Kenny Ausubel

Kenny Ausubel, Co-CEO & Founder of Bioneers, is an award-winning social entrepreneur, author, journalist and filmmaker. Bioneers is a nationally recognized nonprofit dedicated to disseminating practical and visionary solutions for restoring Earth’s imperiled ecosystems and healing our human communities. Kenny launched the annual Bioneers Conference in 1990 with his producing partner and wife, Nina Simons, Bioneers co-founder.

The Bioneers Conference attracts more than 3,000 people each year to the national conference in San Rafael, California, and is beamed by satellite simulcast to close to 20 localized Bioneers conferences across the US and Canada to another 10,000 attendees.

Kenny serves as executive producer of the Bioneers plenary series airing on Free Speech TV and Link TV. He acted as a central advisor to Leonardo DiCaprio’s feature documentary The 11th Hour, and appears in the film.

Kenny co-founded the national company Seeds of Change in 1989 and served as CEO until 1994 to restore “backyard biodiversity” into the food web through marketing organic, biodiverse heirloom seeds to gardeners.

Previously he produced several documentary films about alternative medicine including the award-winning feature documentary film Hoxsey: How Healing Becomes a Crime about the medical politics surrounding the suppression of promising unconventional cancer therapies. Kenny founded and operates Inner Tan Productions, a feature film development company, and has written two screenplays. He attended Yale and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University in 1972. He lives in the mountains outside Santa Fe, New Mexico with Nina and their two dogs.

BOOKS

Kenny has written three books and edited two volumes of the Bioneers book series. His acclaimed book, When Healing Becomes a Crime: The Amazing Story of the Hoxsey Cancer Clinics and the Return of Alternative Therapies (2000), is an almost-novelistic recounting of the saga of ex-coal miner Harry Hoxsey’s incredible thirty-five-year battle with organized medicine for a fair scientific investigation of his herbal treatment for cancer. Often called “the wildest story in medical history,” the astounding Hoxsey story reveals a deeply disturbing pattern of “condemnation without investigation” by organized medicine that has resulted in the obstruction or outright suppression of numerous promising unconventional cancer therapies. Considered the definitive book on Hoxsey and a foundational contribution on the politics of medicine, the book is a tour-de-force of storytelling and reportage.

Kenny wrote The Bioneers: Declarations of Interdependence (1995) about the “bioneers,” biological pioneers who look to nature’s solutions as the model for our technologies and social systems. The book grew out of the Bioneers conference, which Kenny founded in 1990 to highlight leading-edge scientific and social solutions modeled on nature’s operating instructions. He served as editor of the first two volumes of the Bioneers book series: Ecological Medicine: Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves (2004, foreword by Dr. Andrew Weil), and Nature’s Operating Instructions: The True Biotechnologies (2005, foreword by Paul Hawken). He has served as executive editor of subsequent Bioneers book series editions including Ecological Literacy: Educating Our Children for a Sustainable World (2005, edited by Michael K. Stone and Zenobia Barlow of the Center for Ecoliteracy); Visionary Plant Consciousness: The Shamanic Teachings of the Plant World (2007, edited by J.P. Harpignies) and The Original Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom and the Fate of the Earth (spring 2008 release, edited by Melissa K. Nelson).

Kenny also authored Seeds of Change: The Living Treasure (1994) about the mission of the national company he co-founded to bring “backyard biodiversity” into the food web as a hedge against the extinction of the traditional and native seed stocks essential to the biodiversity of farming and survival of our food systems.

RADIO

Kenny has served as executive producer and principal writer of the award-winning radio series Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature. The popular Bioneers series and shows have won twelve awards in international competitions, including the New York festivals and the Crystal Communicator Awards. It is heard in more than 200 communities across the U.S. and Canada, and more globally, reaching total market coverage of 70 million listeners.

Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature features the dynamic voices of scientific and social visionaries with practical solutions and breakthrough social innovations for restoring the Earth and our human communities. These bioneers span diverse fields, cultures and viewpoints within a broad progressive framework. They come from all walks of life, many cultures and countless fields of endeavor: scientists, social entrepreneurs, educators, indigenous leaders, social-justice advocates, journalists, artists, farmers, public servants, youth and more. The series draws on charismatic presentations and interviews from the annual Bioneers conferences to highlight compelling voices and original viewpoints seldom heard in the corporate mainstream media. The series’ focus on solutions illuminates deeply inspiring pathways toward a positive future that’s within our grasp today. It celebrates the marriage of the wisdom of the natural world with the brilliance of human ingenuity.

