Speakers
We are proud to present the speakers’ line-up. Great minds meet at the second New Greening Day online forum on 30 April, 14:00 – 19:00 CET. Nicole Loeser, Board Director of the Institute for Art and Innovation (IFAI Berlin) is moderating this event.
Dr. Friedrich J. Bohn is researcher within the Helmholtz Initiative “Climate adaptation and mitigation” (HI-CAM) and the Department of Ecological Modelling at the Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research UFZ, Leipzig, Germany. He is also involved in several activities of the Scientists For Future.
Bogna Grażyna Jaroslawska is an artist activist based in Berlin. She started her journey as a freelance stage designer in the theater space (Deutsche Oper Berlin, Komische Oper Berlin, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Volksbühne Berlin, Volkstheater Rostock, Landesbühnen Sachsen and others). But her interest led her also to public meeting places, jungle areas, uncontrollable streets, beaches and townships. In designing SOCIAL SCULPTURES, she searches for methods to make complex social or ecological issues understandable through performative installations in public space. To this end, she enters into a direct exchange with the people and regions concerned in order to realize joint works in a public context and to advocate for an improvement of awareness and living conditions. Her works have been shown throughout Europe, India, Japan, and South Africa. Bogna is a 2019 Social Art Award recipient and TEDx speaker.
Florian Hoffmann is the founder and CEO of Berlin’s DO School, a renowned development ground for purposeful doers from around the world, working in partnership with major institutions and corporations. These include IKEA, H&M, the Deutsche Bahn, Covestro, Unilever, Axel Springer, the Hong Kong Jockey Club, the United Nations’ Environmental Program and others. Florian is a serial social entrepreneur and international speaker. He has received numerous awards for his work and was named one of 100 distinguished Young Global Leaders under 40 by the World Economic Forum in 2017.
Filip Popescu is a passionate Project Manager and Sustainability Ambassador with expertise as Material and Environmental Scientist. He has been working with DigitConstruct since 2019 where he is involved in web experiences, technology and music events organization as well as business unit developments. In parallel, Filip is the Sustainability Ambassador for Help’n’Trade, a Swiss local marketplace platform. Previously he worked as an Environmental Scientist with ERA Environmental Management Solutions in Montreal, Canada, managing various clients’ environmental emissions.
Filip is dedicated to promoting the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. Through his involvement in various projects, he is promoting equal rights, access to quality education, sustainable cities and communities, decent work environment and economic growth, and partnerships assuring prosperity for posterity. Filip studied Chemistry at the University of Quebec in Montreal (M.Sc.) and McGill University, where his passion for sustainability grew. He is also a Certified Green Project Manager (GPM-b).
Chantal Bilodeau is a Montreal-born, New York-based playwright. In her capacity as artistic director of The Arctic Cycle, she has been instrumental in getting the theatre and educational communities in the U.S. and abroad, to engage in climate action. This is done through programming including live events, talks, publications, workshops, national and international convenings, and a worldwide distributed theatre festival. She is writing a series of plays that look at the social and environmental changes taking place in the eight Arctic states. In 2019, she was named one of “8 Trailblazers Who Are Changing the Climate Conversation” by Audubon Magazine.
Antonio Rohrssen is the person responsible for environmental issues at Patagonia Berlin and the company’s grant program for environmental and climate activists. He also acts as contact person for local cooperation partners and initiatives. Before his Patagonia time, he volunteered full time for popular initiative “Klimanotstand Berlin” (climate emergency Berlin). Until this day he continues his political work for decisive climate action – now as a board member of the newly founded local party “Klimaliste Berlin“.
Angelica Böhm is a Professor at the Babelsberg Film University KONRAD WOLF. She has been leading the art research project “Transmedia storytelling: Camilla Plastic Ocean Plan” since 2015. More than 300 students, alumni and experts are involved. Based on the scientific expertise of the project partners from the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Center for Marine and Polar Research Bremerhaven, which specializes in plastic waste in the seas, this Project is a mind opener, web-exhibition and future workshop.
Furthermore, she is the co-founder of the Art For Futures-Lab that specializes in future-prototyping workshops to accelerating positive visioning and co-creating solutions.
