Facilitator

CHANTAL BILODEAU is a Montreal-born, New York-based playwright whose work focuses on the intersection of storytelling and the climate crisis. She is the founder of the Arts & Climate Initiative and in her capacity as artistic director, has spearheaded local and global initiatives for nearly two decades, getting the theatre and educational communities, as well as audiences in the U.S. and abroad, to engage in climate action through programming that includes live events, talks, publications, workshops, artist convenings, and a worldwide distributed theatre festival. Her plays have been presented in a dozen countries and translated into French, Norwegian, Greek, and Portuguese. Her main project is a series of eight plays – including, to date, Sila (2014), Forward (2016), and No More Harveys (2022) – that look at the social and environmental changes taking place in the eight Arctic states. She is a Creative Core member of the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics. In 2019, she was named one of “8 Trailblazers Who Are Changing the Climate Conversation” by Audubon Magazine.

Co-Facilitators

JULIA LEVINE is a New York-based theatre maker and social worker. She is artistic producer of the Arts & Climate Initiative, where she organizes with Climate Change Theatre Action; collaborates on the Arts & Climate Incubator; produces live events; and helps to cultivate the ever-growing network of climate artists. She has spoken on public panels with sci-fi author Kim Stanley Robinson and for various productions of Ibsen’s Enemy of the People, about the role of arts in social and climate action. She has organized for environmental justice with the youth climate organization Sunrise Movement, and her original performance work has been seen at Dixon Place, HERE, and Wild Project. Her ten-minute play, Our Food At Work, is published as part of Some Scripts Literary Magazine’s inaugural issue. Julia brings drama therapy into her social work practice to address mental health implications of the climate crisis with individuals and groups. She completed her Master’s of Social Work at Hunter College, and is a member of Climate Psychology Alliance of North America and the North American Drama Therapy Association.

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GIGI BUDDIE is an interdisciplinary artist and climate activist currently based in the Bay Area on the traditional homelands of the Coast Miwok People. She is a graduate of Pomona College and holds a degree in theatre performance and environmental analysis. Both her professional and personal pursuits converge at the intersection of art and climate justice. As an American Indian of Tongva and Mescalero descent, GiGi creates and contributes to art that uplifts marginalized voices, and shares stories of creation, resilience, and beauty from frontline communities. In 2021, she attended the United Nations Climate Summit (COP26) as an NGO delegate for a project that highlighted Indigenous climate leaders from the Global South who were (and still are) championing resilience in the face of the climate crisis. GiGi has worked as a writer and an assistant producer for the Arts and Climate Initiative, as well as an organizer for Climate Change Theatre Action. She has spoken as a panelist on Indigenous sovereignty and climate advocacy panels with ACI and The Tenure Facility.

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Guest Speakers

REBECCA FISCHMAN is a senior resilience planner at Arcadis, helping to manage projects as diverse as the North/West Battery Park City Resiliency Project and the redevelopment of Pier 6 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Prior to that, she was a senior policy advisor with the NYC Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice, where she started a local flood sensor network called FloodNet and coordinated with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the successful implementation of the Rockaways Atlantic Beachfront and Back Bays projects and the Staten Island Coastal Storm Risk Management project. She’s also worked as a Development and Communications Coordinator for the Fifth Avenue Committee, a community development corporation. Rebecca holds a B.A. in history from Kenyon College and a Masters in City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania. Her professional interests include community outreach, urban planning, and climate adaptation.

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JESSICA HUANG is a playwright and librettist whose work includes: Blended 和 (Harmony): The Kim Loo Sisters (with composer Jacinth Greywoode, History Theatre/Theater Mu premiere), Mother of Exiles (Venturous Award, Rosa Parks Playwriting Award, Paul Stephen Lim Playwriting Award), The Paper Dreams of Harry Chin (Bernice Stavis Award), and Transmissions in Advance of the Second Great Dying (EMOS Ecodrama prize). Her popular audioplay Song of the Northwoods is available on Audible. She is developing an original television show with WBTV. Jessica is a Venturous Playwright Fellow at the Playwrights’ Center, a MacDowell Fellow, Hermitage Fellow and four-time Playwrights' Center fellow, and has been a member of Ars Nova Play Group, Civilians R&D Group and Page 73's Interstate 73. She is a graduate of the Playwrights Program at Juilliard.

