Yazemeenah Rossi
Yazemeenah Rossi is a professional photographer, social entrepreneur, and pioneering age-defying international fashion model (one of the first ones to assume her white hair). She started her modeling career at age 30, normally the age of retirement for the industry, then became a model for The Ford Modeling Agency in New York City. She has appeared in hundreds of campaigns and magazines all over the world. She is also the founder of YAZEMEENAH, a social enterprise that produces her unique design of Yak or Cashmere shawls that are made by hand, from families in Kathmandu, Nepal. Part of the proceeds supports children at the Destitute and Orphans Children Safeguarding Foundation. At the age of 65 and with a combined 350,000 followers on social media (Instagram/Facebook), Rossi continues to promote her vision of health and natural beauty. Originally from Corsica, she now lives in Malibu, California.
3 words to describe Nature?
Primordial. Beauty. Powerful.
3 things Nature taught you?
Freedom
Wisdom
Inner Power
3 most treasured Nature spots?
Water
Deserts
Skies
When you look at the ocean, it makes you feel…?
Timeless, whole, Infinite
When you see a forest, it makes you feel…?
Mesmerized, Green hypnotizes me
When you see a volcano, it makes you feel…?
Powerful, Ancient, connected to the Origins
When you see a sunrise or sunset, it makes you feel…?
Part of the Universe, dissolving
When you hear thunder, it makes you feel…?
Alive, vibrant, warrior
When you hear the wind howling, it makes you feel…?
Wild, Free… The wind speaks to me secrets
Are you an Ocean, Mountain, Forest, or Desert person?
Desert by the Ocean :)
On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is Nature to your well-being?
10
Share with us a childhood nature memory?
Corsica, no running water, no electricity until I was 10 on the beach where I lived raised by my grandparents totally immersed in Nature. Washing our bodies and laundry at the river, collecting drinking water coming from a rock under the giant wild fig tree…Vision of my grandmother carrying our precious water in a clay pot on her head … running with my little legs on the desert beach without tourists at that time, all for me ... playing with crabs in the rocs; turtles, lizards, and snakes were my pets … Fishing, gardening, hunting with my grandfather, cooking with my grandmother, knitting by the fireplace with story telling…Nature provided everything we needed, it has been my best teacher… Nature is raw, beauty, and wisdom. It fed me and imprinted my soul for a lifetime, molded me into who I am today.
Melinda Moore
Melinda Moore is the founder of the impact fund, Moore Ventures and is the co-founder of TuesdayNights, a female networking organization. She is an entrepreneur, investor, advisor and global speaker with over 20 years of experience, and two exits (STV Communications and LovingEco). Melinda is the author of How to Raise Money: The Ultimate Guide to Crowdfunding and has raised over 100 million via equity crowdfunding. She served as the Senior Vice President for Entertainment Media Ventures. Her work has been widely recognized by Digital LA (Top 50 Digital Women in 2015), the Green Business Bureau and the National Association of Women Business Owners’ Hall of Fame. Melinda serves on the Board of A Sense of Home and has a B.A. from UCLA.
3 words to describe Nature?
Alive. Grounding. Calming
3 things Nature taught you?
To be more present in this fast paced world
To see creativity and inspiration in all the shades of green in nature
To find strength and beauty being immersed and isolated in nature.
3 most treasured Nature spots?
The coast of Big Sur
The jungles of Tikal, Guatemala
Floating along the rivers in Indonesia
When you look at the ocean, it makes you feel…?
Expansive
When you see a forest, it makes you feel…?
Small
When you see a volcano, it makes you feel…?
Alive
When you see a sunrise or sunset, it makes you feel…?
Connected
When you hear thunder, it makes you feel…?
Alert
When you hear the wind howling, it makes you feel…?
A little anxious
Are you an Ocean, Mountain, Forest, or Desert person?
I feel deeply connected to all but if I have to select one, the Ocean.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is Nature to your well-being?
10
Share with us a childhood nature memory?
When I was a little girl, I loved riding my bike to an open field in my neighborhood and I would just sit and listen for hours to all the sounds of nature...the birds, the wind, the butterflies, the sound of the trees, and the bees.
Pravin Pillay
Prav Pillay is the co-founder of Humanitas Smart Planet Fund, founder of Emergent Performance Consulting, and an artist, researcher, and educator whose creative practice explores how we locate ourselves through the politics of place, culture, and ecology. He has more than 35 years of experience as a social entrepreneur leading, developing and coaching high-performance teams and organizations working on progressive and challenging projects across private, public and not-for-profit sectors. He specializes in Progressive Tech orientation developed over almost 4 decades of involvement in mainframe operations, national data network management, new media and video streaming tech, robotics, AI, SAAS, military-grade surveillance and security, and social tech initiatives.
For several years, Prav was a co-facilitator of Media That Matters - a gathering of media change makers at Hollyhock a leading educational facility on west coast of Canada and more recently served as the Artist and Community Strategist in Residence with R.A.V.E.N. (Respecting Aboriginal Values and Environmental Needs), sessional instructor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and also an Executive in Residence with VIATEC - a technology incubator in Victoria, BC.
Prav holds a B. Arts and Science from McMaster University, a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, an MBA from McGill University and an MFA from the University of Saskatchewan. During his MFA, Prav sought to understand the nature of systems based artworks and collaborated with engineers in Human-Computer interaction to conduct art-science experiments that played in the intersection of art, artificial intelligence, and robotics.
3 words to describe Nature?
Truth. Beauty. Goodness
3 things Nature taught you?
The meaning of Truth
Beauty
Goodness
3 most treasured Nature spots?
The seasonal waterfall in the temperate rainforest near my island home in the Pacific North West
A particular island in a glacier-fed lake in the Xeni Gwet'in territory of British Columbia, Canada
A particular mountain top in the Sinai Desert
When you look at the ocean, it makes you feel...?
At home
When you see a forest, it makes you feel...?
At home
When you see a volcano, it makes you feel...?
If active - I am in awe. If dormant - pensive.
When you see a sunrise or sunset, it makes you feel...?
The beingness of the temporal moment in the vastness of time
When you hear thunder, it makes you feel...?
Alive and awake
When you hear the wind howling, it makes you feel...?
Clean inside
Are you an Ocean, Mountain, Forest, or Desert person?
Each biome is equally compelling. The call is towards deep wild places.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is Nature to your well-being?
10
Share with us a childhood nature memory?
Raising monarch butterfly caterpillars. First collecting the caterpillars and milkweed from under the bleachers of the suburban high school near my home. Then caring for the caterpillars and observing them undergo metamorphosis to chrysalid form and then to butterfly. Finally releasing the butterflies to nature.