Keynote Speakers

Hannes Zacharias 

Hannes Zacharias currently serves as the “Robert A. Kipp, Professor of Practice in Public Administration” at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, KS. following over 35 years of experience in City and County Government in jurisdictions both small and large. 

Hannes has over 50 years of experience in paddling rivers throughout the Midwest, including the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, 1,000 miles on the Missouri River, the entire length of the Kansas and Buffalo Rivers, and down the Arkansas River...twice.

Upon leaving Johnson County Government in January of 2018, Hannes embarked on his second kayak trip on the Arkansas River, this time following water 2060 miles from the headwaters in Colorado to the Gulf of Mexico, retracing (in large part) a journey he did in 1976, some 42 years earlier.  Few people have navigated the Arkansas River by kayak once, yet alone twice. 

The Arkansas River pierces the heart of America, stretching 1,469 miles from the Tennessee Pass in Colorado to the Mississippi River at the eastern edge of Arkansas. The nation's sixth-longest river (45th longest in the world) is both the economic engine and burden to millions of people and scores of cities bordering its banks. From raging rapids to diversion dams for irrigation ditches, to dry streambeds, and finally barge traffic, Hannes examines the impact this wild, elusive and embattled river has had on cities, commerce, and the environment starting with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 through to the present day. 

Jonathan Lundgren

Dr. Lundgren is an agroecologist, Executive Director of Ecdysis Foundation, and CEO for Blue Dasher Farm. Lundgren’s research and education programs are helping applied science evolve in ways that foster the evolution of a regenerative food system. One of his priorities is to re-envision how science is conducted to help fuel a revolution in regenerative agriculture. He regularly interacts with the public and farmers around the world regarding ecologically intensive farming and how diversity fuels the resilience and productivity of an agroecosystem and rural communities.