Cheryl Schaff' is a member of the Menlo Park Climate Team, the Peninsula Clean Energy Citizens Advisory Committee, the Climate Reality Project Leader (Bay Area Chapter), and a member of Extinction Rebellion San Mateo..Her presentation will address climate change from a global perspective, including the basic scientific explanation for this unprecedented development, and examine impacts occurring in California and around the world. IShe will talk about solutions that exist right now and others being developed, as well as how individuals interested in taking action can get involved.

Diane Bailey is Executive Director of Menlo Spark, a nonprofit working to help Menlo Park become climate neutral. She earned a master's degree in environmental engineering and is a Certified Climate Change Professional, who will talk about the impacts of climate change on Menlo Park and what our city is doing to mitigate those negative impacts and become resilient to the changes still to come. 

Anahita Dalmia and her team at Alterea have been working on Agents of Influence, a spy-themed educational video game that teaches middle and high school students to combat online misinformation. The goal of their initiative is to equip the next generation with the skills and knowledge to identify reliable information so they can act responsibly in their personal, civic, and social lives. Their game raised $30,000 on Kickstarter, and has been featured with Cyber Civics, Media Literacy Now, Connected Learning, and the Department of Education’s Digital Literacy Accelerator.  A short video of the game is available here: acy Accelerator. You can learn more about the game through a short video here:  https://bit.ly/AoIKVideoF.

The town of Menlo Park is working on an update to the City’s Housing Element to plan for future housing needs and opportunities through 2031. As part of our outreach and engagement with the community, they will present an overview of the Housing Element update and explain their progress and next steps

Author Dan Grunfield describes how his grandparents survied the Holocaust and escaped to America.   Their son, who was bullied as he struggled to learn English and cope with family tragedy, was now a young man who had discovered and secretly honed his basketball talent on the outdoor courts of New York City. That young man was Ernie Grunfeld, who would go on to win an Olympic gold medal and reach previously unimaginable heights as an NBA player and executive.  And Dan himself, once a basketball standout himself at Stanford University, shares the remarkable story of his family.

 

   

 

 

Law Professor Jorge Contreras shares the  behind-the-scenes courtroom drama, a brilliant legal team battles corporate greed and government overreach for our fundamental right to control our genes.

When attorney Chris Hansen learned that the U.S. government was issuing patents for human genes to biotech companies, his first thought was, How can a corporation own what makes us who we are? Then he discovered that women were being charged exorbitant fees to test for hereditary breast and ovarian cancers, tests they desperately needed—all because Myriad Genetics had patented the famous BRCA genes. So he sued them.

Jorge L. Contreras, one of the nation’s foremost authorities on human genetics law, has devoted years to investigating the groundbreaking civil rights case known as AMP v. Myriad. In The Genome Defense Contreras gives us the view from inside as Hansen and his team of ACLU lawyers, along with a committed group of activists, scientists, and physicians, take their one-in-a-million case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Contreras interviewed more than a hundred key players involved in all aspects of the case—from judges and policy makers to ethicists and genetic counselors, as well as cancer survivors and those whose lives would be impacted by the decision—expertly weaving together their stories into a fascinating narrative of this pivotal moment in history.
 
The Genome Defense is a powerful and compelling story about how society must balance scientific discovery with corporate profits and the rights of all people.