The Global Good Conference will take place on Friday, September 26, from 9 am to 1:30 pm in the Plemmons Student Union on the campus of Appalachian State University.
This year's conference will feature speakers from a variety of industries and roles in the sustainability space. Breakout sessions will cover a diverse range of topics in sustainable business, including carbon savings accounts, rainforest sustainability projects, sustainable fashion, and more. Career-focused sessions for students will connect attendees with sustainability leaders from various industries.
The Global Good Luncheon will provide an opportunity for networking and for recognizing outstanding contributions to sustainability and global engagement in the college.
Speakers
Check back for more details closer to the event. More speakers are coming soon!
Keynote Speaker
President
Reinsurance Association of America
Frank Nutter is president of the Reinsurance Association of America (RAA). Nutter currently serves on the Advisory Board of the OECD’s International Network for the Financial Management of Large-Scale Disasters, the RAND Center on Catastrophic Risk Management and Compensation, and the University of Cincinnati’s Carl H. Lindner III Center for Insurance and Risk Management Advisory Board. Nutter serves on the Board of the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, the largest private funder of research grants to find a cure for childhood cancer. He also serves as chair of EdututorVA, which links college education majors for tutoring with underserved public school students.
He has recently served on the Advisory Board of the Center for Health and the Global Environment, an adjunct to the Harvard University School of Public Health, Council of the American Meteorological Society, and the Board of the University Center for Atmospheric Research, a consortium of universities managing the National Center for Atmospheric Research, sponsored by the National Science Foundation. He has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and the Worker’s Compensation Research Institute, the Board of Overseers of the Institute for Civil Justice, a subsidiary of the Rand Corporation and on the Board of the Bermuda Institute for Ocean Sciences.
Nutter holds a Juris Doctorate from the Georgetown University Law Center and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Cincinnati. The University of Cincinnati awarded Nutter the 2020 Kautz Alumni Masters Award. Nutter was an officer in the U.S. Navy and is a Vietnam veteran. He competed in the 2019, 2022, 2023, and 2025 Senior Olympics in cycling.
Founder & CEO
LIVSN Designs
Andrew Gibbs-Dabney is the founder and CEO of LIVSN Designs. LIVSN creates outdoor apparel products and systems that maximize function and minimize harm to people and planet.
Andrew is dedicated to hedonistic sustainability and believes business success and social progress go hand in hand. He has built LIVSN on these ideals from day one.
He is from Arkansas, where he grew up exploring the bluffs and hollows of the Ozark Mountains. As an outdoor native, Andrew loves being in nature and mainly spends his time mountain biking, paddling, and camping.
Director of Product and Sustainability
LIVSN Designs
Abby Hollis is a designer and artist working to transform the relationship people have with textiles through human-centered design, fiber art, and craft community-building. Hollis works cross-disciplinarily on regional and global scales to shift production systems and consumer culture. Hollis is Director of Product and Sustainability at LIVSN Designs, an outdoor apparel brand creating products and systems that maximize function and minimize harm to people and planet.
Co-founder and CEO
Scope Zero
Lizzy Kolar is Co-founder and CEO of Scope Zero, creators of the Carbon Savings Account® (CSA). Think health savings account (HSA), but for home technology and personal transportation upgrades that reduce employee utility bills and corporate scope 3 emissions. Kolar leads Scope Zero’s mission to reduce personal utility bills and fuel expenses by $300 billion per year, removing the carbon emissions equivalent of 125 million cars from the road. Kolar holds a master’s degree in sustainable design engineering from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from West Virginia University.
Former Director of Institutional Development and Innovation
Sustainable Amazon Foundation
Victor Salviati is the former director of institutional development and innovation with the Sustainable Amazon Foundation (SAF). He is a biologist with a Master’s in Sustainable Development and has been working with conservation and financing conservation in the Amazon since 2009. Among his duties at SAF are fundraising, forest monitoring, innovative arrangements for conservation, REDD+, R&D, and public policies. As key ongoing projects, Victor is leading the first-of-its-kind FSC certification for protected areas’ management, designing FAS’ strategy for climate adaptation in isolated riverine communities in the Amazon, and supporting the regulation of the Environmental Services Law in the State of Amazonas.
