Synergos Cultivate the Soul: Stories of Purpose-Driven Philanthropy

• Wavemaking: Inspired Impact with David Evans Shaw

  David Evans Shaw is CEO of Black Point Group, with wide-ranging interests in technology companies, impact investing and public service activism. His business creation, leadership, investment and board experience includes more than a dozen successful technology companies, employing more than 15,000 people worldwide, with a combined market valuation of tens of billions of dollars. These companies harness modern science to address important needs in healthcare and other markets. Early in his career, Shaw helped build a leading global consulting firm in food and agriculture. Shaw’s career has included extensive public service in science, arts, conservation and public policy. He has served on the faculty of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and the Visiting Committee of the MIT Media Lab. He is a founding director of the US Olympic and Paralympic Museum, Chair-emeritus of The Jackson Laboratory, Treasurer emeritus of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and he has been a global leader in science-based conservation of nature as a trustee of the National Park Foundation, as founding chair of the Sargasso Sea Alliance and Aspen High Seas Initiative, as a Patron of Nature to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, as a member of Ocean Elders, and as founder of Shaw Innovation Fellows and Second Century Stewardship for America’s national parks. He has served as a partner of Venrock Associates, on the board of Maine Medical Center, Hurricane Island Outward Bound, the scientific advisory board of Discovery Communications and Curiosity Stream, a member of the Executive Committee of the US-Israel Science and Technology Commission, YPO and CEO, a Fellow of The Explorers Club, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Leadership Council of the Service Year Alliance, and advisory councils of Just Capital, Polaris Venture Partners, Arctaris Impact Fund, Sustainable Harvest International, the Telluride Science and Research Center, Nautilus Media, Waterbear Media, Saildrone, Visby Medical, and the National Geographic Impact Story Lab. He supports his advocacy interests with the production of documentary films and is the author of a 2024 book entitled Wave Making: Inspired By Impact. Shaw is resident of the State of Maine along with his children and 12 grandchildren. Shaw has been awarded honorary degrees by Colby College, Bates College, Maine College of Art, the University of New England, and the University of Southern Maine. He is a recipient of the Leslie Cheek Medal from the College of William & Mary. Other honors have included induction into the Teddy Roosevelt Society, International SeaKeeper of Year, Blue Ocean Festival Wavemaker, Life Science Foundation Biotech Hall of Fame, honoree New York Restoration Project, UNH Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame, Maine Creativity Center, and Maine Business Hall of Fame. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• Rewilding Ecosystems with Kris Tompkins, President and Co-founder, Tompkins Conservation

  Kristine Tompkins is the president and co-founder of Tompkins Conservation, an American conservationist, and former CEO of Patagonia, Inc. For three decades, she has committed to protecting and restoring wild beauty and biodiversity by creating national parks, restoring wildlife, inspiring activism, and fostering economic vitality as a result of conservation. Kristine and her late husband Douglas Tompkins have protected over 15 million acres of parklands in Chile and Argentina through Tompkins Conservation and its partners, making them among the most successful national park-oriented philanthropists in history. Through Tompkins Conservation and its offspring organizations, Rewilding Argentina and Rewilding Chile, she has helped to create or expand 15 national parks in Argentina and Chile, including two marine national parks, and works to bring back over two dozen species that have gone locally or nationally extinct, such as the jaguar, red-and-green macaw, and giant river otters in Northeast Argentina, and Darwin’s rheas and extremely endangered huemul deer in Chile. Kristine served as Patron for Protected Areas for the UN Environmental Programme from 2018-2022. The recipient of numerous honors, she was the first conservationist to be awarded the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy. In 2024, she followed up her 2020 TED Talk, "Let's Make the World Wild Again," with over two million views, with “A Bold Plan to Rewild the Earth—at a Massive Scale,” available in 14 languages, on the TED mainstage in Vancouver. About Tompkins Conservation Founded by the late Douglas Tompkins and cofounded by Kristine Tompkins, Tompkins Conservation is protecting and restoring wild beauty and biodiversity by creating national parks, bringing back species through rewilding, and fostering regenerative economies. Over three decades, the nonprofit has protected approximately 15 million acres of parklands in Chile and Argentina through the creation or expansion of 15 national parks in Chile and Argentina, in addition to two marine protected areas of 30 million acres. Through active rewilding, the organization is bringing back over a dozen species that are in critical numbers, endangered or locally extinct. In 2015, a kayaking accident in Patagonia took Doug's life. Alongside his wife Kris, the couple are amongst the foremost conservation philanthropists in history.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• Bridging for Impact with Camille Massey, President and CEO, Synergos

