Clare Celeste

International artist and environmentalist

Clare Celeste is a Berlin-based international artist and environmentalist. She works with thousands of hand-cut images of flora and fauna to create immersive installations evocative of our planet’s threatened biodiversity. She is dedicated to raising awareness and action around the ecological and biodiversity crises.

My artworks depict our planet’s rapidly vanishing biodiversity, and her immersive installations overtake and transform spaces into teeming ecosystems.

She is dedicated to raising awareness around the ecological and biodiversity crises through my art, performances, storytelling, and guided discussions. Clare uses her online platform’s broad reach to spark engagement and amplify the voices of climate leaders and change-makers. Her recent installation, The Garden, hosted live discussions with leaders in climate, such as Dr Katherine K. Wilkinson and Heather McTeer Toney. Her events explore science and advocacy work and the inner work and relational reservoirs that can help us hold our uncertainty, grief, and joy in a time of planetary crisis.

Clare holds a Master’s in Public Policy from UCLA and brings together art and environmental advocacy. Her mission is to:

• Partner with those committed to a just, regenerative and biodiverse future powered by 100% renewable energy.

• Create collaborative works that engage audiences of all ages on the importance of biodiversity.

• Use art as a form of environmental activism.

Her work has been featured in the Guardian, Deutsche Welle, Oprah Magazine, This is Colossal, The Jealous Curator, and My Modern Met.

She lives and works in Berlin with her husband and son.

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Louisa Zondo

Co-Founder and Director, Riky Rick Foundation for the Promotion of Artivism

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Louisa Zondo is a co-founder of the Riky Rick Foundation for the Promotion of Artivism. She is also the Chairperson of the Barloworld Empowerment Foundation and former Chairperson of Oxfam South Africa. A lawyer and social activist, she served as Deputy Executive Director of the Constitutional Assembly during South Africa’s transition from apartheid, going on to become Chief Executive of the South African Human Rights Commission in 1996. Along with other members of her family, Louisa is currently involved in the work of the Riky Rick Foundation for the Promotion of Artivism established in memory of her son Rikhado “Riky Rick” Makhado, a well-loved music artist and creative who died in February 2022 from suicide. In 2023 she published “Dearest MaRiky: A Mother’s Journey Through Grief, Trauma and Healing” a memoir of life with her late son. Louisa’s life energy is mainly at the intersection of arts, culture and activism towards a just, connected, life-supporting world. 

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IN LOUISA’S WORDS

How do you think individual, collective, and planetary wellbeing are connected?

In the same way as all of life is connected at the individual, collective and planetary level, wellbeing is also connected at these levels. Individual inner wellbeing cultivates the quietening of the noises of our thoughts and emotions presenting space for deeper connection to the infinite capacities of our inner intelligence. 

At a collective level, continuous engagement in practices that draw us out of the optical delusion of experiencing ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest of humanity and opens up space for cultures and systems that value all life and centre love as the ultimate reality.  

I am inspired by the story of the universe which is informed by scientific and spiritual perspectives and connects all of life to the continuing evolutionary process that began some 13.8 billion years ago. 

For me this means attending to my inner life by developing practices that bring up awareness of and curious about the patterns of thought and emotions that I have created. These patterns have the effect of blocking the flow of life-force in me and essentially make decisions for me without me even knowing that this is happening. Attending to my personal wellbeing becomes my continuous training in encountering all aspects of life – from mundane daily experiences to collective trauma to understandings of myself as part of nature – from the expansive state of connection to pure love. It opens up pathways for coming at all forms of injustice from a consciousness which is different from that which caused the problems and therefore coming upon generative, life-giving solutions based on truth.  

What do you hope the outcomes are from the global Hearth Summit?

Deeper support for those who come at transformational methods to nurture leadership, wellness and justice, equality, diversity and inclusion among the majority who, typically are excluded from accessing these methods. I look forward to plans that would center arts and culture, women and gender non-binary people, young people, BIPOC and economically marginalised in the allocation of resources and support for wellbeing. 

WHAT LOUISA IS READING

  • Justin Michael Williams, “Stay Woke: A Meditation Guide for the REST of Us”
  • Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross, “Your Brain on Art”
  • Vaness Machado de Oliveira “Hospicing Modernity” 
  • Adrienne Maree Brown, “Emergent Strategy”  
  • Kumi Naidoo, “Letters to My Mother – The Making of a Trouble-Maker”
  • Louisa Zondo, “Dearest MaRiky – A Mother’s Journey Through Grief Trauma and Healing”
  • Makhosazana Xaba, “Running and Other Stories”
  • Pumla Dineo Gqola, “Female Fear Factory”
  • Lebogang Mashile, “In a Ribbon of Rhythm”
  • Athambile Masola, “Ilifa”

Clara Oyuela

Psychologist, psychodramatist and writer

Clara Oyuela lives in Patagonia, Argentina. She is dedicated to clinical and educational psychology, focussing on problems of children, adolescents and adults, working both individually and in groups. She transforms clinical and educational experiences into art. She traveled for many years through the American continent, from the southern point of Argentina to Alaska. She has just published her second book, “Chronicles of an abstinence”, a personal investigation: thirty days without instant communication or social networks. She made the experiment with a group of psychology students, digital native adolescents with amazing results. She´s about to edit her third book.

