Craig M. Kolodge, Ph.D., is the former academic advisor, field plant pathologist and county director for the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) in Santa Clara county. He also served as the superintendent of the UC Bay Area Research and Extension Center (BAREC) and was instrumental in developing the City of San Jose’s green waste utilization program focused on re-purposing recycled organics to deliver agricultural and ecosystem benefits. Dr. Kolodge served as statewide chairman of the U.C. Small Farm Workgroup and was a member of the UC Sustainable Agriculture Workgroup where he promoted the principles of regenerative agriculture and soil health.
Advisory Counsel
He currently serves on the Board of Directors for California’s Association of Compost Producers (ACP) and is the Business Development and Sustainability Manager for San Pasqual Valley Soils located in San Diego county. He is a Certified Professional in Erosion and Sediment Control (CPESC) and a Trainer of Record (ToR) for California’s Storm Water Industrial General Permit. He resides in San Diego county and travels throughout southern California demonstrating and teaching the practical application of compost-based Sustainable Management Practices (SMP’s) including urban regenerative agriculture, storm water management, post-wildfire damage mitigation and land conservation/restoration.
Kathy Kellogg Johnson has been referred to as the “First Lady of Compost” by the President of the U.S. Composting Council. She currently serves as Chairman of the Board for Kellogg Garden Products, entering its 95th year of continuous family ownership and operation. Kathy and her brother Hap represent the third generation of this family-owned enterprise.
For three decades, Kathy has been a leader in the compost industry. Spotting a disconnect among business, cities, and county governments who were all striving toward the same goal of standardizing and implementing unified composting definitions and practices, she brought them together to meet regularly. This forged a pathway for the industry by forming the Association of Compost Producers (ACP), the California State Chapter of the USCC.
As Chief Sustainability Officer at Kellogg, Kathy initiated a comprehensive study of the company’s carbon footprint, long before this concept had gained traction in business practices. Seven years of research and independent verification confirmed that Kellogg is a “zero-waste” company — 99.995% of everything entering a Kellogg facility leaves as a product. An independent team of scientists, calculated Kellogg’s annual carbon footprint at negative 500,000 tons of CO2e.
Kathy is a world leader in “soil as medicine.” Depletion of our country’s soil has placed the health of our food and families in jeopardy; the use of fungicides, agricultural chemicals, and neurotoxic pesticides in food production has become suspect in the decline of the bee population, and in the rise of cancer, autism, Parkinsons, Alzheimer’s, and many other neurological diseases. These chemicals are waging war against our soil and our society.
Kathy’s mission and focus is to restore the soil of the United States, both in backyards and farmland, by utilizing the organic materials readily available to us as soil conditioners and fertilizers.
Catherine Von Burg is a Founder and the President & CEO of SimpliPhi Power, a technology company that designs and manufactures non-toxic, efficient, and enduring energy storage and management systems that seamlessly integrate solar, wind, generator, or any other power generation source – in conjunction with or independent from the grid.
“Without energy storage, renewable sources of power are intermittent and unreliable, but so too is the grid in emergency and black out scenarios in which the centralized delivery of power breaks down,” says Catherine. “At SimpliPhi, we are empowering people and communities globally to generate, store and utilize power on their terms, anytime, anywhere, on or off the grid. Access to renewable energy stands to eradicate poverty and is the critical link between social equity, economic prosperity and environmental sustainability. I’m proud to have helped build a company that adheres to the triple bottom line — placing equal importance on people, planet and profit as part of all of our strategic business decisions.”
Catherine’s career spans a diverse portfolio of strategic planning, policy development, executive management, and multidisciplinary team building in the fields of biomedical engineering and research, health and human services and environmental conservation. Committed to the transformation of the power grid and creating universal access to clean energy by leveraging distributed energy storage solutions, she has published white papers and spearheaded national program, policy and business-driven initiatives with organizations such as Pew Charitable Trusts, Rockefeller Institute, Columbia University, NY March of Dimes Foundation, John Hopkins School of Biomedical Engineering, Wilderness Education Association and First 5 Commission of California.
In 2017, representing SimpliPhi, Catherine was nominated to participate in an exclusive entrepreneur program hosted by the U.S. Department of State and the Unreasonable Impact Group. Global business leaders were carefully selected as being the best positioned to solve each of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals established by the United Nations. SimpliPhi’s energy storage and management solutions were chosen to represent UN SDG No. 9, ‘Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure’. Collaborators and mentors in this program included USAID & the World Bank, among others. Globally, projects with SimpliPhi’s energy storage and management solutions often address multiple UN SDG goals, serving to alleviate poverty, greenhouse gas emissions, lack of education, access to critical medical care, enabling economic opportunity and prosperity by leveraging the power of cost-effective energy storage to harness reliable, uninterrupted renewable sources of energy.
Valencia Porter, MD, MPH, is a leader in Integrative, Preventive, and Environmental Medicine, combining ancient wisdom traditions with modern science. As a practitioner of Functional Medicine and Ayurvedic Medicine, she helps people find the root causes of illness and restore and support the body’s natural healing capacities through multiple modalities.
