What Matters Most In America Part Two – A Special Limited Series

This is the second episode in our ongoing series, What Matters Most in America.

Andom Ghebreghiorgis (find him on Twitter and help his run for Congress!) is a first-generation American of Eritrean descent from Mount Vernon, NY. He graduated from Yale with degrees in Political Science and Economics in 2007. He worked at the Robin Hood Foundation after college, and then he became a NYC Teaching Fellow in 2009. He taught MS special education at a high-needs school in the Williams Bridge section of the Bronx, and then was a special education coordinator/ELA teacher at The Equity Project (tepcharter.org) in Washington Heights. He has also been involved in writing (children's book Undercover BMX came out in August) and activism (mostly around education in NYC and human rights in Eritrea and Israel/Palestine).

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is an American environmental attorney, author, activist, clean technology entrepreneur and radio host He is an Irish American, son of the New York Senator and former Attorney General Robert Francis Kennedy and the nephew of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy serves as Senior Attorney and President of Waterkeeper Alliance, a nonprofit focused on grassroots efforts to preserve and protect waterways worldwide.

He is an environmental law specialist and partner at the law firm of Morgan and Morgan. Kennedy co-hosts Ring of Fire, a nationally syndicated American radio program and is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Law at Pace University Law School in White Plains, New York.

In 1995, he co-founded Riverkeeper and served as a board member until 2017.

Kennedy has written ten books, including two The New York Times best-sellers, and three children’s books. His articles have appeared in anthologies of America’s Best Environmental Writing, Best Science Writing, Best Crime Writing, and Best Political Writing for his article “Crimes Against Nature” published on November 24, 2003 in Rolling Stone.

Kennedy has been the recipient of numerous awards, mainly for his environmental work, including the Earth Action Environmental Ethics Award, the New York State Outdoor Education Environmental Impact Award, and has been named New York State Champion of the Environment, and Time Magazine’s “Heroes for the Planet” for his success helping Riverkeeper lead the fight to return much of the Hudson River to its pre-Industrial Age splendor.

Becca Stevens is many things…an author, speaker, social entrepreneur, founder and President of Thistle Farms, the largest social enterprise in the US run by survivors. She has been featured in The New York Times, on ABC World News Tonight, NPR, PBS, and CNN. In 2011, the White House named Becca a “Champion of Change” for her work against domestic violence.

Recently, she was featured in the PBS documentary, A Path Appears, named Humanitarian of the Year by the Small Business Council of America as well as the TJ Martell Foundation, inducted into the Tennessee Women’s Hall of Fame and was conferred an honorary doctorate by Sewanee: The University of the South.

John Tierney is the Executive Director at Council for a Livable World, where his work focuses on national security issues in Congress, nuclear nonproliferation, missile defense, and other areas of peace and security.