People

I am an 18 year old global sustainability activist and the winner of the 2016 International Children's Peace Prize. I am also the Founder President of youth sustainability organisation Green Hope Foundation which has over 1000 young members working across several countries on the SDGs.

I am a 29-year-old environmental educator from Guatemala. When I was 24, I founded Semillas del Océano, an organization that uses education, science and community action to promote the sustainable use of the ocean and its marine life. I'm sowing the seed of conservation in the new generations.

Colorado has established a lead role in advancing environmental education across the nation. In 2012, the State Board of Education adopted the Colorado Environmental Education Plan with bipartisan support. The Colorado Environmental Education Leadership Council is responsible for implementing the plan’s strategies. This is the first collaborative group in the nation specifically designed to engage in cross-sector partnerships to advance environmental literacy in Colorado’s PreK-12 schools. The primary objective of this project is to develop a community of practice where Council leaders and environmental education partners are equipped with effective tools for network building, leadership, and communication. Using a suite of online learning tools, this community of practice will allow Council members to share research and best practices in environmental education. This includes telling the story of environmental education in Colorado through multiple media, hosting a series of webinars aimed at professional development in environmental education leadership, and creating a networking space to build a strong infrastructure of partnerships across all Colorado communities.

Hillary Mason is an environmental educator and researcher at the University of Colorado in Denver. She is the Environmental Literacy Coordinator at the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education, a professional organization aimed at advancing environmental literacy by connecting communities with environmental education materials and resources. Hillary is a member of the Colorado Environmental Education Leadership Council, a select team of leaders charged with implementing strategies in the Colorado Environmental Education Plan adopted by the State Board of Education in 2012. Hillary has a master’s degree in Environmental Science and is currently working on her Ph.D. in STEM Education. Her research focuses on environmental identity development and its relationship to science learning across different cultures and communities. Hillary has worked as a middle grades science teacher and is currently a lecturer in the School of Education and Human Development and the Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado in Denver. As a fellow in the T3 Accelerator program, she is utilizing a peer-to-peer learning model to develop an online platform for Council members to build capacity and partnerships that will strengthen efforts to provide environmental education in Colorado’s PreK-12 schools.

Dr. Mele Wheaton is a senior research scholar with Prof. Nicole Ardoin’s team in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. Her research interests include learning in out-of-school contexts, pro-environmental action, and nature-based tourism. As lead on a variety of projects, Mele has studied behavior change in ecotourists in Galapagos and California, environmental identity and action in high-school students participating in an intensive conservation education program, and professional development in environmental educators. She currently manages several projects including exploring the various pathways to environmental literacy through environmental education programming and connecting research and practice both in education and in conservation land management. Mele has an M.A. and Ph.D. in Science and Environmental Education from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has been a fellow of the NSF-funded Center for Informal Learning and Schools; a fellow of the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation for Environmental Leadership; and a board member of the California Environmental Education Foundation (CEEF). Prior to her research career, Mele worked for more than a decade in a variety of informal education settings including parks and museums in Alaska, Arizona, and California.  Mele has also worked as a field biologist, conducting botanical surveys and studying nesting bald eagles.

Passionate innovator in experiential outdoor learning with a focus on place-based education. Builds bridges with community partners to create and sustain positive change in our local learning communities and meet the needs of learners through the use of research-based content and pedagogy.

I am a PhD Student in the Geography, Planning and Design program at the University of Colorado Denver researching regenerative food systems in urban environments. The ways people, especially children, relate to their environments and local, regional landscape guides my inquiry.