The fight for democracy and the planet begins in the classroom | Lauren E. Graham | TEDxBard College

With her extensive teaching experience, Lauren E. Graham takes us on a transformative journey where she proposes a revolutionary idea; a new social contract. By combining aspects of education, sustainability, social action, and biomimicry, she designs a new interdisciplinary decision-making, movement-building framework. Lauren E. Graham is a social entrepreneur, environmentalist, and educator with an eclectic background in environment and sustainability, social innovation and entrepreneurship, and creative media (documentary film, music, games, and virtual reality) for public engagement.

Graham is currently the chief of staff at Hunger Free America, a NYC-based national antihunger advocacy and direct service nonprofit working to end domestic hunger. In this role, she supports the CEO with managing all aspects of the organization, providing leadership for daily operations, managing strategic planning and staff professional development, and overseeing hiring.

She is also the CEO of Velvet Frame, a social impact strategy and communications consultancy, founded in 2015. She works with nonprofits, startups, and other mission-driven organizations across the environmental-social impact spectrum on their capacity-building and change management challenges using an ecosystems approach.

Graham is a part-time adjunct professor teaching a rotation of undergraduate and graduate courses on nonprofit management, leadership, sustainability, and entrepreneurship at Bard College MBA in Sustainability, the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice, Baruch College-Zicklin School of Business at the City University of New York (CUNY), the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), and the Carbonauts.

Graham holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations and a master’s in sociology from Stanford University, a master’s in environmental management from Yale School of the Environment, and a master’s in nonprofit leadership from the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx