About this event
For the first time since we started, we’re not inviting on a famous person to join the line. Instead, this is a strategy call–a time for people to start hearing what we’re thinking about for next year. This is going to be a new era, and we want to figure out how we can maximize impact and build real power.
We’ve got some new and big ideas to share, and we hope you’ll join us.
Bill McKibben
Bill is a contributing writer to The New Yorker, and a founder of Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 to work on climate and racial justice. He founded the first global grassroots climate campaign, 350.org, and serves as the Schumann Distinguished Professor in Residence at Middlebury College in Vermont. In 2014 he was awarded the Right Livelihood Prize, sometimes called the ‘alternative Nobel,’ in the Swedish Parliament. He’s also won the Gandhi Peace Award, and honorary degrees from 19 colleges and universities. He has written over a dozen books about the environment, including his first, The End of Nature, published in 1989, and his latest book is The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at his Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened.
Vanessa Arcara
Vanessa is the President and Co-Founder of Third Act. Vanessa began her activist work in the world of food & agriculture justice at Slow Food USA, SolidarityNYC, Rural Vermont, and on small farms across the northeast of the United States. Her writing has been published in State of the World: Innovations that Nourish the Planet. Vanessa helped launch the second phase of development at the High Line, an elevated park in Manhattan’s west side. Before starting Third Act, she worked on the climate crisis for a decade at 350.org, helping coordinate actions big and small. She holds a Masters in Environmental Public Policy from Bard College, and a B.A. in Politics & Communication from NYU. She is an activist and administrator, a gardener and a mother, and lives in upstate New York with her family.
Kafia Ahmed
Kafia is the CEO of Third Act. She’s been organizing for nearly 20 years in marginalized communities on issues ranging from housing, carceral abolition, racial justice, and immigration. In between years organizing stateside – Kafia worked in international development, working alongside pastoralist communities in East Africa affected by climate change and survivors of gender based violence. Her passion and pride for her Somali culture and family are part of her driving force for creating a better world – when she isn’t organizing she’s a voracious reader, an avid baker and a lover of chasing waterfalls.
Akaya Windwood
Akaya facilitates transformation. She advises, trains, and consults on how change happens individually, organizationally, and societally. She is on faculty for the Just Economy Institute, and is founder of the New Universal, which centers human wisdom in the wisdom of brown womxn. She was President of Rockwood Leadership Institute for many years, and directs the Thriving Roots Fund, which supports young womxn’s finance and philanthropic learning and leadership based in generosity and interconnectedness. She received the 2020 Vision Award from Middlebury College and was one of Conscious Company’s 30 World Changing Women of 2018. She is an Ella Award recipient from the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and served on the Alameda County Human Rights Commission. Akaya is deeply committed to working for a fair and equitable global society while infusing a sense of purpose, delight, and wonder into everything we do. She lives in Oakland, CA where she reads science fiction, makes sauerkraut, and relishes growing enormous squashes in her garden.
