Adebayo Clement-Akomolafe is a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Covenant University in Nigeria. He helped create the reality television programme "Kalengo" based on community activity. He and his wife Ijeoma were initiating co-founders of Koru, a trans-local network of cultural creatives who believe another world is possible and he is also a member of the Global Cooperative Forum in Switzerland.

Peter Buffett is an Emmy Award winning musician and philanthropist. He composed the score for 500 Nations, CBS miniseries produced by Kevin Costner and his piece, Spirit: The Seventh Fire, premiered as part of the opening of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C. Together with his wife, Jennifer, he is co-chair and co-president of the NoVo Foundation. He is the author of Life Is What You Make It. www.peterbuffett.com

Scott Chaskey, author, poet, philanthropist and farmer, runs Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett, New York, one of the first CSA farms in the country. He is the author of Seedtime: On the History, Husbandry, Politics and Promise of Seeds and This Common Ground: Seasons on an Organic Farm. http://www.peconiclandtrust.org/quail_hill_farm.html

Charles Eisenstein is a speaker and writer focusing on themes of human culture and identity. He is the author of several books, most recently Sacred Economics and The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible. His background includes a degree in mathematics and philosophy from Yale, a decade in Taiwan as a translator, and stints as a college instructor, a yoga teacher, and a construction worker. He currently writes and speaks full-time. He lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and four children. http://charleseisenstein.net

Laura Flanders is a broadcast journalist and author. She hosts GRITtv with Laura Flanders, and is a regular contributor to Yes! Magazine ("Commonomics"), The Nation and MSNBC. Her books include, Blue Grit: True Democrats Take Back Politics from the Politicians and Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species, a study of the women in George W. Bush's cabinet. www.grittv.org Follow her on twitter at @GRITlaura

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and foreign correspondent who writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. His books include, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (with Joe Sacco), Death of the Liberal Class, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. http://www.truthdig.com/staff/chris_hedges

Catherine Ingram is the author of Passionate Presence, In the Footsteps of Gandhi, and A Crack in Everything. A former journalist specializing in issues of consciousness and activism, she has internationally led retreats and public sessions of Dharma Dialogues since 1993 and is founder and president of Living Dharma, an educational nonprofit organization. http://www.dialogueswithcatherine.com/

Manish Jain is founder and coordinator of Shikshantar: The People's Institute for Rethinking Education and Development and Swaraj University. He has worked with UNESCO Learning Without Frontiers transnational initiative, UNICEF, USAID, and Morgan Stanley investment bank. He has been trying to unlearn what he studied at Harvard Graduate School of Education. www.swaraj.org/shikshantar

Camila Moreno works with social movements in Brazil and Latin America on social and environmental dimensions of biotechnology and agribusiness expansion in the region. Her main areas of study, writing and activism in recent years has been on the territorial impacts of development policies and emerging schemes associated to the green economy.

Helena Norberg-Hodge is the founder and director of Local Futures - International Society for Ecology and Culture. She is the author of the bestselling Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh and producer of the film, The Economics of Happiness. She is a pioneer of the worldwide localisation movement and a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award and the 2012 Goi Peace Award. www.localfutures.org

Michael Shuman is an economist, attorney, author, and entrepreneur, and Director of Community Portals for Mission Markets in New York City. He's a founding board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) and a fellow of Cutting Edge Capital, and Post-Carbon Institute. He has authored, coauthored, or edited eight books, including Local Dollars, Local Sense: How to Move Your Money from Wall Street to Main Street and Achieve Real Prosperity and The Small Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition, which received as bronze prize from the Independent Publishers Association for best business book of 2006.  https://bealocalist.org/michael-schuman

Judy Wicks is founder of White Dog Café and an international leader and speaker in the local living economies movement. She is co-founder of the nationwide Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) and founder of the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia and Fair Food. She is the author of Good Morning, Beautiful Business. www.bealocalist.org/Judy-Wicks

Elizabeth Yeampierre is a nationally recognized Puerto Rican attorney and environmental justice leader of African and Indigenous ancestry born and raised in New York City. She is Executive Director of UPROSE and a long-time advocate and trailblazer for community organizing around sustainable development, environmental justice and community-led climate adaptation and community resiliency. Her work is featured in several books and a variety of media outlets throughout the United States, Latin America and Europe. Elizabeth was recently named one of the top 100 Green Leaders by Poder Hispanic Magazine.  http://uprose.org