Director of the Pain Management Department
Santa Cruz Community Health

Michael Amster, MD, a physician and researcher at the UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center with twenty years’ experience in pain management, is the founding Director of the Pain Management Department at Santa Cruz Community Health. A meditation practitioner for 30+ years, he is also a certified yoga and meditation teacher who conducts research on awe and leads mindfulness retreats.

Director
Othering and Belonging Institute

john a. powell, Director of the Othering and Belonging Institute and Professor of Law, African American, and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, was previously Executive Director at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State, and prior to that, the founder and Director of the Institute for Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota. He also formerly served as the National Legal Director of the ACLU, co-founded the Poverty & Race Research Action Council, and serves on the boards of several national and international organizations. Well-known for his work developing the frameworks of “targeted universalism” and “othering and belonging,” john has taught at numerous law schools including Harvard and Columbia University. His latest book is Racing to Justice: Transforming our Concepts of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society.

Author & Journalist

Rebecca Solnit, one of our nation’s most influential writers, thinkers, historians and activists, is the author of 20+ books, including: Orwell’s Roses; Recollections of My Nonexistence; Hope in the Dark; Men Explain Things to Me; A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster; and A Field Guide to Getting Lost. She is also co-editor of Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility (coming April 2023) and writes regularly for the Guardian, serves on the board of the climate group Oil Change International, and just launched the climate project Not Too Late.