meet the speakers

Hannah Alexander

Hannah Alexander is an environmental educator who specializes in plant-insect relationships. A beekeeper, master gardener, certified horticulturist, and professional nature photographer, she uses her unique perspective to inspire others to connect with the natural world. Hannah has partnered with influential brands like Sony, TikTok, Tractor Supply, and local nature preserves to bring eco-education to a wide audience. As a writer, she shares her passion for nature through engaging articles and educational content. Through her work, Hannah is dedicated to helping people recognize the beauty in the small, often overlooked details of nature, fostering a deeper understanding and appreciation of our environment. When she's not teaching or writing, she’s a devoted mother, balancing her professional life with her commitment to environmental advocacy.

Johanna Edmonson

Johanna Edmondson is the founder of The Female Fight Club NYC. Since its founding in 2020, this establishment has become a pillar in the Riverdale community. Her organization demonstrates an authentic investment in women’s health through creating a comfortable space for women to exercise and offering specialized training programs that promote health and well-being. As a successful business owner, community leader, children’s book author, and honored New Yorker of the Week, she is passionate about serving those in need through various volunteer initiatives.

Meghan Finn

Meghan Finn is a director of theater and film. She has directed over 50 fully-staged theatrical productions in contemporary playwriting including hybrid collaborations with visual artists and experimental writers.

As the Artistic Director of The Tank, a New York City-based nonprofit theater, she supports the work of over 3,000 performing artists annually. TimeOut NY recently called her, “the tiger in The Tank.” Meghan co-founded Each Step Home, an organization that assists refugee children who have been separated at the US border, reuniting over 1,000 children with their families since 2018. Her work was featured in the Netflix documentary, Split at the Root.

Katrina Foster

Reverend Dr. Katrina Foster was called to be a minister when she was a 4-year-old girl in Florida, and has led a fascinating life of personal redemption and service to God ever since. St. John's Lutheran Church was going to close in 2015 when the Bishop called in Pastor Foster as a last resort to come revive the church. Since she was called, average Sunday attendance has tripled.

She formerly pastored Fordham Evangelical Lutheran Church in the South Bronx and St. Michael's in Amagansett & Incarnation in Bridgehampton. She has made it a goal to keep Saint John's an open community space for people to come worship, create, & gather together. She loves her wife, poet and professor Pamela Kallimanis. St. John's keeps her pretty busy, but she always loves to meet new people & talk to them. 

Pernilla ohrstedt

Pernilla Ohrstedt is a Swedish architect and designer, and the founder of Pernilla Ohrstedt Studio based in New York City. She has an international reputation for realizing innovative projects that span the disciplines of architecture, design, art, and fashion. Key to her practice is creating striking projects with minimal means - through reuse and unexpected material choices and by bringing together visionary teams of forward-thinking clients, community initiatives and exceptional designers and fabricators. Her projects range from buildings, art installations, museum exhibitions, interiors, set design and furniture.

One of her recent projects, Love Ever After, was on view in Times Square. A month after its debut, the art piece was dismantled to be placed around the New York City shoreline and used as oyster reef cages as part of Billion Oyster Project’s effort to restore oysters to New York Harbor.

Tracy Robertson

Tracy LJ Robertson is a performing and recording vocalist and vocal percussionist, vocal arranger, music director, and facilitator in the world of empowerment through music. A full ride graduate of Berklee College of Music, Tracy has worked with organizations like the Urban Voices Project, Gaia Music Collective, and in more and more spaces where emergent/improvisational music making is explicitly inviting and supporting healing and empowerment in community. Through his new project, Vocal Bloom, Tracy builds community with events and workshops for musicians from all walks of life, engaging their voices and bodies through playful self-surprise and connection through musical creativity.

Eric Solomon

Dr. Eric Solomon has spent over 25 years pushing the boundaries of how humans, brands, and machines make sense of the world—and each other. With a PhD in cognitive science and executive leadership roles at YouTube, Spotify, Google, Instagram, and Bonobos, Eric's career spans the worlds of psychology, technology, and storytelling. Today, as Founder and CEO of The Human OS™, he helps leaders face the single biggest question of our time: How do we stay fully human in a world run by machines? His work and ideas have been featured in Entrepreneur, Psychology Today, California Management Review, and AdWeek.