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  • A tropical forest ecologist, Nepstad has studied tropical forests and strategies for their conservation for the last 24 years. His research includes the Amazon forest tipping point, the analysis of public policies to conserve the Amazons natural resources, the prediction of future trends of Amazon forests and people, the taming of agroindustry, and the development of carbon markets to reduce deforestation within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Based in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, he leads the Centers Amazon program and coordinates the program on REDD (Reductions in Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation). In 1995, he co-founded the Amazon Institute of Environmental Studies (Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amaznia), which is now the largest independent research institution in the Amazon region. He also helped to found Aliana da Terra, a non-governmental organization comprised of cattle ranchers and soy farmers devoted to sound land stewardship, and was a founding board member of the Roundtable for Responsible Soy. He has published more than 100 scientific articles and books on the Amazon and tropical forests generally.
  • Dr. Judith E. Selwyn is a nationally known expert in the conservation of historic building materials. As President of Preservation Technology Associates, Inc. she has overseen the restoration of historic masonry for structures at Harvard, Yale, Wellesley College, Smith College, the U.S. Naval Academy and MIT. Her other projects include the Massachusetts State House, the Gardner Museum and Fanueil Hall, in Boston. Dr. Selwyn is also a collector of American Arts and Crafts furniture and pottery.
  • Mindy S. Lubber is the president of Ceres, the leading US coalition of investors and environmental leaders working to improve corporate environmental, social and governance practices. She also directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), an alliance of more than 70 institutional investors representing approximately $7 trillion in assets, that coordinates US investor responses to the financial risks and opportunities posed by climate change. Ms. Lubber is the recipient of the Skoll Social Entrepreneur Award and under her leadership Ceres was awarded the Fast Company Social Capitalist Award for 2007 and 2008. She was recently voted one of "The 100 Most Influential People in Corporate Governance" by *Directorship Magazine*, who noted Ceres' increasing influence in its field. Ms. Lubber has held leadership positions in government as the regional administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency; in the financial services sector as founder, president and CEO of Green Century Capital Management, an investment firm managing environmentally screened mutual funds; in the private sector as the President of an environmental law and policy consulting group; and in the not-for-profit sector for more than a decade leading environmental and public interest law organizations. Ms. Lubber is an attorney and holds a Masters Degree in business administration.
  • Carl Kaysen's scholarly work has ranged widely in the areas where economics, sociology, politics and law overlap. His current research centers on arms control and international politics. He co-chairs the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Study Committee on International Security Studies. Prior to joining the MIT faculty in 1976, he was on the faculty of the economics department at Harvard University. He served as deputy special assistant for national security affairs to President Kennedy from 1961 to 1963 and was the director of the Institute for Advanced Study from 1966 to 1976. He has been a junior fellow at Harvard University and a Guggenheim Fellow, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He was vice chairman and director of research for the Sloan Commission on Higher Education from 1978 to 1980.
  • As Assistant Special Counsel to the President, Lee C. White worked directly under Special Counsel to President, Theodore C. Sorensen. White's duties included staff work on a wide range of administration programs. When Special Assistant to the President Harris L. Wofford, Jr. left in 1962 to accept a post with the Peace Corps, White inherited much of his responsibility for coordinating civil rights policy for the White House.
  • A speechwriter on the Kerry campaign, he has worked in the White House and State Department. Adam graduated from Princeton, and has a masters from the London School of Economics, where he was a Fulbright Scholar.
  • Muhammad Yunus was born in 1940 in Chittagong, a seaport in Bangladesh. The third of 14 children. He was educated at Dhaka University and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study economics at Vanderbilt University. In 1972 he became the head of the economics department at Chittagong University. Yunus is the author of a memoir, *Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty*. Yunus is the founder and managing director of the Grameen Bank, a successful blend of capitalism and social enterprise. The Grameen Bank lends small amounts of money without any collateral to the rural poor in Bangladeshi villages. Most of the low-interest microloans go to women, who use them to start their own profit-making enterprises, mainly in agriculture, crafts, or services. The Nobel Peace Prize for 2006 was divided into two equal parts going to Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank for their efforts to create economic and social development from below.