Prominent Environmental Attorney and Inspiration Behind the Critically Acclaimed Film Dark Waters, Starring Academy Award-Winning Actor Mark Ruffalo 

Robert Bilott is the tenacious environmental lawyer who became “DuPont’s worst nightmare,” according to The New York Times. The story in his book, Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer’s Twenty-Year Battle Against Dupont, inspired the major motion picture, Dark Waters (November 2019), featuring Academy-Award nominee Mark Ruffalo as Rob Bilott.  

Bilott was a corporate defense attorney for eight years until he took on an environmental suit that upended his entire career—and exposed a brazen, decades-long history of chemical pollution. He shares the story of his epic 20-year legal battle against DuPont that consumed his life and exposed the worst case of corporate coverup and environmental contamination in modern history.  

Bilott recounts the day a farmer came to his firm, convinced the creek on his property had been poisoned by runoff from a nearby DuPont landfill. Audiences will hear the remarkable legal journey that ultimately revealed massive chemical contamination of unprecedented scale and scope, now impacting virtually every living thing on this planet. 

Bilott’s story is an unforgettable legal drama about malice and manipulation, perseverance against the failings of environmental regulation, and one lawyer’s quest to expose the truth about a previously unknown and still unregulated chemical—presenting one of the greatest human health crises of the 21st century. 

To date, Bilott—a partner at Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP—has helped secure over $1 billion in benefits for his clients exposed to contaminated drinking water. Among his many honors, Bilott was selected as one of the best lawyers in America for several years running and in 2017 received the Right Livelihood Award, commonly known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize.” 

Bilott has been appointed a Lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health:  https://ysph.yale.edu/profile/robert_bilott/.

Amira Adawe has more than 16 years of history of working in public health, including local, state, and community-based public health programs, research, and policy. She is the Founder and Executive Director of the Beautywell Project. BW is a nonprofit organization that aims to combat skin-lightening and chemical exposures, address other environmental impacts, and improve community health literacy in USA, and globally. For the past 12 years, Amira has trained government agencies in the US and globally to combat the illegal trade of cosmetics, especially skin-lightening products that contain mercury, effectively. She has been advising the global partnership initiative "Eliminating Mercury Skin-lightening Products" led by the UN Environment Program (UNEP). In 2023, Amira chaired and facilitated the first global stakeholder group and meeting to eliminate mercury in skin-lightening products. She is also an Adjunct Instructor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Amira previously managed the Minnesota Children's Cabinet of Governor Mark Dayton, where she worked on early childhood in all policies and systems using an equity lens. She is a public health researcher whose research interests include women's and children's health in access to health care, environmental justice, skin-lightening practices, and chemical exposures. Amira is the host of Beauty-Wellness Talk Podcast. Amira has an undergraduate degree in Family Social Science from the University of Minnesota, a Master of Public Health from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and an Executive Certificate in Nonprofit Leadership, Nonprofit, Public, and Organizational Management from Harvard Kennedy School. She was also a Policy Fellow 2015-2016 at Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. Amira was a 2020 Bush Foundation Fellow. Amira's work has been featured on local, national, and international media, including CNN, StarTribune, MinnPost, STAT news, National Public Radio (NPR), Matter of Fact with Soledad O'Brien, and WSB-TV, Minnesota Public Radio, New York Times, Bloomberg News and Associated Press, PBS NewHour, Kare11, Good Morning America (ABC), consumer Reports, Voice of America, Sahan Journal and TIB.

Dr. McKinney grew up and completed all of his medical training in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. He practices clinical occupational and environmental medicine in the Twin Cities, and he is one of few clinicians in Minnesota who evaluates work and community-related environmental toxicologic exposures. He now serves as a Faculty Physician for the occupational and environmental medicine residency program where he trained and previously served as Program Director. Following his work on a COVID-19 vaccine trial, he engaged in addressing COVID-19 misinformation and vaccine hesitancy in communities of color, including helping to initiate a longitudinal vaccine clinic as part of the Shots at the Shop national initiative to support engagement within local barbershops that occurred every weekend for a year. He has continued to study and educate on vaccine hesitancy in the community and through research, including teaching University of Minnesota medical students and evaluating hesitancy in Minnesota firefighters. Using this work during the pandemic as a basis, and with more contemporary challenges in public health communication nationally and worldwide, Dr. McKinney continues health communication and advocacy work in educational settings, on social media, and in research. In general, Dr. McKinney is passionate about justice for all patients, both in the clinic as well as in the community, and ensuring that healthcare outcomes and preventable hazards are equitably distributed across populations rather than disproportionately affecting some more than others.