St. Francis High School

Eddie

Dulce

Fatima

Pamela Velazquez

Ulises Cisneros

Martha Mendoza

Associated Press Writer

Martha Mendoza is an Associated Press Writer whose reports have won numerous awards and prompted Congressional hearings, Pentagon investigations and White House responses. She won a 2000 Pulitzer Prize and George Polk Award for Investigative Reporting as part of a team that revealed, with extensive documentation, the decades-old secret of how American soldiers early in the Korean War killed hundreds of civilians at the No Gun Ri bridge. Mendoza is the recipient of numerous other state, regional, national and international journalism awards, including the Overseas Press Club's Madeline Dane Ross Award, the National Science Writers Association Award, California First Amendment Coalition Beacon Award for Freedom of Information, and repeated AP Managing Editors honors. She has reported for the AP since 1997, in Albuquerque, N.M., New York and Mexico City. She was a 2001 Knight Fellow at Stanford University and a 2007 Ferris Professor for Humanities at Princeton University. She lives in Santa Cruz, Calif. with her husband and four children.

Nina Simon

Executive Director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH)

Simon teaches radical exhibition design in the University of Washington Museology graduate program and writes the popular blog Museum 2.0. Her 2010 book, The Participatory Museum, was named "a future classic of museology" and is used as a text in cultural organizations and graduate programs internationally. Previously, Simon worked as an independent consultant to over 100 museums and cultural centers around the world, focusing on participatory community engagement. She served as curator at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, Calif., and was the Experience Development Specialist at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.

Albert Flynn DeSilver

Poet, Author, Artist, Publisher

Albert Flynn DeSilver is an internationally published poet, author, artist, publisher, speaker, and writing coach. He served as Marin County's very first poet laureate from 2008-2010. Albert has published several books and hundreds of individual poems in literary journals worldwide. His work has been included in a number of anthologies including "Letters to Poets: Conversations about Poetics, Politics, and Community," which Cornel West called "a courageous and visionary book." His visual work has appeared at The Armand Hammer Museum, and a recent visual poem was included as part of a large public sculpture commissioned by the Freeport Water Authority and EBMUD, designed by the artist Paul Kos, and built on the banks of the Sacramento River in 2010. Albert has taught writing and poetry workshops everywhere from Spirit Rock Meditation Center to San Quentin State Prison, to the British Institute in Paris—and for more than ten years as a California Poet in the Schools. His latest book is "Beamish Boy: A Memoir" about his extraordinary journey toward an open poetic identity.

Terry Corwin

Executive Director, Land Trust of Santa Cruz County

As a child, Terry enjoyed family camping trips to Big Basin and Henry Cowell’s State Parks. These experiences developed in her a deep love of the natural lands of Santa Cruz County. After becoming a CPA, Terry spent most of her business career in corporate finance. Prior to her executive finance roles in technology start-ups, Terry was in charge of taxation, treasury and SEC reporting for Plantronics. She became Executive Director of the Land Trust in 2005. Since that time the Land Trust has protected 10,442 acres of high conservation value land in Santa Cruz County and raised $38 million toward land protection.

John Perry Barlow

Peripheral Visionary

John Perry Barlow has been a cattle rancher in Wyoming, has written songs for the Grateful Dead, co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and is currently working on a project to turn sewage into jetfuel. He likes open range, open doors, open season, open source, open standards, open government, open hearts, and open minds. He fears only fear and wants to be a good ancestor.