__
Krista Comer | PhD | Associate Professor of English, Rice University 
Author, 'Surfer Girls in the New World Order'

Krista Comer is an Associate Professor of English at Rice University. She is the author of Landscapes of the New West: Gender and Geography in Contemporary Women’s Writing. In her most recent book, Surfer Girls in the New World Order, Krista explores surfing as a local and global subculture, looking at how the culture of surfing has affected and been affected by girls, from baby boomers to members of Generation Y.   She develops the concept of “girl localism” to argue that the experience of fighting for waves and respect in male-majority surf breaks, along with advocating for the health and sustainable development of coastal towns and waterways, has politicized surfer girls around the world.

Farhana Huq | Founder | Brown Girl Surf TM
Founder & Executive Coach, Surf Life Executive Coaching TM
Ashoka Fellow

Farhana is an award-winning, visionary, social entrepreneur and professional coach.  She’s done everything from being a member of the U.S. National Karate team in her youth, to creating educational soap operas to help low-income immigrant women start their own businesses in America. She began volunteering when she was 14, and eventually worked on issues of homelessness and housing, dance arts programs for youth and anti-war activism for Congo.

At the age of 24, she founded C.E.O. Women, a non-profit dedicated to helping low-income immigrant and refugee women become entrepreneurs. Farhana ran the organization for 11 years and helped over 2,000 women in the process.  In 2008 she founded Bay Area Friends of the Congo, an all volunteer group led currently by Congolese-American activists, dedicated to raising awareness and ending the mineral conflict in Congo.   She went on to start Brown Girl Surf in 2011.  Currently she runs Surf Life Executive Coaching TM, where she coaches game changing leaders and entrepreneurs towards a business and life they love using a creative mix of applied neuroscience, surfing, walking and coaching.

Mira Manickam | Founder | Surfer Grrrls Brazil
Environmental Educator, Author, Multimedia Artist

When Mira is not roaming the world adding her shoulder to the wheel of justice through community arts and media, she is an environmental educator in the San Francisco Bay area.  As a Audobon and Toyota TogetherGreen Conservation Leader, Mira started the Trees4Life program, which trained Oakland youth in urban forestry skills while planting trees through intergenerational, community based rituals, as healing acts in the face of urban violence.  Mira's has also led hundreds of kids, families, and teens through the coastal hills of the Marin Headlands as a field science educator and leader of the TEEM high school internship program at NatureBridge in the Golden Gate.  In her most recent project, Surfer Grrrls Brazil, she set out to inspire other girls and women in the outdoors, and raise the profile of women of color in surfing through a solo surf safari up the coast or Brazil where she collaborated with local surfers and musicians she met along the way to make hip hop music videos celebrating her adventures. She is also celebrating the international publication of her first book, Just Enough, based on her master's field work in a small fishing village on Thailand's troubled southern border.  In addition to her work as a hip hop artist, author, and video-maker, Mira is a rock climber and Ninja Warrior enthusiast.  Her home break is Fort Cronkhite in the Marin Headlands, where she enjoys communing with pelicans and porpoises.

Manav Thapar | CEO | Zone to Zen
Lecturer, San Francisco State University

Manav Thapar, CEO of Zone to Zen, and lecturer at San Francisco State University, is known for helping his clients increase motivation & focus, gain confidence & self-esteem, manage irrational thoughts & emotions, recover mentally & emotionally from injuries, and to be an effective leader helping his clients to have a balanced and happy life.  

Born in India, raised in Norway, currently residing in California, Manav once facilitated a group of at-risk teenager to backpack, 56 miles in less than 30 hours to climb Mt. Whitney. An outdoor enthusiast, one can find Manav either rock-climbing, surfing, backpacking or snowboarding, deepening his connection to natural places, mountains and the ocean.   Service is Manav’s core principle as he volunteers for the Wahine Project, National Wildlife Federation, Outdoor Afro, and Youth Beyond Borders.

Dionne Ybarra | Founder | The Wahine Project

Dionne Ybarra dedicated the first 15 years of her career as a Parent Educator. As the single mother of 3 she balanced career and parenting and became the Founding Director of The Wahine Project in 2010. The daughter of a migrant farm worker, the idea for the project emerged from her life experience as a Latina woman who was raised in a marginalized neighborhood in East Salinas. Becoming a surfer in her 30's who knew first hand the liberating and transcending power of surfing, and recognizing that girls, especially girls of color, are underrepresented in the sport, she grew this project into what it is today.  The Wahine Project continues to grow and make an impact on the young girls and young women, known as “Wahines” throughout California as they discover their potential and take it out into the world.

__Wallace J. Nichols | PhD | Research Associate, California Academy of Sciences

Founder/Co-Director, OceanRevolution.org
Co-Founder, SEEtheWILD.org "See the Wild, Find Yourself"
Founder, BlueMarbles.org "Commit Random Acts of Ocean Kindness"

BLUEMiND is a project conceived of by ocean scientist Dr. Wallace ‘J.’ Nichols.  BLUEMiND is an attempt to formally partner with the neuroscience community in order to scientifically document the impact that the ocean has on the brain.  The thinking is that if we can begin to understand what happens to our brains at the neuro level in the presence of the ocean and why it has such a calming, stress reducing effect on humans, conservationists can begin to position the ocean as a public health necessity.  If this link can be made, it will have profound implications on policy, ocean activism and conservation and our overall ability to make the case for protecting the ocean.