Finding and funding innovative solutions to the climate crisis
The Earth’s Call Fund is a financial accelerator that aims to find and fund innovative solutions to the climate crisis. This is a change.
Earth's Call Fund seeks to rapidly deploy capital to innovators targeting climate’s most complex and immediate challenges. We passionately support these efforts through collaborations and partnerships, and have pledged $50 million to promote solutions.
Earth's Call Fund's work is guided by these four pillars:
DISCOVER
We DISCOVER innovators who are actively solving the climate crisis with science-backed and scalable solutions.
ACCELERATE
We ACCELERATE the adoption of climate solutions with rapid funding.
COLLABORATE
We COLLABORATE with others, guided by the United Nations'
17 Global Goals, to solve the climate crisis.
MOBILIZE
We ensure that no one is left behind by helping MOBILIZE people to answer Earth’s Call.
Justin Winters
Justin Winters is the Executive Director of Earth’sCall Fund, a new effort dedicated to scaling resources for innovative solutions to the climate crisis. She is also the Co-Founder of One Earth, a initiative focused on creating a vision for the world that is possible by 2050, one in which humanity and nature coexist and thrive together. This vision is based on three pillars of action – 100% renewable energy, protection and restoration of 50% of the world’s lands and oceans, and a transition to regenerative, carbon-negative agriculture.
Together, these pillars of action give us a global roadmap to tackle the climate crisis at scale, protect biodiversity and ensure a healthy future for humanity. This vision is backed with ground-breaking science. After two years of close collaboration with leading scientists around the world, the One Earth Climate Model was released at Davos in early 2019. This state-of-the-art modeling project shows how we can surpass the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, averting a climate catastrophe while at the same time preventing further degradation of our natural ecosystems. As part of an effort to forge stronger links between science, environmental campaigning and popular culture, Justin was instrumental in the release last spring of the Global Deal for Nature plan and petition calling for a new pact to safeguard the planet’s biodiversity, and the “Earth” song with 20 major musical artists - driving 100 million views on YouTube, over 12 billion earned media impressions and 1 billion social media impressions.
Prior to One Earth, Justin led the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation for 13 years, shaping the organization’s strategic direction and driving Leonardo's communications channels - successfully leveraging his global platform to influence decision-makers and the public on pressing environmental issues. During her tenure, Justin also successfully built out the foundation’s grant-making program and oversaw the awards of over $100 million in grants to more than 200 high-impact projects in 60 countries. Justin also helped create a series of innovative philanthropic funds including Oceans 5, Shark Conservation Fund, The Solutions Funds, Lion Recovery Fund, Elephant Crisis Fund, and Quick Response Fund for Nature that deliver vital new resources to organizations and communities working to implement critical solutions.
We are grateful to our Board of Directors for generously sharing their expertise in support of our work.
Spike Buckley is on the Board of Directors of Pharmajet, Inc., BioCare Systems Inc., and Cryptomill Technologies, Inc. In the non-profit realm he is on the Board of Directors of the Alameda Corridor Business Improvement District, the Colorado Veterinary Medical Foundation and Earth’s Call (Co-Founder). He is a fervent supporter of the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Conservation Colorado, the League of Conservation Voters and NextGen America.
He has been active as an owner/developer in the commercial real estate industry for 40 years. He began his career in the San Francisco Bay Area and has branched out across the US and into Canada, where he founded Carex Services, Inc., a senior citizen housing network, in the 80s in Montreal. At present he owns Grimley Residential, a portfolio of institutional grade apartment complexes primarily in the Southeast, and a retail portfolio along the Front Range in Colorado. He is a graduate of the University of Colorado (BA, Economics).
During an investigative reporting career that spanned 35 years, Roberta Baskin earned more than 75 journalism awards, including three duPont Columbia Awards, two George Foster Peabody Awards, and multiple Emmys. The results of her investigations have changed and improved government and corporate practices affecting health care, worker safety and consumer protections.
Five years ago, Roberta shifted away from uncovering wrongdoing to focus on global corporations and businesses demonstrating exemplary conduct. Working with the Weatherhead School of Business at Case Western Reserve University, Roberta created AIM2Flourish.com, a platform showcasing stories of innovation researched and written by business school students from more than 80 countries. These stories have succeeded in introducing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals to the next generation of global business leaders. Roberta was selected as a Top 100 Visionary Leaders by Real Leaders magazine.
At the heart of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals is climate action, the focus of Roberta’s current role on the Board of Directors for Earth’s Call.
Roberta’s other career highlights include serving as Chief Investigative Correspondent for
the CBS News magazine “48 Hours,” Executive Director of the Center for Public Integrity, Senior Washington Correspondent for “NOW with Bill Moyers,” and Senior Investigative Producer for ABC News “20/20.” Roberta also taught a graduate school course on investigative reporting at Georgetown University. Roberta received a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University and served on the Foundation’s Executive Committee. She also was named an Ethics Fellow at the Poynter Institute.
