Scott brings over two decades of experience in nonprofit fundraising, having contributed to organizations such as the San Francisco Zen Center, Ceres Community Project, and, most recently, serving as the interim development director at Daily Acts.  His journey in the art of Tea ceremony led him to the Urasenke Chado Gakkuen in Kyoto, Japan, where he obtained his teaching credentials. For fifteen years, he shared his expertise at the Urasenke Foundation in San Francisco and at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center. Additionally, Scott received lay ordination in the Soto Zen tradition at San Francisco Zen Center.

Jennifer’s marketing communications, branding, design and analytics experience spans decades and multiple industries, of which wine was the most fun. Jennifer founded and led Ensemble Marketing, a strategic marketing and design agency creating engaging stories and experiences for winery clients. Since turning over the reins to her expert colleagues in 2023, Jennifer has dedicated herself to climate action and education through collaborations with Napa Green, Back to Earth, Apis Arborea and others, finding joy giving back and communing with her pollinator-filled garden.

Maya Pace is from the redwoods of Northern California. She currently works with Trust Labs as the Director of Curriculum as an independent consultant, designing and facilitating workshops on the adaptive challenge of belonging. Prior to this most recent chapter, she traveled across the US as a Harvard University Sheldon Fellow talking to people impacted by our changing climates about how natural disasters have shaped their relationship to place. She graduated from Harvard Divinity School with a Masters of Theological Studies after working as the founding Chief Program Officer of Lead For America, an organization that equips young people to build capacity in their hometowns. Maya has a background in facilitation, group dynamics, coaching, peace building, and hospital chaplaincy. She orients her work around the question: how do we live well together?

Georgi is a traveler along the paths of technology and life with experience in architecture, engineering, mentoring, emotional intelligence, and the sorts… Interested in technology, people, and life fundamentals applied in technology. At present, he is a Senior Network Architect in Salesforce.com for the last 12 years. His responsibilities include researching the field of networking, communications, cloud, and security and charting the long-term strategy for the company in these fields. Some years ago he got a TreeNest in his garden and as he half-jokingly half seriously tells people – the bees started keeping us. He has explored different dimensions of bees and is convinced that they hold a key piece to our growth and understanding of the world and ourselves.

Michael’s pioneering approach to apiculture and honeybee conservation has appeared in national and international magazines, books and films. He has presented his work at Harvard University & New York University, consulted for the USDA, and in 2006 developed the organization Gaia Bees to advance biodynamic practices in apiculture. 

In 2017 he founded Apis Arborea to preserve the life and resiliency of honeybees through wilding, that is, the promotion of self-willed ecological processes, and the use of a holistic, system- and science-based framework in working with bees. He offers workshops and training in the U.S. and internationally.

Michael was born and educated in Germany. He lives with his family, and an infinity of bees, in the oak woodlands of Northern California.

Patricia is the owner of Apex CAS & Consulting, where she takes pleasure in supporting clients’ visions and objectives. Patricia possesses over 30 years of accounting experience (KPMG and Warner-Lambert (Pfizer)), a master’s degree in counseling psychology, and certifications as a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach and a neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) practitioner. She has coached business owners and their teams for more than eight years and can assist her clients in achieving their goals, regardless of their aspirations, by using NLP in her services. When Patricia is not working, she enjoys spending time with her family, hiking, learning to play the piano, and connecting with other fantastic individuals.

Gia brings two decades of entrepreneurial spirit and regenerative vision to her role as Chief Operating Officer at Apis Arborea. With a professional background in the plant-based food industry—from co-founding Kaua’i’s iconic Blossoming Lotus to launching Sonoma County’s beloved The Nectary—Gia has built thriving ventures rooted in sustainability, community, and innovation. Now, she channels her diverse experience into organizational development, strategic planning, and cross-sector collaboration at Apis Arborea. Passionate about the Rights of Nature and More-than-Human Rights advocacy, Gia is inspired by the honeybee as a living portal into ecological reciprocity and interspecies kinship. She views her work with Apis Arborea as a natural evolution—where the hive mind meets heart-centered leadership. Committed to cultivating meaningful change, Gia sees operations as an ecosystem and leadership as a form of service. She lives (and blooms) in Sonoma County, where she continues to nurture her love of wild landscapes, collective action, and the generative edge where innovation meets reverence.

