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Content Curation Advisory Board Member

Ecological Belonging Specialist

Aaron Pereira

Project Co-Lead, The Wellbeing Project

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Aaron recently came across an old and slightly dusty high school paper and was more than a bit surprised to see it explored the connection between inner lives and social change. It was lovely to (re)discover that his work in the Project touches on a life long interest alongside other wonderful things in life like travel, meeting people, reading, and hosting dinner parties or really gatherings of all kinds.

Aaron’s mom got him involved in social change work (some time before the high school paper) and it stuck. The key thread in much of his work is exploring the way we live together. Sometimes that’s taken the form of pop up experiments, boards, or running an organisation. A few other times he’s been a co-founder such as with CanadaHelps. CanadaHelps, one of Canada’s leading charities, engages over 3 million Canadians to raise over $400 million a year for social causes across Canada and around the world.

Taking time for a morning cup of tea helps his day start out gently and well. It started as a (gentle) daily ritual sometime during a 7 year walk-about which was all about taking time for and re-centering his inner life. Something the cup of tea helps with every day. He loves being based in Paris and continuing to spend a lot of time in India.

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Content Curation Advisory Board Member

Organizational Wellbeing Specialist

Gayle Karen Young

Senior Advisor, Hearthland Foundation, and Cultivator, Cultivating Leadership

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Gayle believes the world needs more leaders who are “able for” what lies ahead, who have developed the capacity to meet the complexity of global challenges. Working in the field of leadership for the past two decades, it has become abundantly clear to her that there are the visible, tangible, practical, and pragmatic aspects of leadership that need to be executed on a day-by-day basis, and then there is the work of caring for the spaces between people, of seeing complexity and interdependencies, of understanding relationships and power and all the ephemeral things that still excise tremendous influence on the day-to-day behaviors of people. Thus it is the invisible work of leadership, the work of showing up, setting culture, and creating spaces for others to thrive that is the focus of her work. She believes in meeting people and systems wherever they are, and then developing people to work with the full range of who they are to meet the full complexity of the organizational system and operating ecosystem, working with the intangible but critically necessary human substructures to move a strategy forward.

Gayle Karen Young is a cultural architect and a catalyst for human and organizational development. She comes from a rich organizational consulting background with both corporate and nonprofit clients. She was in process of becoming a Zen monk when she became an executive instead, taking on the role of Chief Culture and Talent Officer at the Wikimedia Foundation (CHRO for Wikipedia and its sister free-knowledge projects) until early 2015 when she joined Cultivating Leadership. From high-level strategic thinking to practical implementation, her skills include leadership development, change management, facilitation, training, strategic communications, speaking, team building, and personal and organizational transformation.

Gayle holds a Masters degree in Organizational Psychology. Gayle is passionate about global women’s issues and supporting women in leadership. She is also very much a geek that loves attending Comic-Con and reading science fiction, which inspires a passion for technology and its leverage for societal change. She is keenly interested in the intersection of technology and human rights and supports futurist humanitarian causes. She lives in both San Francisco, California, and Whidbey Island, Washington.

IN GAYLE'S WORDSIN GAYLE'S WORDS

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

I think of the deep interconnections from the perspective of coherence and integrity. We over-emphasize individual wellbeing as though that were sufficient, and while individual wellbeing is necessary (sleep, diet, and nervous system self-regulation), it is insufficient. One cannot be well if one’s family isn’t well, if your people aren’t well, if your planet isn’t well. 

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

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” – J. Krishnamurti. Greater interconnectedness, greater resilience, greater awareness, and more coherence.

WHAT GAYLE IS READING, LISTENING TO, AND WATCHING

Jennifer Garvey Berger, Changing on the Job (2nd edition) (2024). “It ties deeply between developmental theory and the capacity for resilience and change.”

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Content Curation Advisory Board Member

Intergenerational Trauma Specialist

Dr. Mays Imad

Associate Professor, Connecticut College

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Dr. Mays Imad’s academic journey began at the University of Michigan–Dearborn, where she pursued philosophy and minored in chemistry. She earned a doctoral degree in cellular & clinical neurobiology, with a minor in biomedical sciences, from Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Arizona’s Department of Neuroscience, she joined Pima Community College (PCC), teaching a variety of biology-related subjects. During her tenure at PCC, she founded their Teaching and Learning Center (TLC). Throughout her education and professional journey, Dr. Imad has maintained a keen interest in exploring how the nervous system perceives and responds to the world, which has deeply influenced her approach to both teaching and research.

Currently an associate professor at Connecticut College, Dr. Imad is interested in understanding the social determinants of student wellbeing and success and conducts research on equity pedagogy. Her work reflects a deep commitment to equity and justice in and through education. With fervor, she advocates for institutions to pay close attention to intergenerational trauma and to prioritize repair, healing and growth. She is a Gardner Institute Fellow, AAC&U Senior STEM Fellow, a Mind and Life Institute Fellow, and a Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest (AVReQ).

