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Moroni Benally
Moroni is Vice Chair of the Western Resources Advocates and Co-Director of the Utah League of Native American Voters and also works as the Public Policy Director for a non-profit that focuses on empowering Tribes to prevent violence in their communities. He also served as Director of the Navajo Nation’s Division of Natural Resources where he helped facilitate the Navajo Nation’s involvement in the Bears Ears National Monument and worked extensively on natural resource policy at the tribal, state, and federal levels. Prior to this, he taught at Evergreen State College in the Masters of Public Administration program. He is currently finishing a PhD in Public Policy at the University of Washington, focusing on collaborative governance around natural resources. He is Diné and currently lives in Arizona.
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Khumiso Cosmos (KC) Rathipana
Cosmos attained his Diploma in Wildlife Management in 1998 from Mweka College of African Wildlife Management in Tanzania. He has worked for the Department of Wildlife and National Parks in Botswana for over 30 years. Most of his work experience entailed Community-Based Natural Resource Management, Extension, and Environmental Education and has vast experience working with communities and school groups – both formally and informally – on matters relating to environmental conservation. He serves as a Board Member of Round River Botswana Trust.
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Joaquín Lopez-Huertas
Joaquín is the result of the mixing between the K’iche’ Mayan ethnicity and the Spanish settlers in the land known as Guatemala. He is currently getting a Ph.D. in City & Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah. With more than eight years working with Indigenous Planning in Guatemala, Chile and the US, his research focuses on understanding the possibilities and implications of Indigenous Knowledges in Settler-State Planning
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Stephen Tolpinrud
Stephen is passionate about rural issues, especially those intersecting with social and ecological justice. He has worked on several projects in Latin America to promote agroecology as a social movement and counterweight to (neo)colonialism. At present, he is helping to promote indigenous and food sovereignty in the highlands of Guatemala with the guidance and help of the local Mayan community. Stephen holds a Master of Arts from American University and the University for Peace in International Relations and Sustainable Development. He also has significant experience as an organic vegetable farmer. Steven holds a certificate in Agroecology from the University of California Santa Cruz, focusing on social and ecological justice within agriculture. He is a proud enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation.
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Dennis Sizemore
Dennis holds a BS from New Mexico State University in Wildlife Science and an MS from the University of Montana in Wildlife Ecology. As a co-founder of Round River Conservation Studies, he served as its executive director for 32 years. He was a principal in the Great Bear Rainforest Campaign, the Wooshtin wudidaa Taku River Tlingit Land Plan, Bears Ears National Monument, Namibia Kunene Regional Ecological Analysis, and the Yukon North Slope Aullavait Anguniarvik Agreement. Dennis is a former President of The Wildlands Project. Currently, he serves as Vice President of the Taku-Atlin Conservancy and as a board member of the Pax Natura Foundation.