With a truly holistic approach, Dr. Porter recognizes the intricate relationship between human health and planetary health, and she shares her extensive knowledge in her recent book, “Resilient Health: How to Thrive in Our Toxic World.” Addressing physical, mental, emotional, and societal toxicity, “Resilient Health’ is a handbook for the modern age based on her research, clinical experience guiding thousands of patients through the Chopra Center’s signature detox program, and personal healing journey.
Dr. Porter views pure whole foods to be a foundational building block for health and is an advocate for soil health and regenerative agriculture to nutritional medicine and non-toxic cooking. She enjoys organic gardening, home composting, and living in harmony with the environment.
Double Board Certified in General Preventive Medicine and in Integrative Medicine, she is also a Certified Functional Medicine practitioner by the Institute of Functional Medicine. She earned a Master’s Degree in Public Health in Environmental Health and is a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition.
Paul J. Mills, Ph.D., is Professor and Chief at the University of California San Diego’s Department of Family Medicine and Public Health. He is Director of the Center of Excellence for Research and Training in Integrative Health and Director of the Clinical Research Biomarker Laboratory. He has expertise in Integrative Medicine and psychoneuroimmune processes in wellness and disease, publishing ~375 manuscripts and book chapters on these topics. His work includes a focus on the human health implications of glyphosate (RoundUp) exposure, including publications in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the journal of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.
Erik Oberholtzer is the co-founder of Tender Greens, a pioneering fine casual brand founded in Los Angeles, CA in 2006 with a mission to democratize good food. A vision of the future he continues to drive as a Food Forever Champion on global biodiversity for the Crop Trust with whom he cooks globally alongside the world’s leading chefs. He joined the Rodale Institute’s board in 2019 to help drive awareness around soil health, regenerative organic agriculture and food as medicine. In 2009, he founded The Sustainable Life Program, a six month paid culinary internship program with a mission to provide a path forward for foster youth. Many of the students now hold leadership positions at Tender Greens, serving as beacons of success and inspiration to those at the edge of society.
James Ehrlich is an Entrepreneur in Residence at Stanford University School of Medicine in the Health and Human Performance department as part of the Stanford Flourishing Project. James is also Faculty at Singularity University, a Senior Fellow at NASA Ames Research Center and under the Obama administration was appointed to a White House joint task force on regenerative infrastructure.
In 2016, James Ehrlich founded ReGen Villages Holding, a Stanford University spin-off company realizing the future of living in technology enabled, bio-regenerative and resilient community developments.
ReGen Villages is based on Mr. Ehrlich’s over 15-years case study research of regenerative organic, biodynamic family farming, permaculture and flourishing intentional eco-communities around the world.
Coming originally from a software and technology background, James was inspired by the work of Dr. Suzanne Simard and Dr. Paul Stamets on mycelia networks symbiosis that provide a collaborative economy of nutrient flows. Mr. Ehrlich devised the VillageOS operating system software and Regenerative Village Simulator software along with Rob Liebeskind (ReGen Villages CTO) to create the world’s first digital connectivity and application of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms (AI/ML) to these natural system flows, for the benefit of self-sustaining neighborhoods in different climate zones around the world.
ReGen Villages provides the digital infrastructure for realizing critical life support systems of food, water, energy and circular resources for strong, healthy and vibrant residency – answering almost all of the 17 U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.
Rod Tyler is a graduate of The Ohio State University, a Certified Professional Agronomist, and has been working with compost and environmental projects for nearly 30 years. He is currently President of Green Horizons Environmental. As the founder of Filtrexx International, Rod is also the inventor of the patented SiltSoxx technology. Rod received eight patents for various applications during the Filtrexx development including applications for living walls, living shorelines, sediment control, compost blankets and over 20 low impact development applications.
Rod developed GardenSoxx® in 2001 with the intent of “Soil-in-Soxx” becoming a leading solution to regenerative agriculture. GardenSoxx® uses locally produced, annually renewable, recycled, organic compost products. In 2014, Rod began working with Erik Cutter and his Alegria Fresh SoxxFarms soil team to provide a proof of concept that this system can be used to increase yield and nutritional value of produce grown within the urban envelope.
Rod has written extensively including three books, hundreds of industry articles and research papers. Rod has presented at hundreds of industry related meetings as well as keynote presentations for dozens of conferences and is a member of the Association of Compost Producers.
Roger Mignosa, DO is a physical medicine & rehabilitation physician, clinical professor, and an exercise physiologist. He practices at the University California, San Diego and Osteopathic Center San Diego, and for the World Surf League. He teaches for numerous medical schools and organizations including the University of Arizona and UC San Diego. He also is the educational director for Spiral Health, a medical technology, Rightful, a whole foods nutritional supplement company, and founder of Andiamo Health, an online education program to serve people who suffer from pain and desire to enhance quality of life.
Prior to medical school Dr. Mignosa served as a Rotary Goodwill Ambassadorial Scholar at the University of Queensland, Australia where he studied clinical exercise science after which he led exercise physiology and health programs in hospitals and clinics. Dr. Mignosa educates and consults for the fields of pain, rehabilitation, exercise science, and mental health.