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Content Curation Advisory Board Member

Peacebuilding and Reconciliation Specialist

Dr. Akwasi Aidoo

Senior Fellow, Humanity United

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Dr. Akwasi Aidoo is a philanthropy professional and also engages in creative writing in his spare time.  He is currently a Senior Fellow at Humanity United, and was the founding Executive Director of TrustAfrica.  His other previous positions include head of the health sciences program of the International Development Research Center (IDRC) in West and Central Africa, Director of the Ford Foundation’s offices in Senegal and Nigeria, Director of the Ford Foundation’s Special Initiative for Africa, In the 1970s and 1980s, Dr. Aidoo taught at universities in Ghana, Tanzania, and the United States.

Dr. Aidoo currently serves on the Boards of several international organizations including Human Rights Watch, International Development Research Centre, NatCen International. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of CAPSI. He previously chaired the Boards of Fund for Global Human Rights, Resource Alliance, Africa Grantmakers’ Affinity Group, The Resource Alliance, and two Boards of Open Society Foundations. Other Boards that Dr. Aidoo has served on in the past include those of OXFAM America, Global Greengrants Fund, and the Global Network Committee of the Ash Institute at Harvard University.

Dr. Aidoo was educated in Ghana and the United States and completed a Doctor of Philosophy degree in medical sociology from the University of Connecticut in 1985. In 2021, he received the African Philanthropy Lifetime Achievement Award.

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Content Curation Advisory Board Member Technology and Artificial Intelligence Specialist

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Sennay Ghebreab

Professor, Program Director and Founder

Sennay Ghebreab is a Professor of Socially-Intelligent AI at the University of Amsterdam, where he also serves as the program director of the Master Information Studies and the founder and scientific director of the Civic-AI Lab. He earned his M.Sc. in Technical Information Systems in 1996 and his Ph.D. in Computer Vision and Medical Imaging in 2001, both from the University of Amsterdam. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, Sennay held various positions at the UvA, including assistant professor in the Informatics Institute and the Psychology Institute, head of Social Sciences at Amsterdam University College, and associate professor in the Informatics Institute. Sennay’s research focuses on harnessing AI for the betterment of everyday life and society, ensuring it is done fairly and inclusively. In addition to his academic pursuits, he is actively engaged in numerous committees and boards, such as the State Commission against Discrimination and Racism and the Supervisory Board of the Nemo Science Museum.

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Content Curation Advisory Board Member

Sacred Economy Specialist

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Jay Coen Gilbert
Co-founder, B Lab and the B Corp movement; Executive Chair, Imperative 21; Co-founder, White Men for Racial Justice

Jay Coen Gilbert is Executive Chair of Imperative 21, a global network building narrative power for a just economy. Imperative 21 catalyzes breakthrough narratives that open cultural space for aligned yet hesitant leaders to reimagine and redesign an economic system that cares more about people than profit. The imperatives of that system are to: design for interdependence, invest for justice, and account for all stakeholders. Imperative 21 builds on Jay’s experience as cofounder of B Lab, the nonprofit behind the global B Corporation movement with more than 9,000 companies across 80 countries. Along with his B Lab cofounders, Jay is the recipient of the UMKC Entrepreneur of the Year Award, as well as the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship and the McNulty Prize at the Aspen Institute, where he is a Henry Crown Fellow.

Since 2016, Jay has been called into antiracism work, prioritizing his own learning and unlearning while co-convening multiracial and white caucus spaces, including White Men for Racial Justice (WMRJ), a BIPOC-accountable peer-led community of practice for White men to develop the literacy, skills, and commitment to dismantle the culture and systems of human hierarchy in ourselves, our organizations, our communities, and our country.

Prior to co-founding B Lab, Jay co-founded AND1, a $250M global basketball footwear, apparel, and entertainment company, and subject of documentaries on Netflix and ESPN. Jay also worked for McKinsey & Co, as well as organizations in the public and nonprofit sectors. Jay grew up in New York City and while he graduated from Stanford University with a degree in East Asian Studies, his most rewarding educational experience was co-teaching a class for a dozen years about the role of business in society at Westtown School, a 200-year-old Quaker institution. Between AND1 and B Lab, Jay enjoyed a sabbatical in Australia, New Zealand, and Monteverde, Costa Rica with his yogini wife Randi and two children, Dex and Ria, now 26 and 24. Jay and Randi live in Berwyn, PA.

IN JAY’S WORDS

How do you think individual, collective, and planetary wellbeing are connected?
We can’t change the world without changing ourselves.
What do you hope the outcomes are from the global Hearth Summit?
Deeper roots. Stronger branches