Joanne Cheung


Berkeley, CA, USA  

Joanne Cheung 张涓 is an artist, designer, and organizer. Her name—涓/stream—comes from an ancient poem describing mountain streams flowing towards the ocean. Her homeland is the once abundant wetlands of the Jianghan, an alluvial plain formed by the meeting of two rivers, the Yangzi and its largest tributary, the Han. Through her multidisciplinary practice, she carries forward the care and creativity of her mother, grandmother, and ancestral lineage of traditional medicine practitioners. She has been an artist-in-residence at the Icelandic Association of Visual Artists and a fellow at the Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Her work has been commissioned by Design Miami, Icelandic Glaciological Society, and the Harvard Earth and Planetary Sciences Visualization Lab, and featured in Wallpaper, Wired, and the New York Times. She teaches at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University and UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, organizes with Asian Pacific Environmental Network Action, and serves on the Board of Richmond LAND and Open Environmental Data Project. She holds a Permaculture Design Certificate from Occidental Arts & Ecology Center, M.Arch from Harvard Graduate School of Design, MFA from Bard Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, and BA from Dartmouth College, where she was a Davis United World College Scholar.  





Brijlal Chaudhari


Normandy, France
Brijlal Chaudhari is a member of Tharu nation from the foothills of the Himalayas where the Rhinos and the Elephants used to roam freely. Raised in a multi-generational Tharu family, he carries his ancestors’ oral teachings of relationships, leadership, compassion, storytelling, diplomacy, reciprocity, customary law, governance, Indigenous economics, and resource management. He also holds a bachelor's degree in economics and African Studies and a master’s degree in public administration. He is an Indigenous Peoples’ rights activist with over 15 years of experience leading social change programs and organizations. His expertise lies in bringing diverse groups of people together for an honest and meaningful dialogue for impactful results. He strongly believes that Indigenous Peoples’ way of life, their worldviews and knowledge systems must coexist with the others as equal partners. Hence, he founded Global Home for Indigenous Peoples to create a better world for Indigenous Peoples.