Live Panel Discussion

Speakers

• Anne Biklé Author, Biologist, Co-Founder of Dig2Grow
  

  Anne Biklé

  Author, Biologist, Co-Founder of Dig2Grow

  Anne Biklé is a science writer and public speaker focusing on the connections between people, plants, food, health, and the environment. A bad case of plant lust draws her into the botanical world in search of answers about humanity’s tangled relationship with nature and its tiniest creatures, the microbes that dwell in soil and the human body. She has coaxed many a plant into rambunctious growth or nursed them back from the edge of death with her regenerative gardening practices. Her latest book, What Your Food Ate: How to Heal the Land and Reclaim our Health, explores connections between soil health and human health and will be published in 2022. The book is another collaboration with husband, geologist David Montgomery and builds on The Hidden Half of Nature, the middle volume of their Dirt Trilogy. Her writing has appeared in print and digital media and on radio and her gardening practices have been featured in independent and documentary films.

• Chef Nephi Craig Founder of the Native American Culinary Association
  

  Chef Nephi Craig

  Founder of the Native American Culinary Association

  Chef Nephi Craig, BHT, ACRPS, has 24 years culinary experience in America and around the world in London, Germany, Brazil and Japan. He is an enrolled member of the White Mountain Apache Tribe and is half Navajo. Chef Craig is the founder of the Native American Culinary Association, an organization/network that is dedicated to the research, refinement, and development of Native American Cuisine. Chef Nephi Craig provides training, workshops and lecture sessions on Native American Cuisine for health to restaurants, universities, treatment centers, behavioral health agencies, and entities from across America and abroad. During Chef Craig’s nine-year tenure as Executive Chef of the Sunrise Park Resort Hotel, Craig and his White Mountain Apache culinary team achieved many national and international benchmarks in establishing a culture of Indigenous Foods across North America. Executive Chef Nephi Craig is currently the Nutritional Recovery Program Coordinator & Executive Chef at the Rainbow Treatment Center and Café Gozhóó on the White Mountain Apache Tribe in Arizona.

• Courtney Brown Strategic Consultant & AGSPOSURE Founder
  

  Courtney Brown

  Strategic Consultant & AGSPOSURE Founder

  Courtney P. Brown is an agricultural professional and strategic consultant who researches creative approaches to elevate minority communities by introducing and promoting opportunities available within the agriculture industry. She founded AGSPOSURE Incorporated, an organization designed to address underserved and minority community issues through a distinct lens of agriculture. Courtney hopes this organization compels people to take control of the power they have to improve their communities, look more closely into the world of agriculture, and ultimately discover stories of perseverance, dedication, and strength from minorities who help in keeping our world clothed, fed, and so much more.

  Before starting an agriculture business, Courtney spent five years as an Agricultural Communications Specialist and after a successful career developing strategic communications efforts to advance programs aimed to support small farmers and underserved communities, Courtney now works directly with these communities and researches innovative approaches to help them thrive through the world of service and strategic consulting.

  Courtney further utilizes her expertise as an Advisory Board member for the Selfless Hand Foundation and acts as a consultant with the primary focus of supporting this organization and marginalized communities through developing strategies for marketing, community engagement, programs, and partnerships.

  Brown has a strong agricultural education background and earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture Science with a minor in Communications Arts from Austin Peay State University and a Masters degree in Agricultural Communications from Oklahoma State University. She is currently a doctoral candidate pursuing a degree from Oklahoma State University in Agricultural Education with an emphasis in Agricultural Leadership. Courtney’s research focus explores the experiences of African Americans involved in various areas of agriculture from the community level to the corporate world and education system as well as the farming industry. Her research will help the agriculture industry develop groundbreaking approaches towards diversity as well as support the growth of new opportunities for more African Americans.

  Beyond Courtney’s professional work, she is a lover of sports, animals, and the outdoors. She is a foodie at heart who loves to travel and spend time with her family and loved ones.

