Bigger Than Us

MICHAEL SHELDRICK is a policy entrepreneur and a driving force behind the efforts of Global Citizen to end extreme poverty. As a Co-Founder and Chief Policy, Impact, and Government Affairs Officer, he leads the organization's campaigns to mobilize support from governments, businesses, and foundations. He is the author of the upcoming Amazon best-selling book, From Idea to Impact: A Playbook for Influencing and Implementing Change in a Divided World (to be published by Wiley on April 9, 2024).

With a career that spans the world of pop and policy, Michael has worked with an impressive roster of international artists such as Beyoncé, Coldplay, Idris and Sabrina Elba, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Priyanka Chopra, Rihanna and Usher, as well as prominent political leaders including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley, former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and former Australian Prime Ministers Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.

He has co-produced some of the world's most impactful social campaigns and events, including the annual Global Citizen Festival in New York, the Guinness World Record-winning virtual concert One World: Together At Home, and the Nelson Mandela 2018 centennial celebration, Mandela 100. These initiatives have reached millions of people in over 150 countries and helped secure over $40 billion in support for local and regional organizations working to provide access to essential resources such as healthcare, education, and climate resilience.

A sought-after speaker and author on policy advocacy, sustainable development, and corporate responsibility, Michael has shared his insights at conferences and summits worldwide. His insights have also featured in leading outlets including Forbes, The Guardian, The Hill, HuffPost, Nikkei and Fairfax Media, and his voice heard on major news networks such as ABC, BBC, France 24, Sky News and CNN.

He has been recognized as a finalist for the 2017 Young Commonwealth Person of the Year and serves on: the board of the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global citizens; the Leadership Council of aable, a fintech company connecting compassionate investors with underserved communities; and the Advisory Board of the Nigerian Solidarity Support Fund. He is also a co-host of the Global Town Hall, a North-South, East-West meeting featuring world leaders and leading minds to connect with global citizens.

https://michaelsheldrick.com/

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/

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Vince Beiser is an award-winning journalist and author of “The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization.” The book has been translated into five languages, was a finalist for a PEN America award and a California Book Award, and spawned a TEDx talk. Vince is currently at work on a new book, “Power Metal”, about how the materials we need for digital technology and renewable energy are causing environmental havoc, political upheaval, mayhem and murder—and how we can do better.

Vince has reported from over 100 countries, states, provinces, kingdoms, occupied territories, no man’s lands and disaster zones. He has exposed conditions in California’s harshest prisons, trained with troops bound for Iraq, ridden with the first responders to natural disasters, and hunted down other stories from around the world for publications including Wired, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Time, The Guardian, Mother Jones, Playboy, Rolling Stone, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.

Vince’s work has been honored by Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Columbia, Medill and Missouri Graduate Schools of Journalism, and many other institutions. He has three times been part of a team that won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence, and shared in an Emmy for his work with the PBS TV series SoCal Connected. He is also a grantee of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

https://vincebeiser.com/

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Steve Oldham is a prominent entrepreneur and carbon removal advocate. He currently serves as CEO of Captura where he is leading the commercialization of Direct Ocean Capture – a climate solution that combines innovative technology with the natural carbon removal powers of the ocean to remove CO2 from the atmosphere at scale.

Steve’s career has focused on bringing ground-breaking technologies to market in a variety of domains, including robotics, aerospace, and climate. Steve was previously CEO of leading Direct Air Capture (DAC) company, Carbon Engineering, where he grew the company from ~15 to ~150 people, and established the partnership with Occidental that led to their acquisition of Carbon Engineering in November 2023.

Steve also served as Senior Vice President, Strategic Business Development for MDA, a leading Canadian technology firm. At MDA, Steve held a variety of senior executive positions across Canada and the US, covering General Management, Business Development, and Strategy, and secured financing from Government and commercial sources for a variety of complex technologies, including several large satellite programs.

https://capturacorp.com/

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Seth Godin is an author, entrepreneur and most of all, A teacher.

Seth is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, and speaker.

Though renowned for his writing and speaking, Seth also founded two companies, Squidoo and Yoyodyne (acquired by Yahoo!).

By focusing on everything from effective marketing and leadership, to the spread of ideas and changing everything, Seth has been able to motivate and inspire countless people around the world.

In 2013, Seth was one of just three professionals inducted into the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame. In an astonishing turn of events, in May 2018, he was inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame as well. He might be the only person in both.

https://thecarbonalmanac.org/

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Stacy Flynn is CEO and a founding partner of Evrnu, a textile innovations company. An accomplished sustainable systems expert, Stacy is committed to developing innovative fiber technologies that reduce textile waste and preserve natural resources.

