Laura Scholl,  [Producer/Director] is a filmmaker with over 20 years experience in film and entertainment. Highlights from her career include animation for Atari's Sesame Street game series in 1982, over 125 animated segments for CBS News 1988 Election Coverage, and an interactive documentary for the ecological institute, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, ECOSUR 1995: 20 Años de Investigación. She has just completed working on the Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

PARTICIPATING EXPERTS

Andy Lipkis, who began planting trees to rehabilitate smog- and fire-damaged forests when he was 15 years old, is founder and president of TreePeople, a non-profit organization that for over three decades has served as a guiding light for the citizen forestry movement. Programs under Andy's direction include airlifting bare root fruit trees to Africa, inspiring the planting of one million trees in Los Angeles before the 1984 Summer Olympics, numerous disaster relief efforts during flood and fire, and many trainings designed to increase citizen involvement in urban tree planting and care. The latest program, T.R.E.E.S. (Transagency Resources for Environmental and Economic Sustainability), is a public/private partnership aimed at retrofitting the greater Los Angeles area to be managed as a sustainable urban ecosystem.

Jeremy Narby, PhD. is an anthropologist and author of The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge. He received his doctorate in anthropology from Stanford University. He is also the coeditor of Shamans Through Time: 500 Years on the Path to Knowledge and author of Intelligence in Nature.

Douglas Sharon, PhD. is director of the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley, former director of the San Diego Museum of Man and a member of the Association of Science Museum Directors. He holds a PhD. in anthropology from UCLA. He has on going research in Mexico, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, has published extensively on Peruvian shamanism, and produced an award-winning documentary film.

Marlene Dobkin de Rios, PhD. is a medical anthropologist and Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UC Irvine. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in the Amazon on the plant hallucinogen ayahuasca and written several books, including the Visionary Vine and Hallucinogens: Cross Cultural Perspective.

BOARD OF ADVISORS

Glorianna Davenport is Principal Research Associate and head of Media Fabrics Group (formerly Interactive Cinema) at the MIT Media Laboratory. Trained as a sculptor and filmmaker, her work in digital media, storytelling and performance has continually expanded prevailing aesthetic paradigms, pioneered new channels of communication and invented compelling technological tools for rich media expression.

Dyan Sublett is Senior Vice President for Advancement at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, where she directs all annual, capital and government-sector fund raising programs. Her twenty-six years in development include Senior Vice President for Institutional Advancement at Art Center College of Design, Senior Development Director at UCLA, Vice President of Sundance Institute, and Director of Development at Hampshire College, where she served under Adele Simmons, recently retired president of the MacArthur Foundation.

Brent C.J. Britton is an attorney with Akerman Senterfitt in Tampa, Florida, where he specializes in venture funding, intellectual property and emerging companies law. Previously Britton was Of Councel at Fish & Richardson, a partner with Duval & Stachenfeld LLP, a partner with Thelen Reid & Priest LLP and a founding partner of Britton & Silberman, a San Francisco corporate and intellectual property law firm, which represented Silicon Valley startup companies.

David Sonnenschein is author of the internationally lauded text "Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice, and Sound Effects in Cinema." He is a recipient of the Motion Picture Sound Editors Golden Reel, lectures on sound design in the US, Brazil, Cuba, Canada, Germany, Norway, England and China, and has produced and directed 7 feature films and numerous documentaries. He holds an MFA from USC Cinema/TV.