Youth@BFS

Confirmed Speakers

• Sam Chaltain
  Sam Chaltain is a DC-based writer and education activist. He works with schools, school districts, and public and private sector companies to help them create healthy, high-functioning learning environments. Sam’s writings about his work have appeared in both magazines and newspapers, including the Washington Post, Forbes, and USA Today. A contributor to CNN and Huffington Post, Sam is also the author or co-author of six books, including his latest, Our School: Searching for Community in the Era of Choice (Teacher's College Press, 2013). Sam has a Master’s degree in American Studies from the College of William & Mary, and an M.B.A. from George Washington University, where he specialized in non-profit management and organizational theory. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he graduated with a double major in Afro-American Studies and History.
• Seth Godin
  SETH GODIN is the author of 14 books that have been bestsellers around the world and have been translated into more than 35 languages. Permission Marketing was a New York Times bestseller, Unleashing the Ideavirus is the most popular ebook every published, and Purple Cow is the bestselling marketing book of the decade. His free ebook on what education is for is called STOP STEALING DREAMS and it's been downloaded millions of times since it launched in January, 2012. In addition to his writing and speaking, Seth is founder of squidoo.com, a fast growing, easy to use website. His blog (which you can find by typing “seth” into Google) is one of the most popular in the world.
• Chris Mercogliano
  Chris Mercogliano was a teacher at the Albany Free School for thirty-five years and stepped down as director in June 2007 to concentrate on writing and speaking about non-controlling education and child-rearing. He is a member of AERO’s Board of Directors. He is also the author of Making It Up As We Go Along, the Story of the Albany Free School (Heinemann 1998), Teaching the Restless, One School’s Remarkable No-Ritalin Approach to Helping Children Learn and Succeed (Beacon Press 2004), How to Grow a School: Starting and Sustaining Schools That Work (Oxford Village Press 2006), and In Defense of Childhood: Protecting Kids’ Inner Wildness (Beacon Press 2007). Currently Chris is a regular columnist for Encounter magazine. He has been featured on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio’s “Ideas,” and other nationally syndicated radio shows. The father of two wonderful daughters, he lives with his wife Betsy on a one-acre farm in downtown Albany, New York.
• Scott Nine
  Scott Nine is the Executive Director of IDEA. A dynamic public speaker and organizer, he enjoys teaching and learning about leadership, social justice, community, educational reform, environmental sanity, personal growth, entrepreneurship, and how we get along with one another. Scott has a Masters Degree in Social Work from Arizona State University. He has experience teaching, advising, and creating learning communities for people ages 5 to 95. Raised by two public school educators, Scott fell in love with his partner Hollie while growing up in Apache Junction, Arizona. He is normally based in Portland, Oregon but is spending the school year in Caguas, Puerto Rico, where Kristofer, KD, and Ellanore teach him new lessons on an almost daily basis.
• Zoe Weil
  Zoe Weil is the co-founder and President of the Institute for Humane Education (IHE), www.HumaneEducation.org. IHE works to create a humane, just, and sustainable world for people, animals, and the environment through education. IHE offers a variety of programs for teachers, parents, students, concerned citizens, and changemakers, including the only graduate programs in comprehensive humane education in the U.S., online courses, workshops, and free downloadable resources at www.HumaneEducation.org. Zoe has been a humane educator for over 25 years, bringing the interconnected issues of human rights, environmental preservation, and animal protection to classrooms, conferences, universities, and communities in an effort to provide people of all ages with the knowledge, tools, and motivation to be conscientious choicemakers and engaged changemakers for a better world. Her TEDxDirigo talk, “The World Becomes What You Teach” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5HEV96dIuY has been among the 50 top-rated of over 13,000 TEDx talks, and in 2012 Zoe gave another acclaimed TEDx talk, “Solutionaries” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImOi9YnMau8. Zoe is the author of six books, including Nautilus Silver Medal winner, Most Good, Least Harm: A Simple Principle for a Better World and Meaningful Life; Above All, Be Kind: Raising a Humane Child in Challenging Times; The Power and Promise of Humane Education, and Moonbeam Gold Medal winner for juvenile fiction, Claude and Medea. Zoe also tours with her one-woman show, "My Ongoing Problems with Kindness: Confessions of MOGO Girl." You can find her on Facebook, follow her on Twitter at ZoeWeil, and read her blog at www.zoeweil.com.
• Luke Geissbühler, Brooklyn Space Program
  As a cinematographer Mr. Geissbühler has photographed many renowned documentaries and feature films including "Buck", "Borat" and "Helvetica" as well as Steelcase's very own "One Day." As a self-taught engineer and innovator, he has developed many devices including electric scooters, furniture, camera modifications and a full-size electric car called the Zevi. Raised by two graphic designers and trained as a filmmaker, he attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and worked in special visual effects before venturing out to a successful career in cinematography. He now lives in Brooklyn with his wife Cara and nine-year-old son Max. As a weekend project, Luke and Max built a homemade spacecraft that managed to rise 120,000 feet into the upper stratosphere. The low-tech craft captured video of the Earth's glowing curvature set against the blackness of space before it landed itself back on the ground to send out a beacon and be recovered. Having traveled throughout the globe for work, Luke's diverse background has given him a broad and unique perspective on our world in the next century.
• Dena Simmons
  Dena Simmons is an activist, an educator, and also a student. Born to a resilient mother who escaped Antigua to come to the US, Simmons was raised in the Bronx and hopes to stay there. After graduating with honors from Middlebury College, Simmons returned to the Bronx as a middle school teacher. While she may teach in a classroom, she often learns outside of one. In 2007, she traveled to Antigua as a health volunteer for the Directorate of Gender Affairs to provide better health services for Dominican sex workers. She received a Fulbright grant to study the collaboration between schools and health agencies to prevent teen pregnancy in the Dominican Republic. She is also a 2004 Harry S. Truman Scholar and 2010 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow. She is currently studying for her Doctorate of Education at Columbia University, Teachers College. Her research is focused on teacher preparedness as it relates to bullying in the school setting.
• Nikhil Goyal
  At age 17, Nikhil Goyal is the author of One Size Does Not Fit All: A Student’s Assessment of School to be published in September 2012 by Alternative Education Resource Organization. His pieces have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Forbes, NBC, and Huffington Post. He has also contributed three Letters to the Editors for the New York Times. Nikhil has appeared on Fox Business Network: Varney & Co as well. Nikhil has spoken to thousands at conferences and TEDx events around the world from Qatar to Spain. He has also guest lectured at Baruch College in New York. He is leading a Learning Revolution movement to transform the American school system. A senior at Syosset High School, Nikhil lives with his family in Woodbury, New York.
• Trade School
  Trade School is a self-organized learning model that runs on barter. Everyone is encouraged to teach a class, and students pay for classes with barter items like food, artwork, and services -- not money. Trade School teachers have offered classes ranging from PhotoShop to Squat the Condos in exchange for running shoes, vegetables, and advice. Trade School started in New York in 2010 and has grown into a network of over 25 self-organized Trade Schools around the world. Trade School New York has expanded as well, and is now organized by the following collective members: Aimee Lutkin, Christhian Diaz, Louise Ma, Rich Watts, Caroline Woolard, Or Zubalsky, Megan Snowe, Lydia Dresser, Alex Velozo, and Rachel Steinberg. Trade School is open when space is donated or bartered with Trade School. Previous venue gifts/exchanges have come from Grand Opening, a closed Catholic school, General Assembly, Cuchifritos, the Whitney Museum, and the Museum of Art and Design.