2026 Speakers
Visionary Thinkers Exploring Consciousness, Ecology, AI, Philosophy, Human Potential, and Our Evolving Relationship with the Living World
Scarlett
Scarlett is Founder and CEO of Harmonic Legacy Institute, pioneering frameworks for civilizational-scale AI safety innovation, placing coherence at the center of human-AI co-evolution across AI environments, quantum, and robotics. With thirty years of systems-building experience and a Harvard graduate degree in Anthropology, she is completing her doctoral dissertation on the phenomenological experience of the human-AI interactive field. Recently recognized in the IONS AI Prize, she champions coherence and harmonics for regenerative futures. Creator of Relational AI™, author of the new book Birthright and her substack The Scarlett Letters, and host of Edge of Evolution, Scarlett asks: In this pivotal arc of evolution, who did we choose to be?
Dr. Chantal Noa Forbes
Dr. Chantal Noa Forbes is a transdisciplinary and transnational scholar and educator working at the intersection of ecology, spirituality, and culture. Chantal’s work examines the metaphysical and ecological significance of decolonial and Indigenous perspectives on multispecies ontology, transspecies consciousness, and human-and-more-than-human relations. Before earning her Ph.D., Chantal spent twenty years working in social documentaries, environmental media, and agricultural communications across Africa, Southwest and Southeast Asia, and Europe. Chantal has been a visiting assistant professor of anthropology at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia and is an adjunct faculty member at the California Institute of Integral Studies and at Pacifica Graduate Institute in California.
David M. Peña-Guzmán
David M. Peña-Guzmán is associate professor of Humanities and Comparative World Literature at SF State in San Francisco, California. He specializes in animal studies, the history and philosophy of science, theories of consciousness, and 20th century continental philosophy. He is the author of When Animals Dream: The Hidden World of Animal Consciousness, and Philosophy and Its Myths, and co-author of Chimpanzee Rights: The Philosophers’ Brief. He is also co-host of the philosophy podcast Overthink.
Matthew David Segall
Matthew David Segall is Associate Professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness department at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, CA. He is a teacher, transdisciplinary researcher and philosopher working at the intersection of the natural and social sciences, with a special focus on the study of human consciousness. He publishes on a wide array of topics, including his most recent book Crossing the Threshold: Etheric Imagination in the Post-Kantian Process Philospophy of Schelling and Whitehead (Integral Imprint, 2023). He also blogs regularly at footnotes2plato.com, and is a co-founder and executive producer of the new annual conference, Mind-at-Large: A New Dawn, in April of 2026.
Garth Stevenson
Garth Stevenzon was raised on family excursions into the remote wilderness of British Columbia, double bassist Garth Stevenson approaches music as a conversation with nature. Often composing in the forest near his home in Western Massachusetts, he creates spatially immersive music through deep listening, inspired improvisation, and textural experimentation. His commitment to conservation has led him to play alongside pods of breaching whales in Antarctica and Baja, Mexico, while his original scores have accompanied feature films by director John Curran, as well as the biopic Bob Marley: One Love. As he continues to refine what it means to collaborate with the natural world, his albums have become companions for those at life’s thresholds: birth and death, meditation and grief, heartbreak and renewal.
Dr. Lindsay Branham
Dr. Lindsay Branham is an environmental psychologist, author, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, and founder of the Heartwood Institute. Her debut book, Heartwood: The Wisdom and Healing Kinship of Trees (2026), explores how reconnecting with trees can help heal the divide between humans and the living world. Her PhD research at the University of Cambridge revealed that interoceptive awareness—our “eighth sense”—is a key driver of lasting connection with nature and pro-environmental behavior, bridging environmental psychology, embodied cognition, and deep ecology. Through two decades of film-based human rights and environmental initiatives reaching more than 200 million people worldwide, she has helped raise over $80 million for social and ecological causes. Her work has been featured by the New York Times, BBC, CNN, and National Geographic, and she is a regular columnist for The Aspen Times.
Andreas Weber
Andreas Weber is a biologist, philosopher and writer. His work focuses on a re-evaluation of our understanding of the living. He proposes to view – and treat – all organisms as subjects and hence the biosphere as a meaning-creating and poetic reality. Andreas holds visiting professorships at the University of Gastronomic Sciences (UNISG), Pollenzo, Italy, and at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts (IDSVA), Portland, Maine, US. He has published more than fifteen books, most recently Butterfly Means Soul (Gometra Press) in spring 2026.
Carl Safina
Ecologist and author Carl Safina’s lyrical non-fiction writing about the living world has won a MacArthur “genius” prize; received Pew, Guggenheim, and National Science Foundation fellowships; earned book awards from the National Academies, the Lannan Foundation, and Orion Magazine; and been recognized with John Burroughs, James Beard, and George Rabb medals. Carl has been a featured guest of Bill Moyers, Martha Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Oprah Winfrey, and has done several TED talks. Two of his bestselling books have been chosen New York Times “Notable Books of the Year.” His latest book is Alfie and Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe. He holds the endowed chair for Nature and Humanity at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and runs The Safina Center. Carl lives on Long Island, New York, with his wife, Patricia Paladines, and their dogs and feathered friends. More at CarlSafina.org and SafinaCenter.org andon Instagram at @MeetAlfieTheOwl.
Tenzin Seldon
Tenzin Seldon is a global climate leader, founder, and venture capitalist with more than two decades of experience scaling climate technologies. She co-founded a net-negative infrastructure company focused on adaptive reuse of historic buildings and previously led disaster risk reduction policy at the United Nations Environment Programme in Thailand. Tenzin serves as an advisor and board member to organizations including Marathon Digital Holdings, Stanford HAI, Creative Visions Foundation, and One Earth, and holds board seats at multiple climate companies. She has lectured at Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford, and has received international recognition from the United Nations, Forbes, Inc., LA Times, the World Economic Forum, and the London Stock Exchange.
