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is the vice president and regional director for Africa at World Resources Institute (WRI). She formerly served as co-chair of WRI’s Global Restoration Council and a Senior Advisor to the Global Restoration Initiative. She is the current chair of the Wangari Maathai Foundation and the former chair of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya. An inspiring leader, Wanjira has over 20 years of experience advocating for social and environmental change on both local and international platforms.

Over the years, Wanjira has also served important strategic and advocacy roles raising the prominence and visibility of global issues such as climate change, youth leadership, sustainable energy, and landscape restoration, at Women Entrepreneurs in Renewables (wPOWER), the Wangari Maathai Foundation (WMF), and the Green Belt Movement (GBM) the organization her mother, Wangari Maathai (2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate) founded in 1977. Wanjira currently serves on the board of the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF) and as a leadership council member of the Clean Cooking Alliance. Wanjira is one of a few Six Seconds EQ practitioners in Kenya and was named one of the 100 Most Influential African Women in 2018 and 2020.

Justine Cassell is currently on leave from Carnegie Mellon University to hold the founding international chair at the PRAIRIE Institute for Interdisciplinary Research in AI, and to serve as Directrice de Recherche at Inria, both in Paris. Before going on leave, she was associate dean of Technology Strategy and Impact in the School of Computer Science at CMU, and director of the Human-Computer Interaction Institute. Previously Cassell was faculty at Northwestern University where she founded the Technology and Social Behavior Doctoral Program and Research Center, and before that was a tenured professor at MIT. Cassell has received the MIT Edgerton Prize, Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision award, the AAMAS Test of Time paper award, and the National Academy of Sciences Henry and Bryna David Prize for Social Sciences applicable to policy. She is a fellow of the AAAS, Royal Academy of Scotland, and the ACM.

Dr. Francisco Escobedo has been an educator the better part of 30 years. Since 2010, he is the superintendent of the Chula Vista Elementary School District (CVESD). Located in southern San Diego County, the district’s 46 schools serve over 29,400 students. In 2019, the Learning Policy Institute identified CVESD was one of seven “California Positive Outlier” districts for its superior academic scores. Dr. Escobedo is past president of the Chula Vista Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors; member of the board of directors for West Ed Advisory Board, California Collaborative for Education Excellence, the local YMCA, and for Classroom of the Future Foundation; and a Rotarian. He was selected as 2019 Superintendent of the Year for ACSA Region 18.

During his tenure at CVESD, he initiated a health initiative that led to a dramatic decrease in student obesity trends.