The Selection Committee of the 11th Annual Brower Youth Awards

Barbara Brower

Barbara Brower is a Professor of Geography at Portland State University and is the granddaughter of David Brower. Her research interests include biogeography, cultural ecology, Nepal, the western United States, mountains, wildland resource conservation and policy, and the environmental movement.

Tom Feegel

Tom Feegel, is the founder of GreenMyParents, a radically innovative, nationwide program enabling youth to teach their peers and parents how to work together to seed the green economy, earn money at home, and save the planet through simple, everyday actions. Based on the popular GreenMyParents book, the public campaign empowers youth to lead their family’s effort live a lifestyle of sustainability and save money at home through reducing consumption and waste, and deploying fact-based measurements of incremental achievements regarding energy, water, transportation, shopping and pets. The goal of the program is to save over $100Million for families in 1 year, before applying the same framework to a national campaign to help youth save money for schools. The first international GreenMyParents program is launching in Brazil in 2010. Please join us and learn more at www.greenmyparents.com.

Zion Francis

Zion Francis is an eco-model, actress, civil engineer, environmental advocate, and environmental justice activist. As a citizen-activist she partners with socially and environmentally based organizations such as Engineers for a Sustainable World, The Sustainable Food Center, the Watershed Restoration Team for the U.S. Forest Service, and various food co-ops.

In 2009 she was named "Critics Choice: Best Female Model" at the Austin Fashion Awards, was chosen as one of Austin's 8 Most Beautiful Women for Austin Monthly Magazine's October Beauty issue, as well as Glossy Magazine's Top Pick for Style. She's appeared in Oprah Magazine, Essence Magazine, and on the Food Network's "Rescue Chef".

Zion Francis will be earning a Master's of Landscape Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. She academically and professionally advocates for urban forests, urban farming, and sustainable urban stormwater management.

Lynn Hirshfield

Lynn Hirshfield is Participant Media¹s Senior Vice President of Publishing. Lynn is responsible for launching Participant¹s publishing division to complement the company¹s films and social action campaigns. Prior to joining the staff of Participant, she consulted for the company throughout 2006 on the social marketing and outreach for the Academy Award®-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Lynn has served in the same capacity for a number of internet content and technology start ups, and various studios and venture capital groups specializing in creating new verticals and generating strategic partnerships with corporate sponsors.

Van Jones

Van Jones is a globally recognized, award-winning pioneer in human rights and the clean-energy economy. Van is a co-founder of three successful non-profit organizations: the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Color of Change and Green For All. He is the best-selling author of the definitive book on green jobs: The Green-Collar Economy. He served as the green jobs advisor in the Obama White House in 2009.

Van is currently a senior fellow at the Center For American Progress. Additionally, he is a senior policy advisor at Green For All.

Van also holds a joint appointment at Princeton University, as a distinguished visiting fellow in both the Center for African American Studies and in the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Annie Leonard

Annie Leonard is the Director of the Story of Stuff Project and author of The Story of Stuff (Free Press, March 2010).

In December 2007, Annie released The Story of Stuff, a hit 20-minute webfilm that takes viewers on a provocative and eye-opening tour of the often hidden costs of our consumer driven culture. The Story of Stuff has generated over 10 million views in more than 200 countries and territories since its launch, making it one of the most successful environmental-themed viral films of all time. The film has won numerous awards, including a South by Southwest Festival award, and in 2008 Annie was named one of Time Magazine’s Heroes of the Environment.

Annie has spent nearly two decades investigating and organizing on environmental health and justice issues, traveling to over 40 countries to visit the factories where our stuff is made and the dumps where it ends up. Annie’s films, writing and presentations combine solid information and first hand investigative reporting with a profound sense of hope that we can, indeed must, find a more sustainable way to meet our material needs.

Prior to directing the Story of Stuff Project, Annie worked for the Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production & Consumption, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), Health Care Without Harm, Essential Action and Greenpeace International. She is currently on the boards of the International Forum on Globalization and GAIA and has previously served on the Boards of the Grassroots Recycling Network, the Environmental Health Fund, Global Greengrants India and Greenpeace India.

Annie did her undergraduate studies at Barnard College, Columbia University and graduate work in City and Regional Planning at Cornell University. She resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben is an American environmentalist and writer who frequently writes about global warming and alternative energy and advocates for more localized economies. In 2010 the Boston Globe called him "probably the nation's leading environmentalist" and Time magazine described him as "the world's best green journalist. In 2009 he led the organization of 350.org, which coordinated what Foreign Policy magazine called "the largest ever global coordinated rally of any kind," with 5,200 simultaneous demonstrations in 181 countries. The magazine named him to its inaugural list of the 100 most important global thinkers, and MSN named him one of the dozen most influential men of 2009.

Diana Pei Wu

Dr. Diana Pei Wu (PhD, 2006, Society & Environment, University of California, Berkeley) was a Copeland Fellow of Global Sustainability at Amherst College from 2009-2010 and will be directing the concentration in Urban Community & Environment at Antioch University Los Angeles starting in August 2010. She is the co-author of ReGeneration: Young People Shaping Environmental Justice (2005, Movement Strategy Center) and the Annotated Bibliography on Environmental Justice and Environmental Racism (2002, Berkeley Workshop on Environmental Politics). Diana was a co-founder of the volunteer organization Chin Jurn Wor Ping and has worked on environmental justice, community planning and development, immigrant and refugee rights, as well as organizing or participating in anti-WTO actions and US grassroots climate justice delegations in Copenhagen and Cochabamba. In addition to doing ongoing work supporting youth organizers in environmental and climate justice, Dr. Wu is a member of the Progressive Communicators Network and does occasional media work for community based artists and grassroots social justice organizations at the intersection of justice and ecology.