KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

From captivating Global Trends to Food Chain Collaborations to Fields of Dirt our line up of speakers will open minds to new ways of thinking as we Leverage Partnerships for Profit.

Lauren is the Innovation Director for Collaborative Lab, working with organizations to deliver socially game-changing and profitable solutions in the Collaborative Consumption space, named by TIME as one of the “10 Ideas That Will Change The World”. Playing an instrumental role in building the Collaborative Consumption brand, growing global movement and researching the latest examples for International book editions of What’s Mine is Yours including the UK and Brazil, Lauren is a leading source of strategic knowledge for entrepreneurs, journalists, and venture capitalists who want the latest market insights on new goods and services in the market.

Lauren curates a bi-weekly ‘Collaborative Entrepreneurs’ column getting inside hot ventures from Airbnb to thredUP to TaskRabbit, and is a highly skilled public speaker and workshop facilitator, who has delivered keynotes in Europe, United States, South America and Australia for organizations such as Fast Company, GigaOm, UNEP Future of Sustainable Lifestyles and Entrepreneurship, CPA Australia and the Brightest Young Minds Summit. Her presentations focus on how the latest collaborative technologies will influence the way we live, create, and consume.

COLLABORATIVE CONSUMPTION AND THE CHANGING FACE OF INDUSTRY Network technologies have turbo-charged our ability to share and exchange everything from cars to food to household goods, changing the way we live, work and play. Lauren explains why everyone from hot start-ups to Fortune 500 giants are embracing the Collaborative Consumption economy, named by TIME Magazine as ‘One of 10 Ideas that will Change the World.’ She explores how Collaborative Consumption and key future technology and innovation trends are shaping the evolution of sectors from hospitality and tourism to agriculture to transportation, inspiring the audience to think about adjusting to change and forging new pathways and possibilities to create a stronger, brighter future.

Collaborative Lab: http://cclab.collaborativeconsumption.com/

Larry Yee currently serves as the Co-founder and Coordinating Director for the Food Commons, a large national project dedicated to designing and developing a new economic paradigm and whole systems approach for regional food. Larry is retired from the University of California where he was the director of the Ventura County UC Cooperative Extension office and the UC Hansen Trust, which operated the UC Hansen Agricultural Center. In the early 90’s, he was appointed to a national Extension committee on the future of US agriculture.

For the past 25 years he has worked nationally on sustainable agriculture and food systems. From 1996 to 2000, he worked closely with Dee Hock, founder and CEO Emeritus of VISA International, on innovative organizational structures. This led to the development of Community Alliances of Interdependent Agriculture (CAIA), which was the precursor to the Association of Family Farms national organization (launched in 2002).

Larry served as the co-founder and chair of AFF and he now serves on the executive committee of the national board. In 2003-04, Larry was appointed to a one-year assignment at USDA as National Program Leader for Food Marketing Systems Innovations. He has been involved with the Agriculture-of-the Middle national initiative and currently serves on the national coordinating committee. Larry is also past co-chair of the California Roots of Change (ROC) and a past board member of the Food Alliance. He currently serves on the new Los Angeles Food Policy Council and is co-chair of the Economic Development Working Group.

Larry was recently appointed by Governor Brown of California to serve on the Regional Water Board. Larry lives in Ojai, CA where he serves on the Food for Thought board and works every Sunday volunteering at the Ojai Farmers Market. He has an MBA in Agribusiness from the University of Santa Clara and was a Kellogg Fellow at the Resources for the Future Institute.

THE FOOD COMMONS idea was proposed by Roots of Change Stewardship Council members Jim Cochran and Larry Yee with the intention to provide an alternative to our current global industrial food system. The goal is to create a more localized option for producing, processing, distributing, marketing, and accessing quality food. There are three components to the proposal: 1) Trusts which preserve farm land and food system infrastructure. 2) Community banks to provide financial services to food system enterprises, producers, and consumers. 3) Food commons hubs to aggregate and distribute local and regional food and provide services to communities and local food enterprises. The areas where these bodies overlap create the Food Commons, a place where everyone has access to abundant, healthy, safe, affordable, and fresh food. These three components have the potential to be a major locomotive for economic growth and a magnet for a new generation of innovators who will have the access to capital and the place to put their energy and creativity to work.

The Food Commons: http://www.thefoodcommons.org/summary.html

Sarah Stokes Alexander serves as Director of Environment Practice for The Keystone Center and has over 18 years of experience working as a facilitator on collaborative problem-solving models. She has facilitated numerous efforts in the areas of sustainability, agriculture, transportation, environmental cleanup, and forestry at local, national, and international levels. She has provided facilitation of industry-led sustainability initiatives, interagency coordination efforts, regulatory negotiations, strategic planning, and national and regional dialogues. She provides training in collaborative leadership, stakeholder engagement, and sustainability strategies. She graduated from Middlebury College with a bachelor's degree in environmental studies and holds a Masters of Public Administration from Harvard University.

FIELD TO MARKET is a diverse alliance working to create opportunities across the agricultural supply chain for continuous improvements in productivity, environmental quality, and human well-being. The group provides collaborative leadership that is engaged in industry-wide dialogue, grounded in science, and open to the full range of technology choices. FtM has developed the Fieldprint Calculator which is an educational tool relying on peer reviewed scientific algorithms to determine a producer’s fieldprint, or impact, on the environment.

Field to Market: http://www.fieldtomarket.org/news/2012/field-to-market-brings-stakeholders-together-to-enhance-sustainability/