Listen to hear Bob share his personal story growing up and how this has influenced his view and work in the world. How, through the Fetzer Insitute, they are building a global movement grounded in love, human flourishing and our shared sacred story.

Bob Boisture has served as President and CEO of the Fetzer Institute since 2013, and during this time, helped the Institute adopt its current mission statement “helping build the spiritual foundation for a loving world.” This mission reflects the Institute’s view that humanity will never summon the will, courage, and hope to meet the challenges we face until a critical mass of us truly open our hearts in love to each other and the natural world. Trained as a lawyer, Bob spent most of his career in Washington, working with a broad range of nonprofits and foundations, including the Council on Foundations, Independent Sector, and the YMCA. His work involved strengthening nonprofit governance and helping to design and lead major national advocacy campaigns involving environmental and health issues and the right of nonprofit organizations to participate in the legislative process. Bob is married to artist Mary Margaret Pipkin, and they have three grown sons, two daughters-in-law, and five grandchildren. They spend as much time as they can on their farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.

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Listen to hear how Kat and Mowlgi Mentoring are supporting entrepreneurs and leaders to build purposeful connections within themselves and others to better solve local and global challenges.

Kat is a global nomad who is driven to eradicate loneliness within and outside of ourselves. She is focused on nurturing connectedness, meaningful relationships and communities that enable people to overcome that which holds them back, discover and realise their true potential and have companions so that they never walk alone. To do her part in achieving this and to catalyse human, leadership, societal and economic transformation, she has made leadership, mentoring and coaching her primary focus.

Being the daughter of a serial entrepreneur and part of 2 startup businesses which were sold, she has repeatedly lived the entrepreneurial journey, albeit through a family business lens. Following a career in research and consulting in the Middle East, Kathleen joined Mowgli Mentoring in 2012 and as CEO has set and led the company’s vision and strategy with her passion for quality mentoring, programming, multi-level impact and growth at the core. She can talk for days about leadership, mentoring and coaching and lives it by being a mentor, a mentee and through the way she engages with others. She is a Coactive Training Institute (CTI) trained coach and is a Forum Trainer with the Entrepreneurs’ Organisation (EO).

Being a learning junkie, Kat has a BA Hons from Nottingham Trent Business School and has participated in numerous executive programmes at NYU, Columbia Business School, INSEAD, Wharton and Harvard Business School, as well as Sirdar’s Applied Directorship Programme. She continually seeks out opportunities to evolve as a leader through communities which give her meaning; she was previously the EO Kenya President and Board Member, as well as a member of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE), The Room and the Global Philanthropists Circle (GPC).

She loves dabbling in a bit of interior design, traveling and adding to the list of 35 countries that she has travelled to and is a proud foster mom of 5 baby elephants.

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Listen to hear how Nitya is transforming her passion for public health to create systems change by working with communities academia and philanthropy.

Dr Nitya Mohan Khemka is Director of the Nand and Jeet Khemka Foundation, a family foundation that focuses on strategic philanthropy.  She is also Director, Global Alliances at PATH- a global Health think-tank focusing on health equity. Prior to PATH, she was the Head of the UK Liaison Office for the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) where she was instrumental in establishing the organization’s presence in the United Kingdom and has developed a large cross sectoral portfolio of projects. Nitya is also a visiting Fellow at Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge where she researches topics spanning gender inequality, poverty and human development and lectures on sustainable development and gender. A Fellow Commoner for Clare Hall College, Nitya advises the college on its academic programs and fundraising strategy.

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Listen to hear how Tracy has transformed personal trauma to help others. How she is using art for healing, for connection and to raise awareness about social justice issues to affect change.