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CHIP KEEBAUGH (he/they) is a biodiversity conservationist, wildlife rehabilitator, and artist based in New York. Their creative work approaches entertainment through the lens of a biophilic praxis to spark a renewed ecocentric worldview in local communities. The rest of their time is spent rejuvenating hurting ecosystems and supporting the creatures that live there through land restoration, community outreach, habitat protection, and wildlife medicine. They have worked with countless NGOs including The Climate Healers, The Climate Reality Project, Sunrise Movement, and The International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council, as well as with many locally-run, community-based campaigns and personal autonomous projects that have all sought, in one way or another, to uplift nonhumans. They have learned along the way that there is so much vital work to be done, and the first, most crucial step is simply this: do. 

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NIKKI LINDT is a Brooklyn based interdisciplinary artist, whose work focuses on environmental stewardship and people’s relationships to natural areas. Lindt regularly collaborates with researchers as a part of interdisciplinary research teams. She currently has ongoing projects/residencies at field stations including: Toolik Field Station, Alaska, Abisko Scientific Research Station, Sweden, and the Urban Field Station in New York City. Lindt’s work has been widely exhibited, as public art, in museums and in galleries. These include, NYCs’ Prospect Park, the United Nations in Rome, the Hudson River Museum and Robischon Gallery. Her work has been covered by: The Financial Times, Forbes, NPR’s Here and Now, CBS Sunday Morning, and NY Magazine. Lindt regularly speaks publicly about her work and has been awarded the 2022 NYC Urban Field Station Collaborative Arts Program residency, the Pollack-Krasner Grant, Brooklyn Arts Council Grant, Puffin Foundation Grant and the Environmental Cultural Award, Milieudienst, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

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GIANNA LUM is the co-founder of Climate Cafe NYC – a climate action community that hosts workshops on eco-anxiety, connects people to impactful local activism, and keeps everyone motivated through camaraderie, creativity, and fun. She earned a Master’s in Climate and Society from Columbia University and has a background in climate science, communications, and policy. Professionally, Gianna works for Convincing Crypto as Chief Climate Officer and focuses on blockchain solutions that address economic and environmental injustices. Previously, she has served in the nonprofit sector as a Lead Climate Education Facilitator and worked on climate models at NASA GISS.

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JACKIE RIVERA (they/them) is an actor, performance-maker and Creative Survivalist. Their work seeks to celebrate and foster artistic practice for people who don’t identify as “Artists” by cultivating artistic value in everyday things. They’ve been a bicycle touring theater artist serving for 5 years as Associate Artistic Director of Agile Rascal Bicycle Touring Theater, devising new musicals inspired by climate change. They have a Masters in Performance and Performance Studies from Pratt Institute where they teach in the Saturday Art School program, and where they created a DIY puppet short inspired by their time living in a van and their queer super egos, Tiny Dyke; Van Life. They are also exploring their connection to culture and land by creating an eco-tourism zine based on their bike tours in Puerto Rico, called Boriken Bike Tour.

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RACHEL RIVERA is a Hurricane Sandy survivor, mother of six, and climate leader with New York Communities for Change.

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NATE SMITH is a theater maker and climate activist in New York. He is Founding Director of The Sixth Fest, a climate change festival named after the sixth mass extinction, and Artistic Director of A Theater Group in Silverton, CO, a town of 500 residents in the Rockies. He is also a company member of the Still Point Theatre Collective where he most recently performed a one-man show on the life of St. Norbert. He has performed poetry across the world under Marc Smith, founder of the slam poetry movement, and is a member of Actors' Equity. He also proudly serves in the climate movement's vanguard with groups like Extinction Rebellion NYC and Climate Defiance, and recently led a disruption of An Enemy of the People on Broadway which got international coverage. You can read his interviews about the action with TimeOut, Variety, or see Jeremy Strong's reaction on Seth Meyers. He holds a degree in Rhetoric from U.C. Berkeley.

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LAUREN WANG serves as Director of Climate Programs at the Trust for Governors Island, a nonprofit organization created to realize the full potential of Governors Island for the inspiration and enjoyment of all New Yorkers. In 2023, as part of the Center for Climate Solutions, the Trust launched its Living Lab to amplify local action around climate innovation and education. Lauren also teaches as an adjunct professor at The City College of New York. Her previous experience includes the NYC Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice and NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development.