Welcome to our gang.
Pando builds connections and seeks diversity across all manner of human experience, including gender, identity and orientation, race, ethnicity, age, urban/rural, politics, income, immigration, and wisdom tradition. Offer your talents! Go here.
Eugene Shirley is Pando’s founding president/CEO. Eugene began focusing on social impact projects in college, and did landmark work on human rights under Soviet oppression. He produced award-winning documentary films for 25 years, shifted to the tech startup world, then pulled the team together to launch Pando in 2014. He is a former Jennings Randolph Fellow at US Institute of Peace.
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John Bielenberg is creative director. He has been described as a “designer, entrepreneur and imaginative advocate for a better world.”John has won more than 250 design awards in his career, including the 2013 AIGA Gold Medal for leadership in the design for good movement.
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Rich Binell is a writer, brand strategist, and corporate storyteller. He helps companies understand and explain why they matter.
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Michael Braley is Design Director. Creative Director of Braley Design, Michael’s brand, print, book and package design has been recognized with hundreds of professional honors and is in permanent collections of major museums.
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Alexi Caracotsios is a researcher and writer. He adds experience in event organization and education.
LinkedIn
Doug Chang is Series Producer of Pando Days. An Emmy Award winning producer/director for the longtime PBS cultural flagship series “Live from Lincoln Center,” he was head of programming for LA’s PBS affiliate KCET and later programming director with an emphasis on culture and the arts for PBS at the national level.
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Kate Davis is Design Director. Creative Director/Account Director for Braley Design, Kate is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. She joined Braley Design in 2014.
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Robyn Eason is a Strategic Sustainability Advisor with extensive experience in the private, nonprofit, and public sectors. She partners with climate-forward organizations committed to furthering action, impact, solidarity, belonging, and reciprocity.
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Heidrun Mumper-Drumm is Chair of LA’s CSO Taskforce. She is a CSO and Professor at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena.
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Amy Goldberg is a producer and editor of the ROOTBALL newsletter. She is a former broadcast news writer and producer, public relations consultant and U.S. Senate press secretary.
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Lyn Goldfarb is Creative Producer of Pando Days. An Academy Award nominee in documentary filmmaking with two Emmys and a Peabody, Lyn’s extensive credits include a major film on LA’s Mayor Tom Bradley. She is deeply engaged with Los Angeles cultural and justice communities.
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Betsy Hunter is Head of Partnership Development. She brings her experience in special events, public relations and organization to her work as a Pando Arborist and an expediter of special projects.
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Richard Livingston is Chief Technology Officer. Richard holds a PhD in philosophy of religion and theology from Claremont Graduate University, and is Executive Director for the Cobb Institute, based in Claremont, CA.
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Tucker Nichols is artist-in-residence. Tucker’s most recent solo shows have been held at the ZieherSmith Gallery in New York, Gallery 16 in San Francisco, and the Kunstpanorama in Luzern, Switzerland.
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Marc O’Brien is Design Strategist. Marc produces and leads creative workshops that focus on creating positive change while tackling some of today’s gnarly social challenges. He is the co-founder of Climate Designers.
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Myra Shirley heads social media. She has a background in business and describes herself as a tree-hugger from way back. She serves as treasurer of the Oklahoma Chapter of the Sierra Club.
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Elizabeth Tesolin, Pando Days development. Her background lies in startups and business development for nonprofits, educational companies, and economic development opportunities. She has a keen interest in innovation and green things.
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Mark VanderSchaaf is a regional sustainability planner. He has served as the regional planning director for the Metropolitan Council of the Minneapolis-Saint Paul Area, and as the national chair of the Regional and Intergovernmental Planning Division of the American Planning Association.
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Board of Directors
In addition to Eugene Shirley and John Bielenberg (above), directors include:
FOUNDING CHAIR John B. Cobb, Jr. is a renowned philosophical theologian and leading authority on the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, John is the author of some 70 books. He is a pioneer at the intersection of philosophy, ethics, and the environment and first to address the intersection in a single-author book.
amacad.org
VICE CHAIR Rev. Ed Bacon served for more than 20 years as Rector of one of the largest and most socially active progressive churches in the country, All Saints, Pasadena. A national media figure, he was the first faith leader to regularly and systematically call attention to the Pando one-tree-forest as a contemporary and inter-religious symbol of faith.
