Alex Steffen
Alum 2002Alex Steffen is an award-winning writer, speaker and foresight consultant. Alex is a prolific writer and public thinker, having written thousands of pieces, been profiled in numerous media interviews and given hundreds of talks to audiences around the world. Over the last ten years he has also advised some of the world’s most forward-looking institutions, investors, philanthropists and NGOs. In 2013-2014, he was Planetary Futurist in Residence at the design and innovation firm IDEO.
Jilann Spitzmiller
Alum 2002Jilann Spitzmiller is a documentary producer, director, editor, cinematographer and teacher whose award-winning work has been shown around the globe. She most recently won a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism for her work in the POV PBS documentary, Critical Condition, which she co-produced and co-directed. Jilann has freelanced extensively in the documentary field, directing, writing and shooting two seasons of the documentary series Medical Diary and producing, writing and directing for the NBC documentary series Life Moments.
Victoria Schlesinger
Alum 2002Victoria Schlesinger is an award-winning writer, reporter, and editor specializing in the environment and science. She has written for Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times, Mother Jones, Audubon, Discover, The Christian Science Monitor, California Lawyer and PBS Frontline, among other outlets. She is also the author of Animals and Plants of the Ancient Maya: A Guide.
Alan Rabinowitz
Alum 2002Alan Rabinowitz was an urban economist and former chairman of the Department of Urban Planning at the University of Washington. He is the author of seven books on topics ranging from municipal bond finance to social change philanthropy. He has been a major figure in Seattle civic affairs and community organizing. His activities have included serving on the founding boards of Town Hall, and Social Justice Fund Northwest. He also served on the board of the Burke Museum and helped start an endowment fund for the Washington Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
David Minkow
Alum 2002David Minkow is a writer and editor for the Social Capital Project and Climate Access. Previously, for more than a decade, he was a producer with KQED Public Radio in San Francisco, first as producer for Forum, a daily live public affairs program, and later as senior producer for Health Dialogues, a monthly statewide radio program. David has also worked as an editor for The Daily Journal, a newspaper reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Monroe Evening News, and a freelance radio producer for CBC Radio.
Brenda Miller
Alum 2002Brenda Miller is the author of Season of the Body and co-author of Tell it Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction. Her work has received five Pushcart Prizes and has been published in such journals as Fourth Genre, Creative Nonfiction, The Sun, Utne Reader, Georgia Review and Witness. She is an Associate Professor of English at Western Washington University and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Bellingham Review.
Gregory McNamee
Alum 2002Gregory McNamee is a writer, journalist, editor, photographer and publisher. He is the author or title-page editor of forty books and more than seven thousand periodical publications, including articles, essays, reviews, interviews, editorials, poems and short stories. He is the editor of Zócalo, an arts-and-culture magazine covering Tucson and southern Arizona. He is a consultant, contributor and contributing editor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He is also a contributing editor to and regular reviewer for Kirkus Reviews.
Elin Kelsey
Alum 2002Elin Kelsey, PhD, is a leading spokesperson, scholar and educator in the area of evidence-based hope. Her influence can be seen in the hopeful, solutions-focus of her clients including the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and other powerful institutions where she has served as a visiting fellow including the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, and the Rockefeller Foundation. She is a featured writer for Hakai Magazine and a best-selling children’s book author.
Jim Jontz
Alum 2002Jim Jontz was an American politician who represented the Indiana's 5th congressional district. A progressive Democrat, he served in the United States House of Representatives from 1987 to 1993. After his time in politics, Jim moved to Portland, Oregon, where he began working as Executive Director for the Western Ancient Forest Campaign. While with WAFC, he built an extremely effective grassroots organizing campaign, which pushed aggressively to protect forests, remove federal subsidies that financed clearcutting, and preserve millions of acres of previously unprotected roadless areas in National Forests.
Jessica Hurley
Alum 2002Jessica "Jessa" Hurley is an author whose work has appeared in Seventeen Magazine and USA Today. In addition to writing for print, Jessa has won two Emmy Awards for a documentary television series she wrote and produced about youth overcoming challenges. She is the author of Burn this Book... and Move on with your Life and One Makes the Difference, which she cowrote with Julia Butterfly Hill.
Marc Herman
Alum 2002Over a 20-year career, reporter Marc Herman has reported from volcanoes in Java, vaccine trials in Mozambique, fire festivals in Spain and Presidential debates in New Hampshire. He is the author of Searching for El Dorado, about his travels with South American gold miners. His writing has appeared in dozens of publications including The Atlantic, Harper's Bazaar, Slate, The Believer and GQ.
Stephanie Hamilton
Alum 2002Stephanie Hamilton has written for Parenting, Essence, News Watch and Sierra magazines. She is author of It’s About Time, a resource book for urban young women, and The Whole Parenting Guide, a book for new parents about holistic childrearing.