From Anxiety to Action Speakers
Dr. Gabeba Baderoon — Gabeba Baderoon is an Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, African Studies, and Comparative Literature and holds courtesy appointments in the Social Thought Program and the School of International Affairs. She co-directs the African Feminist Initiative at Penn State with Alicia Decker and Maha Marouan. Baderoon received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Cape Town and has held post-doctoral fellowships in the Africana Research Center and the “Islam, African Publics and Religious Values” Project. Among her honors are the Sarah Baartman Senior Fellowship at the University of Cape Town, an Extraordinary Professorship of English at Stellenbosch University, and fellowships at the African Gender Institute, the Nordic Africa Institute, Bellagio and the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study. Baderoon is the author of the monograph Regarding Muslims: from Slavery to Post-Apartheid, which received the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences Best Non-Fiction Monograph Award, and the poetry collections The Dream in the Next Body, A hundred silences and The History of Intimacy. Her poetry has been recognized with the Daimler award, the Elisabeth Eybers Poetry Prize, the University of Johannesburg Prize for South African Writing and a Best Poetry Book Award from the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Gabeba introduced Dear Mandela.
Lisa Conway — Lisa Conway serves as VP of Global Market Sustainability for Interface – the flooring manufacturer that is leading industry to love the world. She and her team are responsible for activation of the company’s mission to become the most sustainable company in the world including Climate Take Back – the reversal of global warming. She is passionate about bringing awareness to the interconnectedness of environmental sustainability and human health. To drive understanding of the impact of carbon on human health, Lisa and her team provide educational programming around the need for transparency and prioritization of embodied carbon in specifications within the building industry. She co-founded the materials Carbon Action Network (materialsCAN) to mobilize this effort, now part of the non-profit Building Transparency where she serves on the Board of Directors. Lisa also serves on the Sustainability Advisory Board for Penn State University’s Smeal College of Business. Lisa participated in a conversation surrounding the positive role business can play on the environment after the showing of Beyond Zero on Wednesday, November 1st.
Dr. Shannon Cruz — Shannon Cruz is an Assistant Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at Penn State. She studies the determinants, processes, and outcomes of social influence, particularly in environmental contexts. More specifically, she is interested in how environmental attitudes are shaped by ideological factors, change dynamically as the result of social interaction in groups and networks, and can be altered by persuasive messages. Her current line of research focuses on climate change attitudes, examining how messages can help bridge the ideological divide on this issue. Her research has appeared in outlets such as the Journal of Environmental Psychology, Climatic Change, and Social Influence. Shannon will serve as a panelist in the upcoming film series, Creating Constructive Climate Action.
Nathan Havey — Nathan Havey is the Writer & Director of the podcast mini-series, 10 Things You Should Know About Stakeholder Capitalism, and Beyond Zero, the feature documentary film on Interface, a global carpet company leading the sustainable business revolution. In addition to this, he is the Co-Founder of Stakeholder Business, a training company that helps corporate leaders learn the critical lessons in Beyond Zero and bring them into their own companies. Nathan participated in a conversation surrounding the positive role business can play on the environment after the showing of Beyond Zero on Wednesday, November 1st.
Dr. Mark Ortiz — Mark Ortiz is an activist and Presidential Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Geography at Penn State. He completed his PhD in Geography at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2022. Broadly he is interested in transnational youth movements, the global politics of climate change, and youth popular and social media cultures. His doctoral research, funded by the National Science Foundation, characterized the pathways to institutional influence of emerging global youth climate movements such as the School Strikes for Climate and YOUNGO Youth network active in UN negotiations. During his postdoc, Mark is working to develop new storytelling approaches to better represent the geographical diversity of contemporary youth climate activism and elevating the stories of those young people on the frontlines of climate change often erased from mainstream narratives. He is a Leadership Team Member of the North Carolina Climate Justice Collective and has worked with numerous youth and intergenerational climate justice organizations including CliMates and the Climate Reality Project. He has also served as an expert panelist and consultant on topics related to youth empowerment for IDEO and the U.N. Foundation and served as a delegate to several UN climate change and sustainable development meetings around the world. Mark will serve as a panelist in the upcoming film series, Creating Constructive Climate Action.
Dr. Heather Swan — Heather Swan is an eco-poet, author, and professor of writing and environmental literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Poet Lore, Phoebe, Cold Mountain, The Raleigh Review, Basalt, About Place, Midwestern Gothic, The Hopper and anthologies such as Healing the Divide, New Poetry from the Midwest, and The Rewilding Anthology. Her chapbook, The Edge of Damage, was published by Parallel Press and won the Wisconsin Writers Chapbook Award, and her full collection, A Kinship with Ash, was published by Terrapin Books. Her nonfiction has appeared in journals such as Aeon, Catapult, The Learned Pig, Minding Nature, Edge Effects, Belt Magazine, and Resilience Journal. Her book, Where Honeybees Thrive, was published by Penn State University Press and won the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Prize. Her second book from PSU Press, Where the Grass Still Sings, is coming out this spring. Heather will serve as a panelist in the upcoming film series, Creating Constructive Climate Action.