LinkedIn
Karenna Gore is an attorney, author, and Director, Center for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary. Previous work includes for the legal center of Sanctuary for Families and as Director of Community Affairs, Association to Benefit Children (ABC). The author of Lighting the Way: Nine Women Who Changed Modern America, she is a graduate of Harvard College, Columbia Law School and Union Theological Seminary.
Devon Hartman is a Claremont-based architect and founder of CHERP, Community Home Energy Retrofit Project. In Pomona, CA, he is developing the first non-profit solar factory in the country, targeting low-income sites for installation and job creation in disadvantaged communities.
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Paul Koretz is former Los Angeles City Councilmember (5th District). He has long been at the forefront of environmental and social justice issues in Los Angeles and helped open Pando’s 2015 inaugural conference. Andy Shrader, the Councilmember’s Director of Environmental Affairs, represents the Councilmember on Pando matters.
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Marcela Oliva is a Professor of Architecture at Los Angeles Trade Technical College. She was awarded Educator of the Year in 2022 by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) – Los Angeles.
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Rebecca Schmitt is an executive and entrepreneur with deep experience in commercial online businesses, from early stage startups to the Fortune 50. She has a track record of heading up successful launches, audience growth, and brand building. In 2015, she was named one of Folio Magazine’s Top Women in Media, Corporate Visionary category.
LinkedIn
Brandt Williams is a serial entrepreneur, founder of several early stage startups, and has held leadership roles at Fortune 250 enterprises. As an avid outdoors person, Brandt joins the Pando Populus board to help foster communities to build a lasting impact for all people to enjoy earth’s natural resources in their most pristine form.
Website | LinkedIn
“Pando means I belong to you, you belong to me,
we belong to each other.”
―Maria Shriver
Advisors
Lourdes Arguelles is Professor Emerita of Education at Claremont Graduate University and a Lopon (Senior Dharma Teacher) at Drikung Kyobpa Choling, Escondido, California.
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Bonny Bentzin is Deputy Chief Sustainability Officer at UCLA.
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Rev. Dr. Ambrose Carroll, Sr. is the founder and visionary for Green The Church.
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Ignacio Castuera is a long-time movement leader and United Methodist minister in the southern California area.
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Helen M. Cox is Sustainability Division Manager, City of Thousand Oaks.
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Dana Dakin is founder of Womens Trust, following a 35-year career in the financial services industry.
Mark Eckhardt is CEO of COMMON, a global community spanning 21 countries and 27 industries.
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Joseph C. Hough, Jr. is former Interim President of Claremont Graduate University and former President of the Union Theological Seminary.
Ruey-Lung Hsiao is a computer scientist with expertise in molecular biology, statistics, and finance.
Col. Bob Ireland is a retired USAF Chief Flight Surgeon, psychiatrist, and retired United Methodist minister.
Wes Jackson is founding President (ret) of The Land Institute.
Marty Kaplan is the Norman Lear Professor of Entertainment, Media and Society at USC’s Annenberg School for Communi-cation & Journalism and founding director of the School’s Norman Lear Center.
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Pablo La Roche is Professor of Architecture at Cal Poly Pomona and Sustainable Design Leader at CallisonRTKL.
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Matthew Manos is founder of the design strategy consultancy,
verynice.
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Cecil L. Murray is the John R. Tansey Chair of Christian Ethics in the School of Religion at the University of Southern California and Chair, USC Cecil Murray Center for Community Engagement.
Kwazi Nkrumah is Chairman of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Coalition.
Luis Navarro is Associate with Langan Engineering and Environmental Services.
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Marcela Oliva is Professor of Architecture at Los Angeles Trade Technical College.
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John Onderdonk is Chief Sustainability Officer for Caltech.
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Paul Rogers is an ecologist, Director of the Western Aspen Alliance, and chief scientist for Pando, the tree.
Andy Shrader is Director of Environmental Affairs, Water Policy & Sustainability for Los Angeles Council member Paul Koretz, Council District 5.
LinkedIn
Tom Welch is an educational consultant and speaker on education.