Scott Badenoch

Co-Founder and CEO of CreativeCitizen.com / Digital Village Panelist

Scott Badenoch is the Co-Founder and CEO of CreativeCitizen.com, the wiki for green living, where you can find Creative Solutions for living more environmentally friendly lives. Scott is also a leader in the green community as a member of the steering committee for Green Business Networking, a group with over 1300 green business leaders, and BALLE's LA chapter (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies) called Local First LA.

Scott is a visionary and evangelist for the green movement, driving the market to greater heights through business solutions. Scott is an active attorney in the state of California and is a member of the Los Angeles County Bar Association, California State Bar and the American Bar Association. Scott earned his Juris Doctorate and Master's degree in Mediation, Negotiation and Arbitration from Pepperdine University and is a writer for TriplePundit.com and EcoTimes.com. He studied poetry at Northwestern University for his Bachelor's degree. He can be reached at scott@creativecitizen.com or follow him on Twitter: TheCitizen.

Gurutej Kaur

Kundalini Yoga expert and Transformative Business Coach

For over 36 years, Gurutej has been teaching people how to connect to their higher consciousness through yoga, chanting, mediation and healing. Everyday she lives the meaning of her Sikh name, which translates as “the one who brings you from darkness into light at the speed of light.”

In 1969 Gurutej met Yogi Bhajan. Bhajan is credited for having brought Kundalini Yoga here to the United States. As one of his original students, Gurutej emerged as a founding practitioner of Kundalini. Through his instruction and spiritual guidance, Gurutej is considered a foremost authority on Kundalini and internationally recognized as one of a handful of Kundalini Yoga Masters in the World.

In 1970, Gurutej co-founded 3HO Canada. She ran 3HO for 17 years, where she facilitated the duplication of the successful yoga centers throughout the Canadian market and in due course helped take the organization worldwide. Gurutej’s obvious head for business did not overshadow her commitment to Toronto’s children, which is why she introduced yoga to surrounding communities by teaching staff at Toronto General Hospital and students at The School House and The Alternative Schools.

A co-founder of The Golden Bridge Yoga Center in Los Angeles, Gurutej, has lived and practiced out of The Blessings Center in the same market since 1999. But as a mother, her greatest achievement is in successfully raising two dynamic and consciously aware adult children, who like Gurutej, take great pride in their commitment to making the world a better place.

Gurutej is an artist, exhibiting her first gallery showing for her paintings and mixed media in May 2003. A prolific writer and media contributor, Gurutej is the subject of much media attention. She has been featured in/on Vogue, L.A. Yoga, Yogi Times, Fit Yoga, Common Ground, Splendora.com, The Discovery Channel and MTV. She was awarded Yogi Times’ July 2003 Service Award and Teacher of the Month for August 2003.

In 2005, Gurutej will have released over a dozen instructional yoga videos and DVD’s, which started with her popular Chakra series. Her healing products have been featured in Living Arts, Crystal Distributing, Spirit Voyage, and Ancient Healing Ways catalogues.

Pilar Stella Ingargiola, MPH

CEO & Founder of OneGiving - Co-Chair, Policy Action Sessions

Pilar Stella Ingargiola, MPH, is the CEO & Founder of OneGiving (www.onegiving.com), a global organization that empowers, inspires and connects people in giving to create change on the planet. Pilar is an author, speaker and social entrepreneur who has been working towards social change and making a difference on the planet through every endeavor she has embarked on over the past 15 years.

Pilar has worked locally, nationally and internationally on leveraging resources and enhancing efficiencies for and developing effective partnerships and collaborations. Pilar works with policymakers, foundations, nonprofits, media, business, universities, community and consumer organizations, and community and youth to create social change, affect policy and transform giving. Pilar works with media to promote giving and acts of service; with philanthropists and foundations to transform giving, leverage resources and affect policy; with corporations and investors in socially responsible giving and investing; with community and partners to build bridges and collaboration; and young people and others to affect social change.

Pilar is a founding partner of the LA Peace Collaborative (www.lapeace.org); participated in the Memorial Marshall Fellowship of the German Marshall Fund (www.gmfus.org); co-founded the Center for Systems Integration (www.csi-policy.org) in Denver, Colorado, a for-profit think tank working across sectors and systems for social justice and policy change; and co-founded with Colorado State Senate President Peter Groff and a collaborative of community partners to create the Colorado Multi-Ethnic/Cultural Consortium (www.cmecc.org), a nonprofit committed to creating a voice in policy for communities of color. A graduate of Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health in International & Global Policy and Maternal and Child Health, Pilar has been committed to social justice, health, education, multi-cultural, human and civil rights issues throughout her career.

Pilar speaks about multicultural, peace, human rights, social justice and other policy issues; socially responsible giving and investing, and other topics to inspire action for change and making a difference on the planet. Pilar also does workshops with women, young people and other audiences about writing, speaking our truth, living fully, sharing our gifts, and giving back to ourselves and others.

Melanie St.James, MPA

Managing Director of The Global Summit / Moderator

Melanie’s life-long dedication to social justice, hands on international policy research and private sector entrepreneurialism fuel her passionate dedication to multi-sector collaboration, and functional vision of The Global Summit.

At 20, she began advancing theories linking population, environmental scarcity and poverty, advocating multi-sector collaboration and community empowerment.

Inspired by research and related programs in Africa, she founded TGS producing organization, Empowerment Works (EW) in 2001. Her training in transformational mediation and international negotiations further contributed to EW’s 7 Stages of sustainable development & PIE approach.

Melanie advances The Global Summit holistic approach through workshops and speaking at international conferences. Highlights include the 2006 International AIDS Conference in Toronto as co-Founder of the Coalition for a Sustainable Africa; unveiling her Population Theory at the 2004 Sustainable Resources Conference in Boulder; presenting PIE and moderating at the 5th International Symposium on Digital Earth, the 2008 Global Sound Conference and Lightning in a Bottle Eco-Festival, May 2008.

In April 2007, Melanie produced the first national press-conference on Colony Collapse Disorder, "Bees, Bio diversity and Food Security" which brought world renowned expert insights on sustainable agriculture, critical food security and bio-diversity to the mainstream media via immediate coverage in the LA Times and Live on NBC.

In concert with building Empowerment Works’ grass-roots programs in Africa, Melanie has deepened her private sector insights as Founder/CEO of BioNova™ Medical Corporation, through which she has authored various patents HIV/AIDS treatments and other life threatening diseases, managed treatment protocols in Africa and research with City of Hope and UCLA AIDS Institute.

Before he passed away, Ms. St.James worked closely with her father whose environmental technologies struggled to reach their potential in the face of vested interests while ultimately coming to life through Eco-Motors, LLC, a leading edge clean technology corporation. The need to expose what works best and disseminate it for the common good is one of Melanie's core interests in The Global Summit.

Melanie holds a Masters degree of Public Administration in International Management from the Monterey Institute of International Studies and BA in International Relations & Diplomacy from Schiller International University in Madrid, Spain. A global citizen at heart, Melanie speaks French and Spanish and has lived and conducted research throughout Asia, Europe, Africa and Central America. Preparing for TGS 2009 in LA, Melanie resides in Venice Beach, California with her dog, Jackson.