Professor of Entomology at UC Riverside.

My idea is to help build a new field of research, which I refer to as evolutionary proteomics. Evolutionary proteomics will not only aim to understand evolutionary processes at the protein level but will also attempt to quantify variations in proteomic profiles and investigate their consequences for natural and sexual selection. Such knowledge will be of fundamental significance, but will also be applied in new breeding programs for honeybee stock improvement in collaboration with beekeepers in California and Western Australia. My overall goal is to develop a scientifically-guided breeding program that selects for honeybee lineages that are tolerant against diseases and more versatile in coping with environmental stressors.

UC Riverside 

Elizabeth has worked at the intersection of food, climate, and agriculture for the past fifteen years. She is Chief Strategy Officer for Mad Agriculture, a non-profit that works with farmers as agents of change to move from extractive, conventional agriculture to regenerative, organic farming.  The Mad! ecosystem of companies provides land and business planning, farmer forward financing, marketplace development, and storytelling.  Elizabeth’s role is to implement strategic initiatives in collaboration with our diverse network of partners in order to accelerate systematic change in our food system and help spark the regenerative revolution in agriculture.  In her prior role as President of Demeter USA, the exclusive domestic certifier of Biodynamic farms and products, Elizabeth focused on expanding awareness and markets to enhance returns for regenerative farmers.  She began her career in the California wine industry, where she spent nearly two decades in increasingly senior positions, with a growing emphasis on the environment. Elizabeth speaks frequently at national food and environmental conferences, and has written extensively on agriculture and climate change. 

[email protected]

Scott F. Gilbert is a developmental biologist who has written textbooks in developmental biology and ecological developmental biology. Recently retired from Swarthmore College, where he taught and pursued research for 35 years. One of Scott’s research foci concerns developmental symbiosis,  the phenomena wherein symbiotic microbes, and host cells facilitate each other’s development. He is also interested in the ways that another type of symbiosis, domestication, may be facilitated by developmental changes and bias further developmental changes. Scott has also been a Finland Distinguished Professor at the University of Helsinki and has participated in Vatican panels concerning embryology and religion. In 2016, he presented a lecture on developmental biology to His Holiness, the Dalai Lama.

Jack and his wife Hilary met while getting an MBA and a Ph.D. from Stanford University.  She founded and managed a management consulting company for 30 years while Jack jumped into international real estate development and finance.  While on a biking trip in South Australia they fell in love with Kangaroo Island where they purchased an environmentally sensitive sheep and cattle farm. That farm then became the Cygnet Park Sanctuary and an experimental center for their conservation ideas and a perfect test ground.  Eventually, Jack and Hilary created a new non-profit, BIO-R OZ, to carry on their dream.  BIO-R OZ today has more than 1000 volunteers working all over South Australia and continues to develop breakthrough conservation strategies.  Jack and Hilary leverage their business experience to help conservation efforts in California, Arizona, and South Australia and hope to create long-term sustainable change.  They live on a small farm in Sonoma County with a plethora of farm animals where they do their best to entertain friends with as nice a local cuisine as they can create.  Their farm does its best to be a culinary art refuge in the current crazy world.  For fun follow them on Instagram at backyardterroir

Cameron Nielsen is a documentary filmmaker and bee enthusiast. His journey with bees started from a young age under the mentorship of Michael Thiele. Cameron explored the question, “how can you engage people with the importance of honeybees?” during his interdisciplinary undergraduate studies at Quest University Canada. This led him get a masters in documentary filmmaking from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He made an award winning documentary film ‘Rewilding Honeybees’ about the work of Apis Arborea. Cameron is currently working as a cinematographer and editor at Oregon Public Broadcasting.