With over 50 years on the front lines of the sustainability movement, Gil Friend—called one of the 10 most influential sustainability voices in America by The Guardian—invites you to an interactive session exploring where we’ve been, where we stand, and what’s next.

Together we’ll consider the challenge of moving beyond sustainability as damage control to doing businesses though we actually belong to the living world, and how a critical diagnosis of the six structural defects of capital-ism points to the strategies that could allow both people and the planet to truly thrive?

Join this dynamic, thought-provoking conversation and leave with fresh insights, new connections, and practical ideas for accelerating the transition to a living, regenerative world.

You’ve heard the term building decarbonization, but what does it actually mean, and why is it a key piece of the climate puzzle? This session is designed for those who are new to the topic and want a clear, practical understanding of how reducing carbon emissions from buildings can lower costs, improve health, and help meet climate goals.

Experts will break down the fundamentals—what building decarbonization is, how it works, and why it’s essential for businesses, homeowners, and policymakers. Through real-world examples and actionable insights, you’ll leave with a solid foundation to engage in the conversation and take steps toward a more sustainable built environment. Whether you're a building professional, policymaker, or simply curious, this session will provide the knowledge you need to get started.

For many, living in northern California means living with on-going stress from wildfire threat. 

In this session, Erica draws on lessons learned and best practices from the past 2 years organizing fuel reduction and evacuation planning in her own neighborhood of 80 homes on a dead-end street in a very high fire hazard severity zone. 

How does our automatic and unconscious fight-flight-freeze survival instinct actually prevent us from taking proactive steps to protect ourselves and our homes from the threat of wildfire?

How can we attend to the inner terrain of our emotions and nervous system to sustain health and well-being amidst on-going stress and threats to our survival?  

Erica has been invited to share her perspectives on the inner terrain that’s missing in wildfire threat and mitigation with the West Contra Costa County Fire Safe Council, Berkeley Fire Department, Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors, East Bay Wildfire Coalition, Contra Costa Resource Conservation District, and Stanford University Wildfire Seminar Series.

More information about Erica’s work is at ericapengconnects.com. She can be reached at erica@ericapengconnects.com 

With 513,000 acres of forestland in Sonoma County, forest landowners and managers have a substantial task in managing these lands for improved wildfire and climate resilience and protection of our communities and ecosystems from catastrophic wildfires. This session will divulge timely findings on our capacity to meet these challenges head on together, as well as highlight two local businesses that are creating solutions through their enterprises that transform low-value wood into value-added products.

Wildfires are increasingly devastating built environments, leaving profound impacts on lives, property, insurance markets, local economies, and ecosystems. In the face of what often feels like an insurmountable challenge, this session explores practical strategies and actionable solutions to mitigate risks, build resilience, and foster hope. Join experts and community leaders to discuss innovative approaches to adapting to wildfires and protecting what matters most.

What we call natural building is the continuation of many living, revived, and reinvented traditions of community-held building practices based on the use of local materials and multigenerational building knowledge. Standardized industrial construction methods have birthed a whole host of complementary building products, all owned and developed by specific companies who had no impetus to monitor the impacts to the commons, or people working along their supply chains. This has given rise to a culture of construction, which includes expectations around what materials should cost and how they should perform, that is dependent upon a wide array of specific products backed up by a system of intellectual property and legal liability.