Spring 2024 Fundraising Event - header - 1300x500

It's About Time!

We live in a world filled with conflicts and crises. But there are also beacons of harmony and hope. Every moment matters in the struggle between suffering and flourishing. We believe it’s about time to promote visions of transformation. It’s about time to engage in initiatives of innovation. It’s about time to create communities of compassion. It’s about time to build an ecological civilization.

Please enjoy special online gala featuring a group of brilliant thinkers, great leaders, and inspiring artists to envision the possibilities of an ecological civilization and raise funds to help the Cobb Institute realize its mission.

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This event will include a panel discussion with four fascinating individuals who have each made significant contributions in the area of ecological civilization, and performances by three gifted artists whose work exhibits care for our common home.

All of the participants will share their unique visions to generate transformation.

Saturday, April 20, 2024, 1:00 PM Pacific

Online-only via Zoom

Featured Panelists

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Philip Clayton

President, Institute for Ecological Civilization

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Philip Clayton is the president of the Institute for Ecological Civilization. As a visionary thinker, Philip leads EcoCiv in expanding and deepening its mission at the intersections of environment and humanity. With several decades of experience in university-based research, teaching, and lecturing, Philip is involved in the conceptual development of all EcoCiv’s projects and ensures mission fit. In particular, he helps project leaders think about intersectional societal changes relevant for their particular projects. Philip holds the PhD from Yale University; has held guest professorships at Harvard, University of Cambridge, and University of Munich; and is the author or editor of several dozen books and some 300 articles on science, ethics, and religion.
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Mirian Vilela

Executive Director of the Earth Charter International Secretariat

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Mirian Vilela is the Executive Director of the Earth Charter International Secretariat and the Center for Education for Sustainable Development at UPEACE. Mirian has been working with the Earth Charter Initiative since early 1996. She coordinates the UNESCO Chair on Education for Sustainable Development with the Earth Charter and served as a member of the UNESCO Expert Reference Group for the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD). Over the years she has led and facilitated numerous international workshops, courses and seminars on values and principles for sustainability. Prior to her work with the Earth Charter, Mirian worked for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) for two years in preparation of the 1992 UN Earth Summit and a year at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). She actively participated in the 2002 World Summit of Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg, and the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development/Rio+20. Mirian holds a PhD. in Education from LaSalle University and a Master´s Degree in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where she was an Edward Mason Fellow. She is originally from Brazil.
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Jeremy Lent

Founder, Deep Transformation Network

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Jeremy Lent is the founder of the Deep Transformation Network, a global community exploring pathways to an ecological civilization, and the nonprofit Liology Institute, dedicated to fostering an integrated worldview that could enable humanity to thrive sustainably on the Earth. He is an author and speaker whose work investigates the underlying causes of our civilization’s existential crisis, and explores pathways toward a life-affirming future. He is the author of The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning and The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe. Born in London, England, Lent received a BA in English Literature from Cambridge University, an MBA from the University of Chicago, and was a former internet company CEO.
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Vandana Shiva

Founder, Navdanya

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Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental thinker and activist, a leader in the International Forum on Globalisation, and of the Slow Food Movement. Director of Navdanya and of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, and a tireless crusader for farmers’, peasants’, and women’s rights, she is the author and editor of 20 influential books, including Agroecology and Regenerative Agriculture: Sustainable Solutions for Hunger, Poverty, and Climate Change, Reclaiming the Commons: Biodiversity, Traditional Knowledge, and the Rights of Mother Earth, and Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace. She is often referred to as "Gandhi of grain" for her activism associated with the anti-GMO movement. Shiva is one of the leaders and board members of the International Forum on Globalization, and a figure of the anti-globalisation movement. She is a member of the scientific committee of the Fundacion IDEAS, Spain's Socialist Party's think tank, and is also a member of the International Organization for a Participatory Society.

Featured Artists

The Cobb Institute's artist laureates will share their vision of an ecological civilization through their creative works.

Hope Montgomery

Hope Montgomery

Musician Laureate

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Combining lyrically rich songs with rhythmic melodies, Hope Montgomery’s music explores faith, doubt, self, and love entangled with an illustrative backdrop of landscape and nature. Born in the South, but a current resident of Rockaway Beach, Oregon, Hope’s writings are interested in the allure of place and calling. Hope has played the guitar her entire life and is influenced by other indie pop and folk musicians like Clem Snide and Bad Bad Hats. She is hoping to release her third album in 2023, and you can find the rest of her work at Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play, or wherever you find your music.

Read more about Christina and her work on her musican laureate page.

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Christina Hutchins

Poet Laureate

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Christina is an award-winning poet and scholar of process philosophy and theology. She has also worked as a biochemist, a Congregational (UCC) minister, and for many years taught theology and literary arts at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. She lives in Albany, California, where she served as the city’s first poet laureate.

Her poetry collections in Tender the Maker, The Stranger Dissolves, Radiantly We Inhabit the Air, and Collecting Light. Her poems appear widely, including in The Antioch Review, The New Republic, Prairie Schooner, Salmagundi, The Southern Review, and Women’s Review of Books. Her essays on process theology, queer theory, and poetry appear in volumes by Ashgate, SUNY, and Columbia UP. Awards include The Missouri Review Prize, National Poetry Review Prize, a fellowship to St. Petersburg, Russia, and living in Robert Frost’s home in Franconia, NH, as the Dartmouth Poet in Residence.

Read more about Christina and her work on her poet laureate page.

Andre van Zijl Visual Arts Laureate

Andre van Zijl

Visual Arts Laureate

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As an award-winning artist of international merit, Zimbabwean born artist Andre van Zijl’s work has historically been artistic commentary on socio-political and global culture from a holistic spiritual standpoint. In his ancestral homeland, South Africa, he was a victim of political secret police, visiting each of his biannual one-person exhibitions to see if they could arrest him for a law banning negative representation of any S. African president, living or dead.

Read more about Andrew and view some of his works on his visual arts laureate page.

“Today . . . we can proclaim that 'ecological civilization' is 'at hand' That means that it is possible to relate to other human beings and the natural context of all of us in a caring way that leads to sustainability. This can be done best by building communities of loving people who model the behavior that love requires and think of their human communities as part of the inclusive community of creatures. To love God today is to love all the creatures God created through the evolutionary process and to work together to transform our exploitation into sustainable sharing.”

– John B. Cobb, Jr., Is It Too Late?

Join us to imagine and create the future together.

One of the primary purposes of this event is to raise funds to help support our work and mission. We need your financial assistance to continue providing meaningful and transformative offerings. 100% of the proceeds will go toward the people who make it happen, our dedicated staff, and the operational costs needed to run to Cobb Institute.

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