Speaker Bios

Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr. is the president and CEO of Hip Hop Caucus, a minister, community activist, US Air Force veteran, and one of the most influential people in hip hop political life. He was the 2003-2004 political and grassroots director for the Hip Hop Summit Action Network and a key architect of P. Diddy’s 2004 “Vote Or Die!” campaign. After Hurricane Katrina, he established the award-winning Gulf Coast Renewal Campaign, and, in 2008, led Hip Hop Caucus’ “Respect My Vote!” launch. Within the green movement, he works to bridge the gap between communities of color and environmental advocacy, calling for divestment from fossil fuels, increasing climate movement diversity, and access to clean air and water. In 2018, he helped launch Hip Hop Caucus’ Think 100% platform.

Fatima Iqbal-Zubair is California Environmental Voters’ Legislative Affairs Manager. In this role, she works with our elected leaders and stakeholders in the Capitol to pass transformative climate policy that will meet the urgency of this moment. Living in a frontline community in South Los Angeles, Fatima brings with her lived experiences and intersectional advocacy in a community that has struggled with the impacts of environmental racism for far too long. Her activism stemmed from her work as a high school Science teacher in Watts working in a school that has contaminated water and land. Since then, she has grown to be part of numerous local and statewide coalitions and is excited to use her experiences and focus on youth to create communities all across our state that are healthy, livable, and thriving.

Luis Angel Martinez (he/him), Campaigns Organizer at Fossil Free California, is an experienced organizer grounded in social and environmental justice principles. Spending his childhood in the community of Wilmington, CA where the neighborhood is surrounded by five refineries, peppered with oil wells, and neighbored by the Port of Los Angeles, Luis always had friends and family whose health was negatively impacted by the poor air quality caused by the fossil fuel industry. Motivated by this, Luis has been involved in local Los Angeles and Wilmington environmental justice organizing since the age of 15. He worked with Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), and he now uses his experience in grassroots organizing with Fossil Free California, to mobilize workers and frontline communities in pushing for fossil fuel setbacks, divestment, and phaseout at the local and state level. 

Carlos Davidson is an Emeritus Professor of Environmental Studies at San Francisco State University. He continues to be active with the California Faculty Association. He has been a leader in three successful divestment campaigns: 2012-13 at San Francisco State, 2021 the California State University system, and 2022 San Mateo County. Davidson earned his Ph.D. in ecology at the University of California, Davis and has a Master’s degree in economics from U.C. Berkeley.

Bill McKibben 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.