Speakers
Casey Anderson
Master of Ceremonies
Casey Anderson is the handler and best friend of Brutus the Bear and the co-owner and director of the Montana Grizzly Encounter, a grizzly bear sanctuary in Bozeman, Montana. He is the host and executive producer of the Nat Geo WILD Channel series “Expedition Wild” and “America the Wild.” A fifth generation Montanan, Casey was born and raised in Helena.
Bob Berky
Presentation: Bird Watcher
Bob Berky has performed as a solo artist throughout the world. In New York, he has appeared at the Dance Theatre Workshop, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center and as a featured artist at The Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival in “The Alchemedians” and “The Power Project”. “The Alchemedians”, with Mr. Berky and Michael Moschen, was produced off-Broadway and toured worldwide. He has also performed at the Kennedy Center and Arena Stage in Washington and the National Theatre in London, England.
Mike Chamberlain
Talk: Whales to Windmills
Mike Chamberlain is the Manager of Innovation for the Guest Experience at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. In this capacity, he helps oversee the design and development of new initiatives in the Guest Experience group to insure that the aquarium have a continuous flow of new programs and experiences for our guests.
David Gonzales
Talk: Fighting for the Trees
David Gonzales is a local writer/photographer/filmmaker who is well known for his book on the history of skiing: “Jackson Hole — On a Grand Scale.” He founded TreeFight, an initiative to inform the public of the plight of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’s whitebark pines and to search for solutions to prevent their extinction. His talk TreeFight is an initiative to inform the public of the plight of the GYE’s whitebark pines, and to search for solutions to prevent their extinction. TreeFight is administered by David Gonzales, who appreciates the support of Bridger-Teton National Forest, Grand Teton National Park, GEO/Graphics, Inc, and all donors and TreeFighters.
Robert E. Grady
Talk: The Care and Feeding of the Innovation Ecosystem
Robert E. Grady is an American venture capitalist and investment banker, and a senior-level public official. Currently, he is managing director at Cheyenne Capital, Chairman of the State of New Jersey Council of Economic Advisors for Governor Christopher J. Christie and Chairman of New Jersey’s State Investment Council, which oversees the state’s $72 billion pension fund. Grady also serves as a director of multiple public and private companies; serves on the National Commission on Energy Policy; is a member of the Board of Governors of the Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School, the International Advisory Board of The Harvard Center for Environmental Economics, and the Council on Foreign Relations; is a Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution; and is a financial and policy adviser to numerous political campaigns and government officials of national import.
Bill Lange
Talk: Discovering New Worlds Beneath the Sea in 3D
A pioneer in ocean exploration, Bill Lange is an enthusiastic ambassador between the sea and those of us on dry land. His research interests include telemetry system design, deep submergence imaging systems, and marine mammal data telemetry and monitoring systems. With vibrant video clips captured by submarines, Bill Lange takes us to some of Earth’s darkest, most violent, toxic and beautiful habitats, the valleys and volcanic ridges of the oceans’ depths, where life is bizarre, resilient and shockingly abundant.
Brian Leith
Talk: Filming the Invisible People
Brian Leith is an executive producer for the BBC’s Natural History Unit in Bristol. His most recent films include “Human Planet,” the first wildlife series about mankind, and “Elsa: the lion that changed the world.” He has won numerous awards over the years, including a much-prized “Best of Festival” award at Jackson Wildlife Film Festival in 2003. For the BBC series ‘Human Planet’ he filmed – for the first time – an as yet ‘un-contacted’ tribe in Amazonia. These are moving and mysterious images, glimpses of people peering up at us, spears in hand, never having seen a helicopter before – let alone our world of skyscrapers, computers and television. Was he intruding on their world? Yes. Was he potentially saving their world from far more destructive intrusion? He hopes so. But it is a weird, and worrying, and yet wonderful encounter between two vastly contrasting worlds.
Dr. Laly Lichtenfeld
Talk: Saving the Lions on the Maasai Steppe
Dr. Laly Lichtenfeld is a woman with a passion for Africa. She is co-founder and executive director of the African People & Wildlife Fund and a research affiliate of Yale (Ph.D. ’05). Lichtenfeld is a member of the National Geographic Big Cats Initiative and a recipient of the Fulbright Award.