Tracy Ferron is the Founder and Executive Director of Life on Earth Art, a California-based non-profit organization working to heal trauma and division in our society by fusing community art-making, art therapy, and activism with touring large-scale art experiences.  LOEA offers transformative healing work to schools, social service organizations, public and correctional institutions, partnering with other non-profits. Ferron’s work illuminates social injustices which beg for awareness, compassion and action.  Her large winged heart artworks have graced protests for incarcerated rights at San Quentin Prison and the Women’s March in Sacramento, CA.  Her museum installations have explored medical experimentation (2018), the murder of global activists (2019), and community artmaking celebrating loved ones lost for Día de los Muertos (2021). Tracy conceived of and produced Unbound (2021-22), an 80-foot community made sculpture of hundreds of paper mâché winged hearts flying free from a cage in an innovative year-long partnership with 70 therapists at one of California’s largest psychiatric facilities. This project brought art-making engagement to over 500 psychiatric patients, 200 staff and 800 community participants–creating a sense of belonging and uplift.  Unbound was recognized with a first place award for Arts for Innovation by the National Organization for Arts in Health in November 2022. Tracy received her Master’s Degree in Engaged Humanities at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She has presented at Burning Man (2014), the Jungian Society for Scholarly Studies (2017), Google Headquarters (2018), the Northern California Art Therapy Association (2020) and Pacifica Graduate Institute (2021). For more information, see https://lifeonearthart.org or contact Tracy at tracy@lifeonearthart.org. 

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What I loved about this conversation with Satish is learning how he has taken action his whole life to transform the world into a spiritual place; and how he sees the intersection between spirituality and ecology. He shares his view of philanthropy as moving from me to we, from and ego to eco.

Peace-pilgrim, life-long activist, and former monk, Satish Kumar has been inspiring global change for over 50 years. He undertook a pilgrimage for peace, walking for two years without money from India to America for the cause of nuclear disarmament. Now in his 80s, Satish has devoted his life to campaigning for ecological regeneration and social justice. He is a world-renown author and international speaker, founder of The Resurgence Trust and Editor Emeritus of Resurgence & Ecologist – a change-making magazine he edited for over 40 years. To find more about Satish and join him in protecting people and planet click here.

Photo by Geoff Dalglish.

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What I loved about this conversation with Kim is hearing her personal stories and experiences that brought her to dedicate her life to belonging and social connectedness.

Kim Samuel is an activist, educator and movement builder. She is the Founder and Chief Belonging Officer of the Samuel Centre for Social Connectedness, named in honour of her late father. She is president of the Samuel Family Foundation; visiting scholar at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative; and the first-ever Fulbright ambassador for diversity and social connectedness. Kim has lectured at institutions including Oxford, Harvard, and Vancouver Island University. Her first book, On Belonging: Finding Connection in an Age of Isolation was released recently by Abrams Press. 

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What I love about this conversation with Howard is his passion for using impact investing to address large-scale social problems. He shared his story of personal transformation after facing a crisis, which led him to co-create Gratitude Railroad, working to create deep social and environmental impact through investments.

Howard is co-founder and Chief Evangelist of Gratitude Railroad. Gratitude Railroad is an educational, community building, and impact investment organization focused on catalyzing positive social and environmental change through for-profit businesses. GRR’s core focus is an active investment process led by its Founders, Advisors and Partners guided by its full time diligence team.

He is also the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Basso Capital Management, L.P. a hedge fund management company focused on Special Purpose Acquisition Corporations (SPACs). Howard is the portfolio manager for the firm’s dedicated SPAC fund and oversees all operating and marketing efforts.

Previously, Howard was co-head of the institutional convertible trading desk at Smith Barney. Before Smith Barney, Mr. Fischer was a convertible trader at Drexel Burnham and at Cohen Feit & Company. Prior to his trading career, Mr. Fischer was a Certified Public Accountant in both public and private practice. Howard serves on the Boards of 1% For The Planet and The Carbon Underground, and advises BrightEdge, the investment fund of the American Cancer Society. He also has advisory/board roles at DoneGood, Builders Fund, Atlas Impact Partners and Blackdirt Capital – for profit entities in which he has invested.

Howard holds a B.S.E. in Accounting and Finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and was a 2013 and 2014 fellow in the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard University.

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What I love about this conversation with Gary is learning how The Saville Foundation is creating genuine partnerships through deep listening and working from the inside out, with people in the center.

