Keynote Speaker: Fireside Chat with Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben is a founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org and the Schumann Distinguished Professor in Residence at Middlebury College in Vermont. He was a 2014 recipient of the Right Livelihood Prize, sometimes called the ‘alternative Nobel,’ and the Gandhi Peace Award. He has written over a dozen books about the environment, including his first, The End of Nature, published 30 years ago, and his most recent, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

Cody Simms resides in Los Angeles and is Partner and Senior Vice President of Investments at Techstars, one of the most active early-stage venture investors in the world. 

Earlier in his career, Cody held roles including Chief Product Officer at StumbleUpon, Vice President of Product Management at Yahoo, and Product Manager at The New York Times, Sprint, and NBC Internet / Snap.com.  

Cody has recently co-founded Climate Changemakers, a nonpartisan, nationwide community-driven movement to channel climate concern into climate action. 

Cody holds an M.A. in Transnational Communication and Global Media from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and is a Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude graduate of the University of Kansas with a B.A. in History and East Asian Languages and Cultures with emphasis on Mandarin Chinese. He got his start in tech when he moved from Kansas to San Francisco in 1999 after graduating from college, falling into the original dotcom boom with pre-IPO Snap.com.