Sustainability Director
Microsoft
Charlie Sellars is a Director of Sustainability at Microsoft, which pledged to become Carbon Negative, Water Positive, Zero Waste, and Protect Ecosystems by 2030. As one of the youngest directors at the company, he has overseen sustainability for both the Windows & Devices and Cloud Operations portions of Microsoft, helping launch several sustainability-forward products ranging from new Windows PCs with repairable and recycled components to the Ocean Plastic Mouse.
Recognized by IM100 as one of 2024’s top 100 most impactful individuals in the digital infrastructure industry, Charlie also serves as a governing body member of the iMasons Climate Accord, an industry coalition united to decarbonize the digital infrastructure that underpins the next generation of cloud and AI services.
Charlie has previously served as board member and CTO of an impact-focused non-profit, The $100 Solution, which believes that “solutions to big problems start with small steps.” He initially joined this non-profit while studying for his Bachelor of Arts degree in Physics from Williams College, a small liberal arts school nestled in the Berkshire mountains which helped to grow his love for nature.
Charlie is the author of Author of "What We Can Do: A Climate Optimist's Guide to Sustainable Living" Taking a holistic, data-driven view across our Personal, Professional, and Political lives, What We Can Do aims to instill readers with a pragmatic optimism in the fight against climate change. Using a lens of organizational design and modern environmental frameworks, his best-selling book also underscores "how sustainability gets done" by highlighting how every job can be a sustainability job.
Raised outside Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Charlie is currently based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Director of Planning and Business Development
Destination by Design
Eric is the director of planning and business development at Destination by Design, a multi-disciplinary place-making firm based in Boone, North Carolina. He has worked in planning and economic development for more than twenty years and during his career has assisted more than 150 local government jurisdictions in the fields of land use planning, place-based economic development, open space and greenway planning, downtown revitalization, and place-branding.
Director of Sector Development
Mountain BizWorks
Noah serves as Director of Sector Development at Mountain Bizworks, a Community Development Financial institution working to build a vibrant and inclusive entrepreneurial community in Western North Carolina by helping small businesses start, grow, and thrive. In his role there, he leads Mountain BizWorks’ initiatives to expand entrepreneurship and economic opportunity through industry cluster and related place-based development strategies, with a special focus on the Food/Farm, Outdoor Industry, and Craft sectors.
Noah specializes in helping communities and organizations work together to build shared infrastructure and systems, and achieve economic development goals larger than any one organization could tackle alone. As part of this work on collective impact, he has managed numerous infrastructure development projects and programs, including feasibility studies, pilot projects, and both physical and digital product development processes.
He has also planned and facilitated numerous high-level planning retreats and think tanks on behalf of organizations such as the Appalachian Regional Commission, Appalachia Funders Network, NC Biotechnology Center, Sustainable Food Lab, and the Central Appalachian Network.
He has deep knowledge and networks in the outdoor recreation, food/beverage, and craft sectors. He has expanded and supported these industries in Western North Carolina both during his time at AdvantageWest and Mountain BizWorks and through contract work for clients such as the NC Biotechnology Center, Rural Support Partners, the Appalachia Funders Network, the Outdoor Gear Builders of WNC, and the Just Transition Fund.
Executive Director
Camp Grier
Jason has been involved in the outdoor industry professionally for almost 40 years and recreationally his entire life. In 1987, when Jason was 12, his father opened a small outdoor store called Appalachian Outfitters in Greensboro, NC which specialized in backpacking, climbing, and paddling equipment. Mentors were easy to find in this outdoor community and it wasn’t long before Jason found himself on rocks, rivers, and bigger mountains around the world. Jason has a Master’s degree in education and has been a fourth grade teacher, climbing guide, wilderness instructor, and camp director. Since joining Camp Grier in 2013 he has helped lead the organization into an era of expansion and growth by partnering with the USFS and other community based organizations to grow the outdoor economy in Old Fort. These efforts have led to $8M invested in public outdoor recreation infrastructure in Old Fort which is catalyzing more than $75M of nonprofit and impact investments in tourism, workforce development, commercial retail, and workforce housing projects.