Nina Simons

About NINA SIMONS

Nina Simons is a social entrepreneur who is president and co-founder of Bioneers. Her life and work are particularly informed by her passion for systems thinking, the beauty, magic and mystery of the natural world, women’s leadership, learning, and the arts’ capacity to shape consciousness.

Throughout her career, she has applied innovative approaches to successful ventures that have worked to advance social and environmental change. Previously, she served as president of Seeds of Change and as director of strategic marketing for Odwalla, where she helped them each to achieve national prominence rapidly, through creative, community-based and innovative approaches to communications, social networking and marketing.

With her husband and partner Kenny Ausubel, Simons has developed effective outreach and media strategies for disseminating the positive solutions and stories of the Bioneers community of ecological and social innovators. Since beginning Bioneers in 1990, they have collaborated to grow the organization and its influence, which now reaches many millions through its annual conferences, satellite conference partners, award-winning radio series, broadcast and print media, interactive website and book series.

In addition to advancing practical social and environmental strategies, Nina has an enduring interest in the leadership of women and girls, which has long been reflected in Bioneers’ conference programming and media. In 2006, she began offering Cultivating Women’s Leadership, a five-day intensive forum for women entrepreneurs, educators, donor activists and other nonprofit practitioners to: learn tools and practices to strengthen their effectiveness in the world through inner work; clarify their purpose; collaborate across differences; and create relationships and networks to cultivate leadership, empowering alliance and support.

In 2002, Nina produced a retreat for diverse women leaders called UnReasonable Women for the Earth, to envision a broad progressive women’s movement with environmental restoration at its heart. The gathering served as an incubator, resulting in the formation of CodePink: Women for Peace.

Nina is currently producing a web-based publication called “Sheroes: A Multicultural History of Women’s Leadership,” written to offer diverse women and girls a way to see themselves reflected in snapshot stories of women who have preceded them in breaking glass ceilings across a wide spectrum of endeavors. Helping to address the significant gap in young women’s knowledge of the women whose shoulders they stand upon, the project also seeks to create an accessible ‘way in’ for women to learn about some of the roots of the women’s rights movement in the U.S., which largely informed by a multi-cultural collaboration. The finished document will be shared widely on the web for use by groups working to empower and equip the leadership of women and girls.

Nina speaks and teaches nationally about women’s leadership, cultivating a culture of solutions and connection, and businesses and organizations as living systems. She serves on the board of the David Brower Center in Berkeley.

Awards &
Distinctions

• 2007 – Rainforest Action
Network’s REVEL Award for
helping build an integrated,
progressive movement at the
crossroads of environment and
social justice.

• 2006 – Global Green USA’s
Green Cross Millennium Award
for Community Environmental
Leadership for creating community
and inspiring others through their
influential environmental conference
and communications programs.

• 2005 – Business Woman
of the Year Award, presented
by Capital City Business and
Professional Women of Santa
Fe, NM for her significant
achievements on behalf
of women in business and
community.

• 2005 – Flyaway Productions’
10 Women Campaign Award

• 2003 – The Robert Rodale
Award for Bioneers’ work in
bringing the emergent field of
Ecological Medicine to public
awareness and for championing
new approaches to wellness and
healing.

• 1996 – Named an Utne
Reader “Visionary” for
her leading-edge work in
communication, community
building, and ethical commerce.