Travis Rejman (born in Waterloo, Iowa, United States) [1] is the American Co-Founder and Executive Director of The Goldin Institute, a Chicago-based non-profit organization that works to foster global grassroots partnerships for sustainable change.
The Goldin Institute focuses on areas of poverty alleviation, gender empowerment, conflict resolution and environmental sustainability. [2] He began working door to door as an environmental community organizer for issues concerning government, business, as well as civil society. [3] Before the foundation of the Institute, Travis worked in the Interfaith field serving as Director of Programs for the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions. Among the programs he developed were the 1999 Parliament in Cape Town, South Africa and the 2004 Parliament in Barcelona, Spain. [4]
Rejman worked as a part of the organization Public Allies from 1994 to 1995, under the direction of Michelle Obama. [1] Obama was the Founding Executive Director of Public Allies Chicago. [5] Rejman appeared and spoke in the video South Side Girl that introduced Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention in 2008. [6]
Based on his work in Uganda building a National Platform for Child Soldier Reintegration and Prevention, Rejman's perspective on the Kony 2012 campaign was featured in the Huffington Post on March 9, 2012. [7]
Joseph Rao Kony is a Ugandan militant who founded the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations Peacekeepers, the European Union, and various other governments.
Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is an American attorney and author who served as the first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017, being married to former president Barack Obama.
A viral video is a video that becomes popular through a viral process of Internet sharing, typically through video sharing websites such as YouTube as well as social media and email. For a video to be shareable or spreadable, it must focus on the social logics and cultural practices that have enabled and popularized these new platforms.
Kelly David Brownell is a clinical psychologist and scholar of public health and public policy at Duke University whose work focuses on obesity and food policy. He is a former dean of Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy. Noted for his research dealing primarily with obesity prevention, as well as the intersection of behavior, environment, and health with public policy, Brownell advised former First Lady Michelle Obama's initiatives to address childhood obesity and has testified before Congress. He is credited with coining the term "yo-yo dieting", and was named as one of "The World's 100 Most Influential People" by Time Magazine in 2006.
Isabel Toledo was a Cuban-American fashion designer based in New York City. She was widely recognized in the fashion industry for her attention to craftsmanship and the "sophisticated simplicity" of her garments.
Public Allies is an American nonprofit organization that operates an AmeriCorps program and is dedicated to leadership development. Its mission is to create a just and equitable society and the diverse leadership to sustain it.
Maya Kasandra Soetoro-Ng is an Indonesian-born American academic, who is a faculty specialist at the Spark M. Matsunaga Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, based in the College of Social Sciences at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She is also a consultant for the Obama Foundation, working to develop the Asia-Pacific Leaders Program. Formerly a high school history teacher, Soetoro-Ng is the maternal half-sister of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States.
Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii to Barack Obama, Sr. (1936–1982) and Stanley Ann Dunham, known as Ann (1942–1995).
During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, controversy broke out regarding Barack Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a former leader of the Weather Underground, a radical left organization in the 1970s. Investigations by CNN, The New York Times and other news organizations concluded that Obama did not have a close relationship with Ayers.
The family of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, is a prominent American family active in law, education, activism and politics. Obama's immediate family circle was the first family of the United States from 2009 to 2017, and are the first such family of African-American descent. His immediate family includes his wife Michelle Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha.
The Environmentalist is a public interest, eco-investigative journalism website that reports on the geopolitics and science of climate change, general politics, sustainable living, business impact and the history of affected regions.
The presidential transition of Barack Obama began when he won the United States presidential election on November 4, 2008, and became the president-elect. Obama was formally elected by the Electoral College on December 15, 2008. The results were certified by a joint session of Congress on January 8, 2009, and the transition ended when Obama was inaugurated at noon EST on January 20, 2009.
Jackie Norris is a political aide, educator and corporate strategist in the United States. She served as the assistant to President Barack Obama and Chief of Staff to First Lady Michelle Obama. Jackie is the current President and Owner of SPPG in West Des Moines, Iowa. She previously served as the CEO and president of Goodwill of Central Iowa.
Philip David Radford is an American activist who served as the executive director of Greenpeace USA. He was the founder and President of Progressive Power Lab, an organization that incubates companies and non-profits that build capacity for progressive organizations, including a donor advisory organization Champion.us, the Progressive Multiplier Fund and Membership Drive. Radford is a co-founder of the Democracy Initiative, was founder and executive director of Power Shift, and is a board member of the Mertz Gilmore Foundation. He has a background in grassroots organizing, corporate social responsibility, climate change, and clean energy. He currently serves as the Chief Strategy officer at the Sierra Club.
Plantation Estate is a single-story, wood-frame, 5,000-square-foot (460 m2) Pacific Ocean-front house at 57 Kailuana Place in Kailua, Honolulu County, Hawaii, which former President Barack Obama rented for use during his Christmas vacations from 2008 to 2016.
Evangelos Spiros "Spike" Mendelsohn is a Washington, D.C.-based chef and restaurateur best known as the fifth-place finisher of the fourth season of Top Chef, which aired 2008–2009. He is the chef and owner of multiple restaurants: Good Stuff Eatery, Santa Rosa Taqueria, and We, The Pizza in Washington, D.C. In the summer of 2017, Mendelsohn closed his restaurant Béarnaise in Washington's Capitol Hill and opened Santa Rosa Taqueria in its place. In 2019, Mendelsohn opened PLNT Burger, a vegan restaurant featuring Beyond Meat, inside Whole Foods Market in Silver Spring, Maryland.
The 2012 State of the Union Address was given by the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama, on January 24, 2012, at 9:00 p.m. EST, in the chamber of the United States House of Representatives to the 112th United States Congress. It was Obama's third State of the Union Address and his fourth speech to a joint session of the United States Congress. Presiding over this joint session was the House speaker, John Boehner, accompanied by Joe Biden, the vice president, in his capacity as the president of the Senate.
The Goldin Institute is a non-profit organization based in Chicago, Illinois, US, that works directly with communities around the globe to create their own strategies and solutions to issues such as poverty alleviation, environmental sustainability, gender empowerment and conflict resolution.
Kony 2012 is a 2012 American short documentary film produced by Invisible Children, Inc. The film's purpose was to make Ugandan cult leader, war criminal, and ICC fugitive Joseph Kony globally known so as to have him arrested by the end of 2012. The film was released on March 5, 2012, and spread virally, and the campaign was initially supported by various celebrities.
Cindy S. Moelis currently serves as the President of the Pritzker Traubert Foundation and is the former Director of the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships.