About the Presenters

Mary Pat Champeau is the Director of Humane Education Graduate Programs at the Institute for Humane Education and Antioch University. She holds an MA degree from New York University. Mary Pat has been in the field of education since 1979 when she began teaching as a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger, West Africa. She went on to teach in refugee camps in Southeast Asia, community-based programs in NYC, and to supervise American culture and language programs for the World Trade Institute. Since 2002, Mary Pat has directed and taught in the humane education graduate programs first with Cambridge College, then Valparaiso University, and now at Antioch University. As a devoted practitioner who has worked with hundreds of graduate students, she is reminded daily that the field of education still attracts the best and brightest, that teachers are transformational leaders in society, and that the world becomes what we teach.

Paul Bocko, Ph.D. is Faculty and Chair of the Antioch University New England Department of Education. He teaches in the Experienced Educator Program and is Concentration Director for Climate Change & Sustainability and Place-Based Education. His teaching is built on the principles of sustainability and the three Es (environment, economy, equity). His fieldwork includes learning with his graduate students as they grow their professional practice, researching sustainability and place-based education, facilitating trainings with green educators, and managing the Horatio Colony Nature Preserve, a diverse, 645-acre forest in southwest New Hampshire. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2022. He is passionate about helping teachers guide K-12 students to design solutions for real-world problems as they fully participate as citizens and ensure that current and future generations live meaningful lives and advance social, economic, racial, and environmental justice.

Nandita Bajaj is the Executive Director of Population Balance, a U.S. nonprofit that works to inspire narrative, behavioral, and system change that shrinks our human impact and elevates the rights and well-being of people, animals, and the planet. She is also a Senior Lecturer at Antioch University in partnership with the Institute for Humane Education, where she teaches about the combined impacts of pronatalism and human expansionism on reproductive, ecological, and intergenerational justice. In addition to several peer-reviewed papers and forthcoming book chapters, her work has appeared in major news outlets including Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, The Guardian, Newsweek, Ms. Magazine, The Globe and Mail, The Washington Post, and National Post. She has an M.Ed. (humane education) from Antioch University, a B.Eng. (Aerospace Engineering) from Toronto Metropolitan University, and a B.Ed. from University of Toronto. She was born and raised in India and has lived in Toronto, Canada for 26 years.