on the relationship between nature and culture, art and science. She co-edited with Lauret Savoy the anthology The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity, and the Natural World. Her work is anthologized in the Norton Book of Nature Writing and Best American Science and Nature Writing. Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, she is former Regents Professor Emerita at the University of Arizona.

Denise Fort

Denise has an extensive background in environmental and natural resources law; her 40 years of practice, politics, reflecting and writing are animated by a belief that society must turn toward a more sustainable relationship with its environment. She is a Professor Emerita at the UNM School of Law, where she directed the Water Resources Administration Program and the Utton Center. She was also the director of the New Mexico Environment Department and of the Department of Finance for the state.

Brittany Geode

Brittany is the Chief of Staff at the Academy for the Love of Learning, a nonprofit based in Santa Fe, NM, which strives to transform learning, the way we think about it, and the way we approach it. She is also deeply involved with the Santa Fe Community Yoga Center, a nonprofit that works to make yoga and mindfulness practices accessible to all bodies in the Santa Fe area, including in our local schools and to incarcerated populations. Brittany earned her M.A. at St. John’s College in Santa Fe and her B.A. in Political Science from Buena Vista University.

Merle Lefkoff

Merle is a social change entrepreneur whose practice is devoted to the application of nonlinear complex systems thinking to whole system change. She has been a mediator, facilitator, and leadership trainer in conflict zones around the world, and led the planning group of NGO leaders at the United Nations launch of the Gross National Happiness index. She is the founder and co-chair of the Center for Emergent Diplomacy, presently in partnership with the Swedish group, Timeless Knowledge.

Kathleen Dean Moore

Kathleen is a philosopher and climate-ethics writer, whose most recent books include Great Tide Rising: Toward Clarity and Moral Courage in a Time of Planetary Change; Earth’s Wild Music: Celebrating and Defending the Songs of the Natural World; Bearing Witness: The Human Rights Case Against Fracking and Climate Change; and now the illustrated Take Heart: Encouragement for Earth’s Weary Lovers. Her co-edited book, Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril has just published its tenth anniversary edition. Formerly Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Oregon State University, Moore left academia to focus on writing and speaking about the moral urgency of action of the climate and extinction crises. She often works with music and film, having written the scripts for a number of short films, including “Bedrock Rights: Global Action Against Fracking and Climate Change,” “The Extinction Variations,” and twenty “Animal Interludes.”

Chrissie Orr

Chrissie is an artist, animateur and creative investigator focused on developing a relational aesthetic around community and site with issues relevant to both. She has created community-based art projects in diverse areas of the world and is recognized internationally for her pioneering work. She is a founder of the SeedBroadcast Collective, co-founder of the Academy for the Love of Learning’s EL Otro Lado Project and Living Story Collaborative. Chrissie was born in Scotland, a descendant of the Picts (the painted ones).

Emily Raboteau

Emily writes at the intersection of social and environmental justice, race, climate change, and parenthood. She is the author of Lessons for Survival: Mothering again the Apocalypse (Macmillan, 2023), and Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora, winner of an American Book Award and finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. A contributing editor at Orion Magazine and a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, her essays have appeared and been anthologized in The New Yorker, The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Nation, Best American Science Writing, Best American Travel Writing, and Best African American Essays. Distinctions include an inaugural Climate Narratives Prize from Arizona State University, the Deadline Club Award in Feature Reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists New York Chapter, and grants and fellowships from NYFA, the Bronx Council on the Arts, MacDowell and Yaddo. She has recently served as nonfiction faculty at the Bread Loaf Environmental Writing Conference and is a professor of creative writing in the English Department at the City College of New York (CUNY) in Harlem.

Phoebe Schenker

Phoebe is the Executive Director of Reuse Alliance, based in Sonoma County. She began her career as an architect, primarily at EHDD in San Francisco, and an exhibit designer always focused on sustainability and reuse. Over fifteen years she designed many public buildings, including the award-winning projects Lands End Lookout in San Francisco, the New Seas Aquarium at the Point Defiance Zoo and the Aquarium in Tacoma, WA. Most recently she served as the Chief Planning Officer at the Eames Institute. For her Masters in Architecture from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, she did her thesis on the reuse of big box stores. She is also the founder of The Mending Library, a pop-up that helps people repair and rewear their clothes.

Diana Chapman Walsh

Diana (CUHF Core Leadership Team) served as the President of Wellesley College for fourteen years; her presidency was characterized by her collaborative leadership style, innovations in curriculum, campus expansion and successful fund-raising. Diana was the Norman Professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and chair of the Department of Health and Social Behavior prior to her presidency. She has written, edited and co-edited twelve books on both healthcare and education topics, and a seminal essay on Trustworthy Leadership published by the Fetzer Institute. She served on many boards, including the governing board and executive committee of the MIT Corporation. Her recent memoir, The Claims of Life (2023), was published by the MIT Press.

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