SDF

Visionaries : Danny Seo & Boyan Slat

Embracing Cultural Shifts for Good

In 1989, Korean American environmentalist Danny Seo started an environmental group at the age of 12 that soon grew to the largest teenage green nonprofit in the USA. Today, at 37, Danny is the CEO and founder of Danny Seo Media Ventures, a for-profit company that inspires millions of people how to marry sustainability with style into their everyday lives. As the Editor in Chief of his own namesake magazine Naturally, Danny Seo, Danny will talk about the importance of self-transformation in building a mission-based company. Just like trends, societies have cultural shifts that must be identified, embraced and used to evolve your own work and messaging. It’s the only way you can achieve the greater good and reach the largest audience possible, which in turn leads to incredible transformations in efforts to protect our natural biodiversity. Danny will guide us through his own remarkable journey from child activist to lobbyist to author to TV personality to Editor in Chief and how you, too, can use your passion to influence and inspire others.

The Largest Cleanup in History

Dutch inventor Boyan Slat made waves in 2013 when his concept to rid the oceans of plastic by making use of the natural currents went viral on the internet. One year later, having worked with a team of 100 scientists and engineers, he showed that a single of his systems, deployed for 10 years, can clean up almost half the infamous ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’, an area where a vast amount of plastic concentrates. He then went on to raise 2.2 million dollars through crowdfunding, and received the United Nations’ highest environmental award by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2014. At SDF 2015 Boyan will share his progress and how his team is preparing for the largest cleanup in history.

*To be followed by Q&A on the Ocean Cleanup