GARY SHEARER BIO

THE SAVILLE FOUNDATION

Born and schooled in Johannesburg South Africa, having a rich full-spectrum business experience in the IT wave of the ‘70’s and ‘80’s, including being a founding management team member of the now global Datatec Group.Co-founded award-winning New York based wine trading entity Cape Classics Inc. with my brother in 1991, with the experience of over almost two decades of tough but creative and stimulating challenges growing the business from the ground up informing much of my current journey.

In 2006 I sold my shares to participate in the realm of Social Change, and am privileged to be the CEO of The Saville Foundation working around the globe within education and enablement of individuals and communities.I have two fabulous thirty-something children, and since 2018 have lived in the UK in Bristol with my incredible soul-partner Lara. We make trips back to South Africa as often as possible.

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What I love about this conversation with Hali is how she is working to democratize and diversify the field and practice of philanthropy. Listen to hear highlights from her ground-breaking report Philanthropy Always Sounds Like Someone Else: A Portrait of High Net Worth Donors of Color, drawn from over 150 individual interviews of BIPOC donors across the US.

Hali Lee is delighted to have been co-builder of a few pieces of philanthropic infrastructure.  She is founding partner of Radiant Strategies. She co-founded the Donors of Color Network, was on the co-design team for Philanthropy Together, and is the founder of the Asian Women Giving Circle.  She is lead author of Philanthropy Always Sounds Like Someone Else: A Portrait of High Net-Worth Donors of Color, and is writing a book, The Big We, about how we, together, are much more powerful than the sum of our individual parts.

Hali was born in Seoul, South Korea, and grew up in Kansas City. She graduated from Princeton University, studied Buddhism at Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand, and received a master’s in social work from New York University.  Hali lives in Brooklyn, NY along with her dear husband, three college-age children, two cats and a big dog. In her free time, Hali loves to travel, read, play tennis, and keep rooftop honeybees.

Hali was recently profiled in Forbes 50 Over 50: Impact.

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What I loved about this conversation with Katherine is how she and her family are learning together to take action together on sustainability; and how her time working with farmers in Oaxaca laid the groundwork for life’s passion to fight climate change.

Katherine Lorenz is President of the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation (www.cgmf.org), a grantmaking foundation focusing on environmental sustainability in Texas. She is the Leader of the Next Gen of the Giving Pledge, and Inside Philanthropy recently named Ms. Lorenz one of the most powerful heirs in philanthropy.

Previously, she served as Senior Advisor for the National Center for Family Philanthropy (www.ncfp.org) and Deputy Director for the Institute for Philanthropy (www.instituteforphilanthropy.org). Prior to that, Ms. Lorenz lived in Oaxaca, Mexico for six years where she co-founded Puente a la Salud Comunitaria (www.puentemexico.org), a non-profit organization working to advance food sovereignty in rural Oaxaca. She continues to be involved with Puente's work as an active board member. Before founding Puente, she spent two summers living in rural villages in Latin America with the volunteer program Amigos de las Américas and later served on their Program Committee and as a trustee of the Foundation for Amigos de las Americas.

Additionally, she currently serves on the Boards of Directors of the Environmental Defense Fund (Vice-Chair), the Tinker Foundation, and the Endowment for Regional Sustainability Science, and formerly was a Fellow and later Board Chair at the National Center for Family Philanthropy, Board Chair of The Philanthropy Workshop, a Board Member of Exponent Philanthropy, Resource Generation, the Amaranth Institute, and a member of the National Academies' Roundtable of Science and Technology for Sustainability.

Ms. Lorenz serves on the Advisory Council of Boldly Go Philanthropy, the Leadership Council of the Greater Houston Community Foundation, and the National Advisory Committee of USC's Irene Hirano Inouye Philanthropic Leadership Fund, and as a Senior Advisor for Philanthropy for Marsh Creek Social Works.

Ms. Lorenz holds a B.A. in Economics and Spanish from Davidson College.

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