Nina Simons

Nina Simons (born January 10, 1957, in Manhattan, NY) is a co-founder & co-CEO of Bioneers, and an organizer of women's leadership retreats and trainings. Her book Nature, Culture & the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership received the 2018 Nautilus Gold Award in the "Women" category and Silver Award in the "Social Change & Social Justice: category.

Career Simons met her husband, Kenny Ausubel, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The film was referenced in Unconventional Cancer Treatments (1990), a "contract report" prepared by the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) for the United States Congress.

Simons later joined Ausubel and Gabriel Howearth in their fledgling seed company, Seeds of Change, founded in 1989. Simons eventually became President of Seeds of Change. She left Seeds of Change to become the strategic marketing director for Odwalla, a juice company.

Bioneers In 1990, Simons and Ausubel co-founded the Bioneers organization (under the parent organization the Collective Heritage Institute, Inc.) and started a national conference to highlight solutions to many of the world's environmental and social challenges. The idea for the National Bioneers Conference arose from a 1989 meeting with Josh Mailman, a leader in social investment and philanthropy. When Ausubel described various biomimetic innovators and another breakthrough environmental and social solutions, Mailman proposed a conference and offered to help fund it. In 2002 her first retreat, called Unreasonable Women for the Earth, brought 34 women leaders together to brainstorm how to initiate a broad progressive women's movement centered around the environment.

Cultivating Women's Leadership In 2006, in collaboration with Toby Herzlich and Akaya Windwood of the Rockwood Leadership Institute, Simons co-created a 6-day residential training called Cultivating Women's Leadership. Each gathering is chosen from women applicants who are committed to change-making, have influence in their communities, and are selected to optimize diversity in every way in each cohort (at least 30% and often 40-50% of each cohort are indigenous or women of color).

Awards 2018, Nautilus Gold Award in the "Women" category and Silver Award in the "Social Change & Social Justice: category for Nature, Culture & the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership for “pioneering work to promote nature-inspired innovations for restoring the Earth and our human community.” 2006, Green Cross Millennium Award for Community Environmental Leadership, with Kenny Ausubel, from Global Green USA 1996, Utne Reader “Visionary” with Kenny Ausubel