Mujidah Ajibola Oladejo is a sustainability researcher and educator based in Abuja, Nigeria. She designs and implements learning resources and programmes across the themes of environment climate change, ESG, sustainability and circular economy. Furthermore, she conducts research in different areas of sustainability. A Commonwealth Alumna of London South Bank University, Mujidah holds a Master’s of Science in Education for Sustainability. Additionally, she is the founder of The Sustainability Hub, a social enterprise. It is committed to supporting individuals, schools, businesses and communities with the values and motivation as well as skills, knowledge and strategies of integrating economic, social and environmental considerations into personal and business activities. She is a YALI Regional Leadership Centre alumna, a Global Schools Advocate of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN).
Florence Iff has been aware of the impact that humanity is imposing on nature, and as an artist and mother. She feels a responsibility to address these crucial issues and reach a wider audience to create awareness for a future generation. Her generation, living in the western world, is the real beneficiary of technological progress and at the same time the most destructive to nature and a future world. While living in NYC in the late 1990s, she began to explore the theme of nature, its transformation, its increasing artificiality, and ultimately its disappearance. She sees themes of the Anthropocene such as fragmentation and reinvention of the body (transhumanism, genetic manipulation, nanotechnology, nanorobotics, cloning), new structures of matter and life forms of the technosphere, the disappearance of biodiversity to the Corona virus in the context of climate catastrophe. Combining negatives, x-rays, web-based and scientific images as digital assemblages, the Swiss artist mimics the interpenetration of the early with the artificial. The pandemic period has also changed the way she thinks about art and her working methods, leading her to more collaborative work outside the confines of the secluded art world.
Addressing the plastic pollution in our seas and oceans, Ramon Knoester has become one of the professionals to approach this environmental disaster locally and effectively. Retrieving marine litter in ports and finding durable re-use of the plastic waste as building material for new floating nature landscapes. Initiating Recycled Park Rotterdam to capture plastic waste in the local harbor and preventing it from entering the North Sea. Within CLEAR RIVERS, Ramon is fighting the further growth of marine litter in all possible ways with harbor clean ups, the use of passive litter traps, education and awareness programs, recycling floating debris and the realization of valuable new products with the recycled plastics.
Conrad Dorer works for the Federal Environment Agency and is concerned with sustainable consumption. His current focus is on how to further promote the sustainable design of products and services. Since 2016 he has been coordinating the EU Interreg project in the Baltic Sea region “EcoDesign Circle (4.0)“, in which design centres and companies are enabled to design for recirculation systems using practical methods and knowledge.
Originally from Australia, Adrienna Zsakay has spent more than half her working life in Asia. Her career has been quite diverse, including the international trade in food, and seven years specializing in Asian food regulations. In 2010, she became interested in infrastructure and operational design for recyclable resource recovery collection systems specifically for the Asian region. This resulted in founding Circular Economy Asia (CEA) in 2016, a registered NGO in Malaysia focusing on consultancy services. CEA’s projects include e.g. Asian Plastics & the Packaging Agreement.
In early 2020 she launched Circular Skills, the world’s first online education platform dedicated to skills training for the circular economy. Courses include the Circular Economy Foundation Course, the Nine Steps Towards a Circular Business, and the Waste-as-a-Resource workshop. Ms Zsakay has a BA (Asian Studies & Politics) from the University of Western Australia and has studied International and Asian Food Law at Michigan State University.
Dr. Christa Sommerer and Dr. Laurent Mignonneau are internationally renowned media artists working in the field of interactive computer installation. They are Professors at the University of Art and Design in Linz Austria where they head the Department for Interface Culture at the Institute for Media. Sommerer and Mignonneau previously held positions as Professors at the IAMAS International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences in Gifu, Japan and as Researchers and Artistic Directors at the ATR Media Integration and Communications Research Lab in Kyoto, Japan. They also were Visiting Researchers at the MIT CAVS in Cambridge US, the Beckmann Institute in Champaign Urbana, IL, USA and the NTT-InterCommunication Center in Tokyo.