  Camille Massey is President and CEO of Synergos, a global organization that has pioneered the use of bridging leadership, which builds trust and collaboration to solve complex problems. She joined the organization in this role in November 2023. Camille combines decades of experience working on complex development challenges together with deep recognition of the values of inclusion, of listening, and of supporting people and institutions that are most proximate to those challenges. Previously, she was Founding Executive Director of the Sorensen Center for International Peace and Justice. She also previously served as Vice President for Global Strategy and Programs at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, and has served in senior positions at Human Rights First and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, working in 23 countries with a concentration in Africa and Asia. Camille founded Cue Global, a consulting business that designed and implemented strategic policy, legal, advocacy, communications, and resource mobilization plans for global organizations, was appointed a Human Rights Fellow at The Carter Center in Atlanta, and worked with musician Peter Gabriel to help establish WITNESS, an international human rights organization supporting local groups in the use of video. As a long-time board member of Breakthrough, she works on projects worldwide to stop violence against women and girls. She also serves on the board of Outright International and the advisory boards of Global Witness, the Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University and House of SpeakEasy, a literary nonprofit organization. Camille Massey earned her J.D. from CUNY School of Law, and a B.S. from Syracuse University's Newhouse School where she currently sits on the Advisory Board. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Bar Association, and the New York City Bar Association.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• Connecting to Heritage Through Food with Teresa Corção, Founder, Instituto Maniva.

  Teresa Corção was the Chef and Owner of the restaurant O Navegador from 1981 to 2020. The restaurant closed during the Covid 19 pandemic. In 2001, she joined the International Slow Food Movement as co-leader in Rio de Janeiro, becoming interested in the socio-environmental influence linked to the world of food. In 2002, she created the Cassava Project, researching the importance of this root for Brazil, promoting Tapioca Workshops in public schools until 2012, innovating food education with a concept she created: “gastronomic identity”. In 2007, she founded the Maniva Institute and the Ecochefs group, Civil Social Organization of Public Interest – OSCIP, a pioneer in working with gastronomy as an instrument for socio-environmental transformation: “valuing traditional foods and reestablishing lost ties between small and medium-sized farmers, their products and consumers” She is the creator and screenwriter of documentaries: O Professor da Farinha (2004), Seu Bené Via Para a Itália (2006) (screened at the Berlin Film Festival in 2008), The Food Path (2015), Terra Preta, Aço Prata (2016), in addition to the TV series Bagunça na Cozinha shown on Canal Futura (2010). She was chosen as Chef Ambassador of Brazilian Cuisine at SENAC, and she was a speaker at TEDX CAMPOS in 2012 and at TED GLOBAL-SOUTH during the Rio Olympics in 2015. Teresa was a finalist for the Basque Culinary World Prize, which is considered the Nobel Prize for Gastronomy in 2016, for her work as an activist chef and researcher of healthy and sustainable Brazilian cuisine. Other highlights: Co-creator in 2019 and manager of the Projeto Gosto da Amazônia – whose objective is to open the Rio de Janeiro market for wild arapaima from Amazon management. Consultant in the training of the 12th Military Region in Amazonas for training in cooking regional Amazonian products. Co-creator of the Alimenta Manaus campaign during the pandemic that enabled the connection between family farmers and food insecure populations in the city of Manaus, promoting the acquisition of organic and culturally related products to the beneficiaries. Co-manager of the Arroz Anã project in Porto Marinho, in the State of Rio. Curator of the Project at SENAC for the production of the book Very Prazer, Arroz Anã and lectures and show classes at events to promote the culture of this product. Winner, by Instituto Maniva, of the Jabuti Award in 2020, the most important in Brazilian literature, in the Creative Economy category for the book Ecochefs, Parceiros do Agricultor – Editora SENAC, in the Creative Economy category. Curator and consultant and Executive Chef at Bistrô SESC Convento do Carmo in 2023, 2024. Teresa is a Fellow of the international organizations Ashoka and Synergos. She also participates in international Forums linked to the sustainability of Food Systems, such as Conscious Food Systems Alliance – CoFSA and Catalysts 2030 Brasil.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• Working with Capital On Behalf of Nature with Alexa Firmenich, Founder, Naia Trust

  Alexa Firmenich is an investor, consultant and facilitator focused on climate and biodiversity. She is the founder of Naia Trust, an animist investment vehicle that supports early stage nature-based solutions, scientific research and new economic models. She is also senior advisor at the Crowther Lab at ETH Zurich, and was co-director of its initiative SEED that is developing the world's most holistic measure of biodiversity with the goal to steer financial and political decision-makers to crystallise the value of nature into the global economy. Parallel to this work Alexa is trained as a group facilitator in leadership development and ecological pedagogy, designing multi-day learning journeys through her role at Leaders' Quest. She is also an author, podcast host of Lifeworlds, a founding board member of Terra Habitus, a Mexican environmental fund that operates large-landscape conservation and watershed restoration, and a wilderness guide. https://www.alexafirmenich.com/ https://www.naiatrust.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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