• Dr. Adrienne Godschalx Soil Food Web School Mentor and Researcher
  

  Dr. Adrienne Godschalx

  Soil Food Web School Mentor and Researcher

  Dr. Adrienne Godschalx studied chemical ecology at Portland State University and conducted her PhD research on nitrogen-fixing rhizobia and how a plant’s belowground symbiosis can affect leaf chemistry, and as a result, the plant’s relationship with insects, both herbivore pests and beneficial predators. She pursued her research further as a postdoc at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland, where she investigated the volatile organic compounds plants emit as signals to microbes and insects. When Adrienne started working as a Mentor for the Soil Food Web School, she was bewildered by the potency of the soil food web in plant health and plant-insect interactions: that leaving the harmful -icides aside and restoring the soil food web can nourish nutrient-rich, naturally-defended plants. Adrienne is thrilled to have a tangible way to engage in symbiosis with the beautiful wild world.

• Dr. David Montgomery MacArthur Fellow and Professor of Geomorphology
  

  Dr. David Montgomery

  MacArthur Fellow and Professor of Geomorphology

  David R. Montgomery is a MacArthur Fellow and professor of geomorphology at the University of Washington. He studies landscape evolution and the effects of geological processes on ecological systems and human societies. An author of award-winning popular-science books (Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, The Hidden Half of Nature, and Growing a Revolution), he has been featured in documentary films, network and cable news, and on a wide variety of TV and radio programs. His books have been translated into ten languages. He lives in Seattle with his wife and co-author, Anne Biklé. Their new book What Your Food Ate: How to Health Our Land and Reclaim Our Health will be published spring 2022.

• Dr. Dilafruz Williams Author, Garden-Based Educator
  

  Dr. Dilafruz Williams

  Author, Garden-Based Educator

  Dilafruz Williams, PhD is Professor of Leadership for Sustainability Education in the department of Educational Leadership and Policy at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, where she has taught since 1990. With dozens of partners, she has designed, co-founded, and supported several cutting-edge initiatives, such as:

  – Learning Gardens Laboratory
  – Leadership for Sustainability Education Master’s program
  – Sunnyside Environmental School
  – An NSF-funded project, Science in the Learning Gardens: Factors that Support Ethnic and Racial Minority Students in Low-Income Schools.

  A prolific scholar, Dr. Williams has authored over 70 chapters, journal articles, and curriculum resource guides and has given close to 200 invited lectures, symposia, and conference papers. Her research has focused extensively on garden-based education, environmental education, place-based education, urban education, and service learning. Her co-authored book, Learning Gardens and Sustainability Education:

  Bringing Life to Schools and Schools to Life (Routledge, 2012), presents a practical model of student engagement with gardens, that serve as milieus for learning. She is also co-editor of Ecological Education in Action: On Weaving Education, Culture, and the Environment (SUNY, 1999).

  Dr. Williams has given workshops and keynote addresses in Australia, Austria, Canada, India, Nepal, New Zealand, Seoul-Korea, South Africa, and the United States. She is the recipient of several awards and honors. She was elected city-wide to the Portland School Board, 2003-2011. She has graduate degrees from Bombay, Syracuse, and Harvard Universities in the sciences, public administration, and education. Her passion for gardens is evident in her own delight in engagement with soil, plants, and wildlife in the multitude of manifestations of wonders and mystery that a garden offers. For her research, curriculum, instruction, and projects see http://learning-gardens.org/ and https://sites.google.com/pdx.edu/dilafruz/

• John D. Liu Filmmaker, Ecologist, founder of Ecosystem Restoration Camps
  

  John D. Liu

  Filmmaker, Ecologist, founder of Ecosystem Restoration Camps

  After 15 years as a Television Producer and Cameraman for CBS News, RAI and ZDF John began to study ecology in the mid 1990s. John founded the Environmental Education Media Project (EEMP), he helped to create the China Environment and Sustainable Development Reference and Research Center (CESDRRC), and he helped create the China HIV/AIDS Information Center (CHAIN). Over the years he has produced, directed, written and presented numerous films. He is currently Ecosystem Ambassador for the Commonland Foundation and Visiting Research Fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology of the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences (NIOO/KNAW).