Rachel Abrams

doctor, author

Rachel Carlton Abrams, MD, MHS opened the award-winning Santa Cruz Integrative Medicine & Chi Center in 2008 where she manages and works with 15 practitioners and 10 instructors to provide the highest level of care from conventional and holistic medicine. She is a graduate of Stanford University with a medical degree from the University of California San Francisco and a masters degree from the University of California Berkeley. She is Board Certified in both Family Medicine and Integrative and Holistic Medicine and uses treatments from both conventional and holistic medicine to help create ideal health for her patients. Dr. Abrams is the author of two books and teaches workshops and classes regularly in Santa Cruz and throughout the country.

Joe Jordan

Joe Jordan worked at NASA Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute for more than 20 years, serving on various projects, including flying observatories for infrared astronomy, Hubble Space Telescope design, studies of stratospheric ozone depletion and global climate change, the search for planets around distant stars, image analysis from the first Mars rover, and investigations of Saturn’s rings and the atmosphere of its moon Titan. In the last few years he’s been teaching renewable energy at Cabrillo College and San Jose State University. He leads “physics-in-nature” hikes and astronomy/stargazing evenings for various organizations or events in this area and elsewhere. He’s on the Board of Directors of Ecology Action, and long ago helped steer them in the direction of their now primary work on modernizing energy infrastructure. He originated the very first public-facility solar-energy projects in Santa Cruz, including the large-scale deployment of solar-energy systems on several of our schools. Sky-power to the people!

Heidi Boynton

personal trainer

Heidi Boynton, personal trainer, co-founder of Finding Sophia, co-founder of Mini Mermaid Running club, and triathlon coach, has inspired women of all walks of life in achieving their personal goals. A cancer diagnosis in 2001 and an additional diagnosis in 2008 has been the stimulus for Heidi to share her story of living life fully through writing, speaking, coaching, and participating in endurance events. She has done multiple triathlons and marathons, ultimately completing Ironman distance triathlons. Through her unique personal experience she has helped women work through fitness and emotional blocks in training for races as well as for life. Heidi loves to help women reach their fullest potential by helping them to stay focused on their own individual abilities.

Jonathan Trent

NASA scientist and adjunct Professor at UCSC

Jonathan Trent, NASA scientist and adjunct Professor at UCSC, wanted to understand what politicians meant when they said: “We need an Apollo mission for energy” and he began “Global Research into Energy and the Environment at NASA (GREEN).” Leading an interdisciplinary team of scientists and engineers, he investigated how tools developed for Apollo, and space exploration in general, could be applied to address some of the most pressing problems on “spaceship earth.” Inspired by closed life-support systems developed for long-duration space exploration, he invented OMEGA—a system to grow microalgae, produce sustainable biofuels, clean wastewater, sequester carbon, and produce food and fertilizer without competing with agriculture for freshwater or land. The OMEGA project, supported by NASA and the California Energy Commission, is an ecology of technologies in which wastes become resources. An optimistic glimpse at the future and a reminder that we are not passengers on spaceship earth, we are the crew!

Jay Silver

PhD Researcher

Jay Silver is a PhD Researcher in the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT Media Lab, and he is currently working at Intel Research helping them develop a Maker Culture. He cofounded Joy Labs, Experiendipity, and Beginners’ Mind. Time named one of his inventions “Top 15 Toys for Young Geniuses,” and he has put out many creative platforms including Drawdio, Singing Fingers, and Scratch, collectively in the hands of millions. Jay studied electrical engineering at Georgia Tech where he was named Engineer of the Year. He was awarded a Gates Scholarship to earn a master’s in Internet Technology from Cambridge University. He also holds a master’s in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT Media Lab where he invented “Camera for the Invisible.” Jay has faith that being a romantic is of the utmost importance. Some other names for romance are: spontaneity, silliness, civil disobedience, oneness, empathy…

Kyle Theirmann

pro surfer

Kyle Theirmann, 21, is a pro surfer with a passion to systemically effect change. Combining surfing great waves around the world with making a series of short films about current issues, Thiermann focuses on the power we have to create a better world through everyday actions that we take. Through his Internet series, Surfing For Change, Kyle inspired viewers to move over 340 million dollars of lending power out of multi-national coal funding banks, and into local banks around the country. Kyle connects young people with the simple daily decisions they make that benefit their local economies and the world and leverages his exposure as a Pro Surfer to empower typically disengaged people to become part of the solution. Kyle was voted Best Inspiration in the Good Times News Awards and is the winner of the Peter Benchley Blue Vision Youth Award.

Roger McNamee

Roger McNamee is a co-founder of Elevation Partners, an investment partnership focused on the intersection of media and entertainment content and consumer technology. Roger performs 100 shows a year in the band Moonalice, where he plays bass and guitar. Moonalice pioneered the use of social media in music, inventing such applications as Twittercast concerts, Moonalice radio on Twitter, live Mooncast (video) concerts, the Couch Tour. Moonalice’s single, “It’s 4:20 Somewhere” has been downloaded more than 845,000 times. Roger is the author of The New Normal and The Moonalice Legend: Posters and Words. Roger serves on board of directors of Wordnik and Move. In philanthropy, he serves on the boards of directors of National Geographic Ventures, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame Museum, and the Rex Foundation. Roger holds a B.A. from Yale University and an M.B.A. from the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.

Lori Butterworth

founder, Jacob’s Heart

Lori has founded two award-winning, nationally recognized non-profit organizations, which have dramatically improved care for thousands of children with life-threatening conditions. As the founder and former Executive Director of Jacob’s Heart, Lori designed, implemented, and secured sustainable funding for innovative programs that provide emotional, financial and practical support to families of children with cancer. Lori also co-founded the Children’s Hospice and Palliative Care Coalition (CHPCC), spearheading healthcare policy initiatives including the enactment of the Nick Snow Children’s Hospice and Palliative Care Act of 2006. Now she is mentoring the next generation of nonprofit leaders through the Boomerang Foundation and is passing on her own positive, life-affirming experiences while providing support and guidance to young people about “living life on purpose.” Among Lori’s awards for her contribution to the nonprofit sector are Oprah Winfrey’s Use Your Life Award and the California Association of Nonprofits Award for Achievement in Innovation.

Nancy Abrams & Joel Primack

Nancy Ellen Abrams is a lawyer (J.D., U. of Michigan) with a B.A. from the University of Chicago in the history and philosophy of science. She specializes in the role of science in a new politics and is an award-winning writer and lecturer at UCSC. Joel R. Primack is Distinguished Professor of Physics at UCSC. He received his A.B. in Physics from Princeton and Ph.D. in Physics from Stanford. He is one of the creators of the theory of Cold Dark Matter, the accepted theory of the formation and evolution of galaxies and the nature of the dark matter that makes up most of the mass in the universe. Nancy and Joel co-authored The New Universe and the Human Future: How a Shared Cosmology Could Transform the World and The View from the Center of the Universe: Discovering Our Extraordinary Place in the Universe.