Carolin Schmee

Social Entrepreneur

Carolin Schmee has been dedicated to entrepreneurship and social-system changing / corporate social responsibility for more than 25 years, during which she co-created 6 foundations / CSR departments, in large corporations both nationally and internationally.

After a burn-out, she continued my path towards self-knowledge and awareness through Yoga and Coaching, bringing Well-being to people and companies, and co-created a center with more than 60 professors and spiritual masters in Argentina.

Today she focuses on Sustainability with a newly created nationwide regeneration and education project. She is part of the Council of various organizations.

She is the mother of Bastian, a yoga practitioner, living in Buenos Aires.

Lorea Bilbao Ibarra

Councilor for Basque language, Culture and Sports and Spokeperson for Bizkaia Provincial Council

Lorea Ibarra is a teacher, with a degree in Basque Philology and also in Sociocultural Anthropology. She has completed postgraduate courses in Basque Culture and a “Master’s degree in innovation and development of skills in Higher Education”.

She has been a Basque language teacher at the Labayru Institute and is currently on leave from the Begoñako Andra Mari University School for Teaching.

During her professional career she has been the director of Basque Language Promotion of the Basque Government (2000-2005), Cultural Advisor of the Basque Government for Language Policy issues (2005-2009), representative at the Bizkaia General Assembly (2011-2015) and a member of the executive committee of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) responsible for Basque language, education, culture and sports.

Since 2015 she is the Provincial minister for Basque language, culture and sports in Bizkaia.

Sandrine Woitrin

Co-Lead for the Wellbeing Project

Sandrine Woitrin worked for over ten years in the retail and restaurant business. She was part of the opening team of Starbucks in Spain and France, then helped create the CSR department of Grupo Vips and Starbucks Spain and France. She studied Naturopathy and is passionate about alternative therapies. She is now co-Lead for the Wellbeing Project, a global initiative co-created with Ashoka, Impact Hub, Georgetown University, Porticus, the Skoll Foundation and Synergos, catalysing a culture of inner wellbeing for all changemakers.

Aaron Pereira

Project Lead for The Wellbeing Project

Aaron is excited about the interplay between our inner lives and the broader world. Aaron Pereira is currently Project Lead for The Wellbeing Project. The Wellbeing Project is catalysing a culture of inner wellbeing for all changemakers. The Wellbeing Project is co-created with Ashoka, Esalen, Impact Hub, Porticus, the Skoll Foundation, and Synergos. The Project emerged from a 7 year sabbatical ending in 2012. Aaron has also worked with the Guggenheim on an urban labs project, co-founded a pilot social enterprise to address the inequity and the housing issues in Mumbai slums, and on exploring different threads of how neighbourhood life happens especially in Paris. Pre-sabbatical, Aaron was co-founder of CanadaHelps and Vartana. CanadaHelps engages over 2 million Canadians to raise over CAD$200 million a year to support causes in their community and around the world. CanadaHelps also works with over 20,000 charities on capacity related issues. Vartana was one of the pioneers of the Canadian field of social finance. Aaron is an Ashoka Fellow and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. Aaron completed a degree with a minor in Economics from Queen’s University, studied at Oxford University as a Skoll Scholar, and completed an executive education program at Harvard.

Vanee Surendranathan

Community mental health and disability

Vanee Surendranathan has over two decades of experience working in the NGO sector. Her specialties focus on community mental health and disability. In this interview, she talks about the significance of community approaches for mental health, issues relating to mental health and the ageing population of Sri Lanka, and the need of paying attention to mental health issues within reconciliation and transitional justice processes.

Juan Maquieyra

Executive Director of Fratelli Tutti Political School

Juan Maquieyra is the Executive Director of Fratelli Tutti Political School, an organization impulsed by Pope Francis that seeks to forge a global community of young leaders with a political vocation inspired by Pope Francis. The aim of Fratelli Tutti is to co-create processes of social transformation oriented to common good, and ventured to propose new paradigms from the social and existential peripheries of the planet.

Juan is the former Chief of Advisors of the Mayor of the City of Buenos Aires, and also former President of the Housing Authority of the City of Buenos Aires where he led the most ambitious slum upgrading program in Latin America. During his time at the Buenos Aires City Government, he proposed a model for public policy design based on the principle of “process over proyect” where citizen participation in the design, implementation and evaluation of policies is more important than the project itself. The results of that model can be seen in the present by visiting Villa 20, Villa Rodrigo Bueno or Villa Fraga in Buenos Aires.

Juan holds a Masters Degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He was a Visiting Scholar at the New School in New York, a professor of Public Policy at Universidad Austral and professor of Political Science at the Universidad Católica Argentina.

Wanja Muguongo

UHAI EASHRI Founder

Wanja Muguongo founded UHAI EASHRI, an organization that addresses the structural and systemic discrimination and marginalization that people of non-conforming sexual orientation, sexual expression, and gender identity continue to face in Africa. She also served as the organization’s executive director until her retirement.

A feminist and social justice activist, Ms. Muguongo has spent her entire professional career working in human rights activism, mostly within the East African civil society sector but also branching out to work in India and Pakistan. Before founding UHAI EASSHRI, she worked at the Ufadhili Trust on its East African program on Community Resource Mobilization and Volunteering. Ms. Muguongo has a master’s degree in sociology, and is fluent in English, Kiswahili, and Kikuyu. She has edited and collaborated on many publications and papers, and is a Yale World Fellow 2012.