David Helvarg is Executive Director of Blue Frontier and the author of six books: Blue Frontier, The War Against the Greens, 50 Ways to Save the Ocean, Rescue Warriors, Saved by the Sea and The Golden Shore. He is editor of the Ocean and Coastal Conservation Guide, organizer of ‘Blue Vision’ Summits for ocean activists and the Peter Benchley Ocean Awards (co-hosted with Wendy Benchley), and winner of Coastal Living Magazine’s 2005 Leadership Award and the 2007 Herman Melville Literary Prize.

Helvarg worked as a war correspondent in Northern Ireland and Central America, covered a range of issues from military science to the AIDS epidemic, and reported from every continent including Antarctica. An award-winning journalist, he produced more than 40 broadcast documentaries for PBS, The Discovery Channel, and others. His print work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, LA Times, Smithsonian, National Geographic, Popular Science, Sierra, and Parade. He’s done radio work for Marketplace, AP radio, and Pacifica. He has led workshops for journalists in Poland, Turkey, Tunisia, Slovakia and Washington DC. He is a licensed Private Investigator, body-surfer and scuba diver.

Valeria Merino is an environmental lawyer by training and a social entrepreneur. She has worked in many different areas of social change, developing a multidisciplinary approach to resolving social issues. Early in her career, she spearheaded a successful national justice reform in Ecuador that empowered citizens and social organizations to demand from the government and local authorities the recognition of their civil, economic and environmental rights. Simultaneously, she was part of the core leadership that grew Transparency International into an anti-corruption global force serving on its global board. Later, she was the leader of Ashoka’s largest global program, identifying and supporting social entrepreneurs with innovative system change ideas in more than 90 countries. At Ashoka, she also created the Rural Innovation and Farming Program with support from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2015, after graduating from the Founder Institute, an incubator of tech companies, she joined the Skoll Foundation, based in Palo Alto CA, where she worked with some of the best social organizations in the world to accelerate their efforts to change systems. She is particularly motivated to work on designing and implementing solutions to complex social problems, and building and sustaining global networks and collaborations to make it happen.

At Earth Day Network, she is already putting her experience to work. She is developing collaborative strategies and executing actions to further build Earth Day Network and its 50th anniversary into the platform that will unite the voices of citizens and institutions around the globe, into the global environmental and wellbeing movement that is required to save the planet and life on earth. She has been leading at EDN the End Plastic Pollution Campaign.