Brad Leibov is a strategic and proven leader with expertise in managing and accelerating philanthropic, nonprofit, and collaborative solutions to address our most pressing environmental challenges. With over 22 years of executive leadership experience, he has been involved with numerous nonprofits, social enterprises, and program initiatives as a chief executive officer, founder, co-founder, board member, or advisor. He was recently appointed CEO of EarthShare, a philanthropy working across industries and issues that has distributed over $300 million to support the nation’s largest network of environmental and conservation organizations to protect the health of the planet.
Brad previously served as President and CEO of the Liberty Prairie Foundation, where he guided the vision and strategic direction of a leading environmental philanthropy with pioneering programs in conservation, sustainable and regenerative agriculture, and environmental policy. He has used his position to successfully build and support a diverse network of partners across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to accelerate philanthropic investment in new and innovative solutions to environmental issues. In addition to serving as the Vice-Chair of the Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders collaborative, Brad serves on the Steering Committee of the Fresh Taste Funders Initiative, the Boards of the Liberty Prairie Foundation and The Carbon Underground, and is a member of the Environmental Grantmakers Association and Climate and Energy Funders Group. Brad’s belief in the power of collaboration and his approach to generating environmental impact inspired his work to help launch Funders for Regenerative Agriculture, where he serves as a founding Steering Committee member of the nation’s first funders initiative dedicated to accelerating the emergence of nature-based solutions to climate change.
Jacqueline has held executive positions in the aviation, design and chemical industries over the past thirty years. Most recently, she led the transformation of StarPort Aviation, as President, into a vision and values focused company, establishing sustainable profitability and successfully negotiating its’ acquisition. Prior to leading StarPort, she established Cambata Designs as a way to model her passion of for-profit companies fundamentally engaging in social issues – in this case to address the 1st and 4th UN Sustainable Development Goals: No Poverty and Quality Education. She serves on the Advisory Boards of the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit, The Academy for Systems Change, and Images and Voices of Hope. She was featured in Jim Liebig’s book, Merchants of Vision.
Jay Halfon is a practicing attorney and public policy strategist. His practice focuses on legal issues affecting tax-exempt organizations. He represents many leading foundations, advocacy groups and political organizations. He has a broad range of experience influencing public policy at the state and national levels. He currently advises and supports a variety of organizations working on climate campaigns including efforts to stop oil and gas extraction in California. Mr. Halfon is a founding board member of the international climate change organization 350.org and serves on the boards of several grant-making institutions including the Park Foundation with assets of $400,000,000.
Jim Trengrove is Founder and President of The Barnaby Woods Group, a media company specializing in strategic communications and digital production. His clients have included The Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the Study of the U.S. Senate, Consumer Federation of America, US Embassy in Georgia, and The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
For six years, Trengrove served as ICANN’s Senior Director of Communications, developing strategies for the launch of the new generic top-level domain program (new gTLDs) and for support of the IANA transition of US government oversight of critical internet functions and protocols to ICANN’s multi-stakeholder community.
Trengrove spent 21 years as Senior Producer for Politics at The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (PBS) where he directed the program’s daily and long-range political, congressional and election coverage. During his time at the Newshour, Trengrove received three Joan Barone Shorenstein Awards for Washington-based Reporting, the Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for Distinguished Reporting of Congress, and was nominated for a national Emmy for the two-hour PBS documentary, Debating Our Destiny: Forty Years of Presidential Debates.
Trengrove also produced the Emmy award-winning public affairs program, “Chicago Tonight” (WTTW/PBS). He began his journalism career in 1976 at New Jersey Public Television in Trenton before moving on to WLS-TV, Chicago and WJLA-TV, Washington DC as Producer and Executive Producer of News.
Currently, Trengrove serves on the boards of Habitat for Humanity for Prince William County, Virginia and Foolproof, an independent, online financial literacy curriculum. Trengrove received a Nieman Fellowship to Harvard University during 2001-02. He is a graduate of Boston College and married to Roberta Baskin, a national award-winning investigative reporter. They have two daughters, Chelsea and Vanessa, and live on Lake Jackson in Virginia where Trengrove serves as President of the Lake Jackson Citizens Association.
Founder, DreamMakers.org, author, DreamMakers Innovating for the Greater Good
Michele is a Transformation Catalyst and Strategic Advisor on leadership and organizational transformation. She is known for her work helping leaders to unleash the creative genius of their people to create the culture and conditions for people, organizations and the planet to flourish. She served in President Clinton’s administration where she worked for Vice
President Al Gore in the Reinventing Government initiative. Michele previously served on the executive leadership team of Herman Miller, a Fortune 500 global company, as Corporate Vice President For People. In this role she facilitated Herman Miller’s whole company transformation processes.
Michele began her career at the Michigan Department of Corrections where she served as the first of two female probation officers to supervise adult male felons in Detroit, Michigan. She also served as the Director of the Michigan Halfway House for Women, and later became Michigan’s first female deputy warden to lead programs for rehabilitation in a Michigan prison.
She is the author of DreamMakers: Innovating for the Greater Good. Michele currently serves on the Boards of Directors of Earth's Call and she serves on the advisory boards of the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent for World Benefit at Case Western Reserve University, the David Cooperrider Center for Appreciative Inquiry at the Stiller School of Business - Champlain College and Images and Voices of Hope.