FILM

Kenny is an award-winning filmmaker whose birth was announced in Variety, the show business journalistic icon, where his mother worked. He produced, wrote and directed three non-fiction films in the 1980s. He is the founder and president of Inner Tan Productions, Ltd. Co., a feature film development company devoted to visionary and social-issue dramatic films. The company has three projects in development.

Kenny’s feature documentary Hoxsey: When Healing Becomes A Crime (1987) won the prestigious Best Censored Stories Award for journalism, played in theaters in a dozen US cities, and aired on HBO and Bravo to exceptional ratings. It also played and aired internationally on television and at numerous film festivals. It had the rare honor of a special screening for members of Congress at the Kennedy Center, reported on National Public Radio, and helped influence the creation of the federal Office of Alternative Medicine (now the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine). Often called “the wildest story in medical history,” Hoxsey is currently in development by Inner Tan as a dramatic feature film with producer Diane Nabatoff (Take the Lead) attached.

Kenny wrote original screenplays for two other Inner Tan projects: Star Rover and The Robber Barons. Star Rover is based on the true story of the late-nineteenth century outlaw Ed Morrell, whose remarkable life inspired Jack London’s last novel “The Star Rover.” Morrell’s imprisonment for life as a political prisoner and subsequent torture led him to a spiritual redemption that resulted in his release from San Quentin and in his becoming the nation’s leading prison reformer. Morrell was responsible for the Honor System and abolition of corporal punishment in U.S. prisons. The Robber Barons (script revisions by David Ward, The Sting) is based on the astounding true story of the “California Outlaws” in the late nineteenth century who challenged the notorious Southern Pacific Railroad robber barons with remarkable success. The backdrop of the story reveals the genesis of modern corporate monopoly and the vast populist movement that opposed it.

ARTICLES

Since the 1970s, Kenny has published articles on topics ranging from alternative medicine and environmental health to social justice and politics. His writings have been published most recently in online media including the Huffington Post, Orion and Alternet and in magazines such as Utne, Explore, Alternative Therapies and Tikkun.

• Honey, We Shrunk the Planet (Huffington Post, Oct 29, 2007)
• Remembering the Future (Explore, March/April 2007)
• Mighty Corporate (Huffington Post, 11/4/05)
• Heeding the Law of the Land (Alternet, 10/4/05)
• The Real Yoda (Huffington Post, 6/5/05)
• The Long Way Home (Alternet, 10/15/04)
• This is Your Brain on Public Relations (Orion Online, Sept, 2004)
• The Empire Strikes Out (Orion Online, March 2004)
• The 21st Century Blues (Alternet, 1/9/03)
• This Rare Historical Moment (Alternet, 10/21/02)
• Ecological Medicine (Alternative Therapies, Sept/Oct, 2002)
• Ecological Medicine: First, Do No Harm (Yoga International, Mar, 2002)
• The Coming Age of Ecological Medicine (Utne, May/June, 2001)
• When Healing Becomes a Crime (Tikkun, May/June 2001)
• Theft of the Ark (Seeds of Change catalog, 1994)

AWARDS

• Global Green Green Cross Millennium Award for Community Environmental Leadership, 2006 with Nina Simons
• Man and Woman of Peace Award, 3HO, 2006, with Nina Simons
• Robert Rodale Award from the Campaign for Better Health, 2003, with Nina Simons
  
• Utne Visionary Award, 1996, with Nina Simons
• Columbia University, Phi Beta Kappa, 1972, B.A. Psychology and Urban Studies

Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature Radio Series

• WorldMedal, New York Festivals International Radio Programming Competition
• 2nd place, 2003; Finalist, New York Festivals Radio Award, 2004
• United Nations Department of Information Award, 2003
• Communicator Awards Crystal Award of Excellence and Crystal Award of Distinction, 2004 and 2006

Hoxsey: When Healing Becomes a Crime (documentary film) and “Cancer Cures: An Outbreak of Controversy” (print)

• Best Censored Stories Award for investigative journalism, 1989

Seeds of Change

• Design Oscar, Metropolitan Home Magazine
• Ozzie Award