Under Stacy's leadership, Evrnu is working to solve the most pressing challenges facing the global textile and apparel industry. In 2019 Evrnu debuted NuCyclTM, a technology that transforms garment waste into a resource by recovering the raw materials for reuse. A future where textile producers, brands, retailers and customers reimagine their relationship with nature is now becoming a reality.

Evrnu has been recognized as an organization making notable contributions to the circular economy as well as being an honoree in the 2020 Fast Company World Changing Ideas.

Stacy is a TEDx and keynote speaker and a passionate voice of authority advocating for materials reuse for sustainability in textiles. She is an Unreasonable Impact Fellow, along with a cohort of CEOs that are advancing other world changing ideas. Prior to founding the company in 2014 with her business partner Christo Stanev, Stacy worked as a global textile specialist for nearly two decades in roles at DuPont, Eddie Bauer and Target.

She holds an MBA in Sustainable Systems from Presidio Graduate Institute and a Bachelor of Science degree in Textile Development and Marketing from the Fashion Institute of Technology.

https://evrnu.com/

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Bernard has over 20 years of public and

Mr. Brown holds a master’s degree in

Bernard Brown holds a Renewable Energy

https://empirediversifiedenergy.com/

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Peter Kelly-Detwiler has 30 years of experience in the electric energy arena. He writes for Forbes.com and other publications on topics related to disruptive innovation and its impact on the electricity infrastructure. He provides strategic advice to clients and investors, helping them to navigate this transitional period. Peter is also the author of The Energy Switch - a book about how companies and customers are transforming the electrical grid and the future of power.

Mr. Kelly-Detwiler has spent much of his career in various areas of competitive power markets. As Senior Vice President at Constellation Energy, he oversaw creation of VirtuWatt – a market leading platform to facilitate real-time awareness of electricity pricing and consumption and bidding of assets into competitive markets. He is currently writing a book on the transformation of electric power markets, to be published by Prometheus Books in the Spring of 2021.

⁠https://www.peterkellydetwiler.com/⁠

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Raj Asava, originally from India, enjoyed a successful corporate career in senior/executive roles for renowned companies, including serving as President of two startup organizations. He retired in 2010 as the Chief Strategy Officer at Perot Systems. Aradhana (Anna) Asava, has over 20 years of experience in the Global Information Technology industry, specializing in leading organization-wide transformational programs. In 2009, Anna transitioned from corporate America to philanthropic endeavors, demonstrating her results-oriented approach and knack for creative problem-solving.

Together, Raj and Anna founded HungerMitao in 2017, a movement aimed at uniting the Indian American community to combat food insecurity. Within six years, HungerMitao expanded to multiple cities, facilitating over 55 million meals for the Feeding America network of Food Banks. Notably, the HungerMitao model has been shared with the Chinese and Hispanic communities.

Their outstanding contributions to philanthropy have garnered recognition and accolades:

• August 2021: Raj and Anna honored as top 100 philanthropists of Indian origin.

• August 2022: President Joe Biden awarded them the prestigious "Lifetime Achievement" medal.

• January 2023: Raj was selected as one of the prominent Indo-Americans in "Jewels of India: Leading Indo-American Personalities (Vol II)" where his personal, professional, and philanthropic journey is highlighted along with that of other leaders like US Vice President Kamala Harris and Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

• May 2023: Hunger Free America commended the impactful HungerMitao movement and honored Raj and Anna Asava for their tireless efforts.

• November 2023: Anna and Raj received the 2023 National Philanthropy Day Outstanding Volunteer Fundraisers award from the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

The Asavas' dedication to eradicating hunger and their innovative approach through HungerMitao have left a lasting impact on communities in need.

https://www.hungermitao.org/

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Dip is a technologist, engineer, and entrepreneur. He lives on the beach with his fantastic family (Wife, Daughter, and Dog). He is currently the Chief Technology Officer of Soluna (Nasdaq: SLNH), a company aiming to make stranded green energy profitable using off-grid high-density computing. Before Soluna, he was a co-founder of Ecovent, a smart home technology company sold to ConnectM in 2016.

Before Ecovent, Dip led the design, development, and production of complex radar systems at Lockheed Martin. Dip has a BSEE from Drexel University, an MSEE from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he currently serves as a lecturer.

https://www.solunacomputing.com/

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Marcus Lehmann, serves as the CEO of CalWave Power Technologies Inc. Marcus founded CalWave in2014 and uses his experience in systems engineering, energy systems and entrepreneurship, to lead a diverse team of engineers, advisers, and industry partners to unlock the vast and steady carbon-free power from ocean waves.

Prior to CalWave, Marcus held research positions at UC Berkeley, Mechanical Engineering, the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and was a project lead at the Cyclotron Road program. Marcus holds a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from Technical University Hamburg, graduated from Technical University Munich with a Masters in Mechanical Engineering and received an honors degree in technology management from the Center for Digital Technology and Management.

https://calwave.energy/

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