Nina Simons is a social entrepreneur and co-chief executive officer and cofounder of Bioneers, a national nonprofit that helps highlight, gather, and disseminate solutions to the most pressing environmental and social challenges. Simons’ life and work are informed by her passion for the natural world, women’s leadership, systems thinking, and the arts’ capacity to shape culture and consciousness.
Previously, Simons served as president of Seeds of Change and as director of strategic marketing for Odwalla. In each case, she was instrumental in the company’s achieving rapid national prominence.
Since beginning Bioneers in 1990, she and her partner and husband, Kenny Ausubel, have collaborated to grow the organization and its influence, which now reaches millions through its annual conferences, satellite conference partners, award-winning radio series, broadcast and print media, interactive website, and book series.
Passionate about women’s leadership, Simons has developed retreats such as “Cultivating Women’s Leadership,” a five-day intensive for diverse women with the passion and capacity to effect change in their communities. In 2002, she produced a retreat for diverse women leaders called “UnReasonable Women for the Earth,” which was designed to envision a broad progressive women’s movement with environmental restoration at its heart. The gathering served as an incubator, resulting in the formation of CodePink: Women for Peace.
Simons speaks and teaches nationally about the environment and the call to engaged action; leading from the ‘feminine’ and redefining leadership; women’s leadership; and businesses and organizations as living systems. She is currently editing an anthology on women’s leadership.
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