Juan D. Martinez
Talk: The New Nature Movement
Juan D. Martinez is director for the Natural Leaders Network, an initiative of the Children & Nature Network. He represents The North Face as an ambassador for outdoor engagement and he was named a National Geographic Emerging Explorer. He dedicates his energy to grassroots campaigns from health care and housing discrimination, to creating garden space where he grew up in South Central L.A.The New Nature Movement focuses on how our culture has struggled with two addictions, to oil and to despair. It’s pretty clear by now that we can’t kick one of those habits without kicking the other. The key questions here are: How do we change our vision of the future? Where do we start? Here’s one suggestion: reconceive environmentalism and sustainability – help them evolve into a larger movement that can touch every part of society. The New Nature Movement.
David Milarch
Talk: Ancient Trees For the Future
“David Milarch is co-founder of the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive and a pioneer in the cloning of trees. He works to preserve the genetic heritage of the world’s last old growth forest giants. A fourth generation nurseryman from Michigan, he and his sons have propogated more than 90 species, including the tallest redwoods. In his talk Ancient Trees for the Future Milarch tells the story of the work of cloning ancient trees. His talk explores the relationship be we have lost between our planet, the climate, and the forests. He talks about what we have lost of the world-wide forests, but also, what is left that can be utilized in a new approach.
Kyle Ruddick
Talk: One Day on Earth
Kyle Ruddick is the creator of One Day on Earth a project with an international community of over 15,000 people that simultaneously created media in every country of the world during one day, October 10th, 2010 (10/10/10). He is directing the resulting feature film and preparing the second One Day on Earth this 11/11/11.
Brian Rutledge
Talk: The Bird that Won the West
Brian Rutledge has been Audubon Wyoming’s executive director since 2005. Before that he fostered research on the African wild dog, guided ecotours to many corners of the globe and managed major zoos. He and his wife Kathleen have made their home on the Front Range of the Rockies amidst cutting horses, sled dogs and cattle. Brian will focus his talk on the Sage Grouse of Wyoming. Over the last seven years the National Audubon Society has applied itself to the development and support of a program in Wyoming to prevent the necessity for listing the Greater sage-grouse under the Endangered Species Act. This was made a national priority due to the potential for positive impacts on the Sagebrush ecosystem and all of its commensurate species.
Louie Schwartzberg
Talk: The Hidden Beauty of Pollination
Louie Schwartzberg is an award-winning cinematographer, director and producer who is credited as an innovator in the world of time-lapse and slow motion cinematography. His films “Wings of Life” is inspired by the vanishing of one of nature’s primary pollinators, the honeybee, He is currently in pre-production with National Geographic to produce and direct a 3D-IMAX film.
Nona Yehia & Jefferson Ellinger
Talk: New Architectures: Nature and Phenomena
Nona Yehia and Jefferson Ellinger, partners in the award winning architecture firm E/Ye Design, practice and conduct research at their office in Wyoming and at CASE/Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. The office treats each project as part of a continuing experimental exploration, investigating links between architecture, technology and environment.
Babs Case (Choreographer), Keith Phillips (Composer), Meleta Buckstaff, Kate Kosharek, Holly Wooldridge, Heidi Ramseur, Marissa Carr, Sarah Konrad, Erin Roy (Dancers)
Talk: Fall and Find
Babs Case is artistic director of Dancers’ Workshop in Jackson and founder of Contemporary Dance Wyoming, its resident modern dance company. She has performed, choreographed, and taught modern dance around the world. Keith Phillips began his career playing piano and keyboards in jazz and rock groups in Chicago in the 1970s. From 1980 to 1996 he served as keyboardist and keyboard programmer for numerous Broadway productions.
Performance: Performed by Contemporary Dance Wyoming, Choreography by Babs Case, Music by Keith Phillips, These works were premiered in June 2011 at the Center for the Arts in Jackson, Wyoming. The work is the result of a collaboration between composer Keith Phillips and choreographer Babs Case who worked for several weeks, along with Contemporary Dance Wyoming performers, to create a suite of dances set to original music.
