Founder and CEO of Billion Bricks

Kumar, after having designed over 10,000 homes as an urban planner and architect during 10 years of corporate career, founded billionBricks with a vision to end homelessness.

Founded in 2013 billionBricks is a non-profit that innovates shelters for the homeless and vulnerable that are scalable, sustainable, and able to create opportunities for communities to emerge out of poverty. WeatherHYDE is an insulated, reversible, lightweight and women-friendly emergency shelter designed to save lives of the homeless in extreme weather. Ashton Kutcher called it, ‘innovation at its finest’ when its social media campaign went viral with over 40 million views. PowerHYDE is world’s first solar home for the homeless which produces enough energy to pay for itself. Since founding billionBricks has rehabilitated more than 4,435 homeless and disaster-stricken people in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Nepal, United States, Canada and Europe.

Singapore President’s Design Awardee, TEDx speaker, chosen as one of Urban Land Institute's 40 under 40, Kumar has won numerous global awards for his work. He graduated summa cum laude from Arizona State University with a Master of Urban and Environmental Planning and an Outstanding Graduate Award for the year 2005.

Executive Director, Ecofieldtrips, PTE, LTD.

Founder and CEO of Green is the New Black

Stephanie Dickson is on a mission to make sustainability mainstream, accessible and sexy. She founded Green Is The New Black, Asia’s first Conscious Festival and media platform, for people who want to live more sustainably by improving the way they think, work and consume while doing more good in the world.

Stephanie is regularly asked to conduct talks and workshops on rethinking sustainability to make it the new norm (in life and at work), conscious consumerism, dealing with eco-anxiety and the conscious movement. And has conducted talks and workshops in cities around Asia.

As a changemaker in the green space, Stephanie has been described as "sustainability entrepreneur helping Asia businesses combat climate change" (CNBC) and a "force of nature" (Honeycombers). She is also a two-time TEDx speaker (P&G), and one of Prestige 40 Under 40 (2018).

Founder and CEO of abillionveg

Vikas Garg is the Founder & CEO of abillionveg, a consumer internet platform launched in 2017, accelerating a global movement towards socially responsible consumption.

Prior to launching abillionveg, Vikas spent 15 years in finance as an analyst, portfolio manager and fund manager at CalPERS, Dymon Asia Capital, Credit Suisse First Boston and 1/0 Capital.

Vikas is passionate about education, veganism and animal protection and he’s involved with grassroots minority education initiatives and animal welfare programs around the world. He graduated from Emory University in Atlanta and lives in Singapore.

Associate Dean of Research at JCU Singapore

Dr Denise Dillon has a PhD in psychology and is the Associate Dean of Research at JCU Singapore. She teaches into environmental psychology and has supervised several research projects aligning with a focus on urban biophilia, which draws on a local and global push for sustainability through an increase in opportunities for engagement with nature in high-density urbanized environments. Denise is an academic psychologist and certified Forest Therapy Guide (through the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy in the US) and has conducted Forest Therapy walks for members of the public in a number of locations in Singapore.

Contributor to Service Learning Program at SAS, Founder Global Issues course; Service Council Sponsor; Peace Initiative Sponsor

Roopa Dewan loves working with young people. She has been involved with education - teaching across the spectrum; running a Kindergarten to teaching Middle school, Highschool, undergraduate and Post-Graduate and extension Classes. She designed the Global Issues course, a research design and Methodology class at Singapore American School. She taught High School English at SAS for 17 years. Thereafter she designed and set the networks for Service learning. She spearheaded the Rainforest restoration project. She has fond memories of presenting at the first GIN symposium in Beijing 2008.

Currently she is a founder-director of the Padmavathi Vidyalaya, a school in Andhra Pradesh and involved with TREE - Trust for Environmental Education, India to use film as a powerful media for conservation. She is also a docent at the National Gallery Singapore and the Singapore Tyler Print Institute where she loves to guide student groups. She loves to travel, cook, read, walk in nature and connect with family and friends.

Co-Founder of Ten Feet Tall Shoes

Samantha Shorten (right) is co-founder of Ten Feet Tall Shoes which provides properly measured and fitted school and sports shoes for children aged 3-18 years in Singapore. Since day one Samantha and her business partner Nicola wanted Ten Feet Tall to stand for something special. They launched the TFT Shoe Bank which collects any and all shoes to send to people who really need them around the world. The TFT Shoe Bank has four key social and environmental benefits:

• Preventing disease - providing shoes to cover the soles of people's feet reduces the incidence of parasitic infection
• Driving micro-enterprise - pre-loved shoes are sold to entrepreneurs in developing countries to create roadside shoe shops or market stalls
• Disaster recovery - unworn shoes collected from the TFT Shoe Bank are sent to people affected in areas of natural disaster
• Reducing landfill

Prior to starting Ten Feet Tall Samantha worked in corporate reputation management for 20 years in London and New York. Her area of expertise was in advising some of the world's most iconic brands on their corporate social responsibility strategy. Her clients included Waitrose, Sainsbury's, Cadbury, Diageo, Unilever and Shell.

Middle School Teacher at Singapore American School

Darnell Fine is a classroom teacher and writer whose work focuses on questions of power and critical thought. He facilitates creative writing seminars and social justice workshops in the U.S. and internationally. An educator by trade, he applies radical imagination to the profession of teaching. He seeks to empower his students and encourages them to transform society into a more just place.

Darnell was also a 2012 recipient of the Teaching Tolerance Award for Excellence in Culturally Responsive Teaching.

Founder of The T-Project