Kenny Ausubel, Nina Simons
Social entrepreneurs (United States)
“For their pioneering work to promote nature-inspired innovations for restoring the Earth and our human community.”
Through the educational and community-building programs of Bioneers, the visionary leadership of Kenny Ausubel and Nina Simons continues to inspire innovators from all walks of life to come together and co-create a more sustainable and harmonious future.
Profile
Kenny and Nina are married partners who began working together soon after they first met in 1987. Before founding Bioneers in 1990 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, they worked together with Seeds of Change, the biodiversity-based organic garden seed company that Kenny co-founded. For the past 28 years, they have cultivated Bioneers as a fertile seed head for catalyzing social transformation and for growing a highly diverse community of leadership.
Bioneers helps realize a profound transformation already taking hold around the globe: the dawn of a human civilization that partners with the wisdom of nature’s design, embodying values of justice, diversity, democracy and peaceful coexistence. It reveals pathways for healing our relationships to the natural world, each other and ourselves.
In addition to holding an annual summit with over 3,000 participants in San Rafael, California, and satellite conferences organized in as many as 18 locations, Bioneers reaches millions of people around the nation and the world with an award-winning radio and podcast series, anthology books, videos and multiple media platforms. Other programs include Indigenous Wisdom, Women’s Leadership, Youth Leadership, Food Systems, and Community Resilience.
Kenny and Nina also pursue projects of their own. As a speaker and trainer, Nina cultivates women’s leadership, and the restoration of the feminine principle in all its forms. As journalist, author and filmmaker, Kenny is currently producing the movie “Changing of the Gods,” about cycles of revolution and transformation across human history (2018 release).