Amy Webb
Amy Webb is a quantitative futurist and a bestselling, award-winning author. She is a professor of strategic foresight at the NYU Stern School of Business and the Founder of the Future Today Institute, a leading foresight and strategy firm that helps leaders and their organizations prepare for complex futures. Webb is a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University’s Säid School of Business, a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center, a Fellow in the United States-Japan Leadership Program and a Foresight Fellow in the U.S. Government Accountability Office Center for Strategic Foresight. She was a Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, where her research received a national Sigma Delta Chi award. She was also a Delegate on the former U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission, where she worked on the future of technology, media and international diplomacy. Webb has advised CEOs of some of the world’s largest companies, three-star generals and admirals and executive government leadership on strategy and technology. She is the author of several popular books, including The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity, which was longlisted for the Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year award, shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Digital Thinking Award, and won the 2020 Gold Axiom Medal for the best book about business and technology, and The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Mainstream, which won the Thinkers50 Radar Award, was selected as one of Fast Company’s Best Books of 2016, Amazon’s best books 2016, and was the recipient of the 2017 Gold Axiom Medal for the best book about business and technology. Her bestselling memoir Data, A Love Story is about finding love via algorithms. Her TED talk about Data has been viewed more than 8 million times and is being adapted as a feature film, which is currently in production. Webb was named by Forbes as one of the five women changing the world, listed as the BBC’s 100 Women of 2020, and the Thinkers50 Radar list of the 30 management thinkers most likely to shape the future of how organizations are managed and led.
Amy serves on a script consultant for films and shows about artificial intelligence, technology and the future. Most recently, she worked on The First, a sci-fi drama about the first humans to travel to Mars. She is a member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and has served as a Blue Ribbon Emmy award judge.
3 words to describe Nature?
Essential. Quantifiable. Mysterious.
3 things Nature taught you?
Humility. Humility. Humility. (Seriously!)
3 most treasured Nature spots?
The hiking paths of Mt. Hayachine, which is part of the Kitakami range in northern Japan.
Walking among the giant redwoods of Sequoia National Park.
Hiking the foothills of Stowe, Vermont, especially in fall.
When you look at the ocean, it makes you feel...?
Concerned. The oceans are a vast ecosystem that we've ignored and polluted.
When you see a forest, it makes you feel...?
At home. There is a concept in Japan known as "shinrin-yoku," which is loosely defined as taking a forest bath. Connecting with trees and the sounds of a forest, breathing in the air, and taking time for contemplation and reflection are ways to improve mental clarity, emotional health and physical stamina.
When you see a volcano, it makes you feel...?
Curious.
When you see a sunrise or sunset, it makes you feel...?
Spirited. Some of my fondest memories are of canoeing and camping in Big Bend National Park in Texas and waking up with the sunrise. Even in the summer, the air is fresh and cool, and there's both a calmness and a sense of anticipation for a new day.
When you hear thunder, it makes you feel...?
Like I'm at work. When I'm researching, reading and writing, I listen to brown noise, which has lower, thicker tones than white noise. Some of the brown noise tracks I listen to include a continuous stream of rumbling thunder.
When you hear the wind howling, it makes you feel...?
Cold. Even if it's not actually cold.
Are you an Ocean, Mountain, Forest, or Desert person?
Mountain
On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is Nature to your well-being?
10
Share with us a childhood nature memory?
There was a small lake near our house, and it was fully alive: snakes, butterflies, fish, frogs, weeds, flowers, trees, and all sorts of bugs. My dad used to take me there just to walk around, look at tadpoles, and observe nature. One afternoon we found a beehive beneath a pile of boulders. We climbed on top and spent hours watching the bees do their work.
Cecilia Vanman
Cecilia Vanman worked as a footwear designer in the fashion business, when she took up scuba diving and freediving as hobbies. These interests and her love for the sea grew into such major fascination, that she decided to study marine biology, eventually graduating with a MSc Distinction in Marine Mammal Science in 2005.
Today as an Expedition Leader and Marine Mammal Biologist, Cecilia Vanman has planned, led and participated in expeditions and scientific projects in the Arctic and Antarctic, the Indian Ocean, the Black Sea, Scandinavian waters, the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. She has circumnavigated the British Isles, Spitzbergen and Iceland and has led three expeditions through the Northwest Passage.
