Tyrone B. Hayes was born and raised in Columbia, South Carolina where he developed his love for biology. He received his Bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1989 and his PhD from the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1993.
After completing his PhD, he began post-doctoral training at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health and the Cancer Research Laboratories at UC Berkeley (funded by the National Science Foundation), but this training was truncated when he was hired as an Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley in 1994. He was promoted to Associate professor with tenure in 2000 and to full Professor in 2003.
Hayes' research focuses on developmental endocrinology with an emphasis on evolution and environmental regulation of growth and development. For the last twenty years, the role of endocrine disrupting contaminants, particularly pesticides, has been a major focus. Hayes is interested in the impact of chemical contaminants on environmental health and public health, with a specific interest in the role of pesticides in global amphibian declines and environmental justice concerns associated with targeted exposure of racial and ethnic minorities to endocrine disruptors and the role that exposure plays in health care disparities.
Aimée Christensen is CEO of Christensen Global where she advises clients ranging from climate innovators to global businesses, from multilateral institutions to investors, including Aleph Farms, Duke Energy, Ford Motor Company, Microsoft, Sustainable Energy for All, and Virgin Group.
Over her 30-year career, she has worked as a policymaker at the White House and U.S. Department of Energy, as a carbon, climate, and clean energy lawyer at the World Bank and Baker & McKenzie, and as Climate Maven at Google. She negotiated the first climate change agreements (U.S.-Costa Rica 1994, et al.), she successfully advocated for the adoption of the first climate investment responsibility policy which was adopted by the Stanford University Board of Trustees in 1999, and guided Google's 2007 commitment to carbon neutrality and lobbied on their behalf for the California Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32). She served as Senior Adviser to the United Nations Secretary General's High-level Group on Sustainable Energy For All (2012) and founded and led the Sun Valley Institute for Resilience (2015-2020) and Sun Valley Forum (2015-present). She is an Aspen Institute Catto Fellow (2010), a Hillary Institute Leadership Laureate (2011), and an Idaho Business Review Woman of the Year (2020). She has a JD from Stanford Law School and a BA from Smith College.