Cecilia has also created the logistical frame work for film productions as an expedition leader for the likes of Disney Nature, Leonardo di Caprio and National Geographic Society. One of her greatest passions is science communication and bringing stories home from her expeditions in remote places to wider audiences through public talks. Cecilia is also a freelance photojournalist and her coverage includes reportage work with the Danish Navy Seals, the Danish Helicopter Rescue Service, the Danish elite unit Sirius Sledge Patrol in NE Greenland as well as articles on sustainable living, freediving, scuba-diving and natural history filmmaking.
Cecilia was invited to join Women Adventurers Club, Denmark in 2011 and 2015, she became the first Danish woman to be appointed Fellow of The Explorers Club
3 words to describe Nature?
Powerful. Healing. In trouble
3 things Nature taught you?
Curiousness
Patience
Interconnection
3 most treasured Nature spots?
Island of Langeland in Denmark
Disko Island in Greenland
South Georgia in the Southern Ocean
When you look at the ocean, it makes you feel...?
Free and humble
When you see a forest, it makes you feel...?
Calm
When you see a volcano, it makes you feel...?
If a busy volcano: like I should enjoy its’ beauty, but have a plan for a quick exit
When you see a sunrise or sunset, it makes you feel...?
Grateful
When you hear thunder, it makes you feel...?
Electrified and alive. But depending on the situation in the field, perhaps quite vulnerable.
When you hear the wind howling, it makes you feel...?
Thrilled in the beginning and I love the power of it all. After days of howling winds during field work, however, I can become almost overcome with a sense of restlessness. It can also add to cabin fever, which is good for no one in a remote camp. At sea, howling winds mean stormy conditions, which are never desirable.
Are you an Ocean, Mountain, Forest, or Desert person?
I am an ‘Ocean-person’ through and through and while I enjoy being there and traveling through them, I could never live in a landlocked country. The Ocean represents freedom and independence to me. More than any nature scape it puts me in my place as a human.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is Nature to your well-being?
10 and beyond.
Share with us a childhood nature memory?
Taking the family rowing boat, piling it high with cushions, blankets, my favorite book at the time and an anchor to go to a spot to read; there to be gently rocked by the sea and watching the soaring birds above in between. This escape to nature meant the world to me at a time when things could be difficult at school. Looking back it also set me on a path…
Scott Carney
Photo credit: Jake Holschuh
Investigative journalist and anthropologist Scott Carney (scottcarney.com) has worked in some of the most dangerous and unlikely corners of the world. His work blends narrative non-fiction with ethnography. Currently, he is a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism and a 2016-17 Scripps Fellow at the Center for Environmental Journalism in Boulder, Colorado. His books include the New York Times best seller "What Doesn't Kill Us" as well as "The Red Market" and "The Enlightenment Trap”.
Carney was a contributing editor at Wired for five years and his writing also appears in Mother Jones, Men's Journal, Playboy, Foreign Policy, Discover, Outside and Fast Company. His work has been the subject of a variety of radio and television programs, including on NPR and National Geographic TV. In 2010, he won the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism for his story "Meet the Parents”, which tracked an international kidnapping-to-adoption ring. Carney has spent extensive time in South Asia and speaks Hindi.
3 words to describe Nature?
Stunning. Brutal. Fair.
3 things Nature taught you?
That there is no division between ourselves and nature.
That the outside world is also the inside world
How we think about the environment is also how we think about ourselves.
3 most treasured Nature spots?
The Nubble Westport, MA
Hampi, India
Outside Iquitos, Peru
When you look at the ocean, it makes you feel...?
Calm, like the horizon has no limits.
When you see a forest, it makes you feel...?
Like there will be something unexpected just around the next bend
When you see a volcano, it makes you feel...?
In awe of the power of the earth.
When you see a sunrise or sunset, it makes you feel...?
Like I'm at the beginning or end.
When you hear thunder, it makes you feel...?
Usually a little surprised. I count the seconds between the flash and the clap to try to figure out how far away it is. The other day I got stuck in a thunderstorm and the bolts crashed fifteen feet from me. It was pretty terrifying. My instinct was to lie flat on the ground.
When you hear the wind howling, it makes you feel...?
IT depends where I am. If I'm inside a house watching a storm pass it's a strangely comforting feeling. If I'm outside it can be brutal.
Are you an Ocean, Mountain, Forest, or Desert person?
Ocean
On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is Nature to your well-being?
I am nature. And so are you. 10
Share with us a childhood nature memory?
I remember climbing up the Nubble, a small but high rock that guards the Harbor in Westport, MA, while my mother yelled at me to get down. She was scared I would fall, but I just had to make it to the top.