Join Sonica Sarna for her talk Crafts Meet Sustainability: Impact Reporting for Indigenous Artisan Communities. She leads Sonica Sarna Design and Projecthrive in India, an award-winning ethical design & production company that engages vulnerable artisan communities, regenerative farm-to-closet and organic textiles, women's empowerment programs & in-house Fair Trade-certified factory production to create high-fashion products in partnership with leading brands worldwide.

The answers to climate change, environmental degradation, and socio-economic inequity already exist within indigenous artisan communities. For centuries, these communities have worked in harmony with nature, farming with the land, dyeing with plants and minerals, weaving with zero waste, and building regenerative systems where nothing is discarded. Yet their voices are often absent from global sustainability conversations, even as machine-driven supply chains are celebrated as innovative. Today, in the midst of a climate emergency, indigenous wisdom is not just relevant, it is urgent. Sonica's work focuses on helping artisan communities measure and communicate this impact through scientific and social metrics, so that indigenous knowledge is recognized, respected, and advanced.

Rodman Primack and Rudy Weissenberg are the co-founders of AD100 design firm AGO Interiors and the Mexico City–based collectible design gallery and incubator AGO Projects. They'll be sharing insights from Love How You Live: Adventures in Interior Design, their first book dedicated to AGO Interiors’ work and the makers they champion. Their practice centers on storytelling, craftsmanship, and connection - guiding clients to invest in meaningful objects while supporting local creative communities.

Primack previously served as executive and creative director of Design Miami and held senior roles at Christie’s and Phillips, working for figures such as Larry Gagosian and Peter Marino while building his own design and textile practice. Weissenberg, who grew up in Guatemala City, worked in Spanish-language media in the United States, producing telenovelas for Univision, Telemundo, and Sony before pivoting to design; he holds master’s degrees from Harvard Graduate School of Design and Columbia Business School and serves as co-chair of the Guggenheim’s Latin American Circle of Friends and on Harvard GSD’s Dean’s Leadership Council.

What actually protects an artist's freedom to create? Drawing on experience leading the development of the first continent-wide Model Law on Artistic Freedom in Africa, this talk explores the challenges and opportunities in building a new architecture of artistic freedom, from laws to markets.

Sam Brakarsh is a cultural strategist, policy advocate, and theatre maker from Zimbabwe. He serves as the Africa Regional Representative for Artists at Risk Connection / PEN America and leads the artistic freedom model law expert group, where he has co-authored the landmark African Union Resolution on the Promotion and Protection of Artistic Freedom. Sam chairs the Pan-African Summit on Artistic Freedom (Zanzibar, 2025 & Ethiopia, 2026), and cofounded the Chikukwa Research Trust and Culture Centre in Zimbabwe. His cultural advocacy includes developing a residency network for artists-at-risk with Res Artis International, coordinating the AMANI: Creative Defense Network, advising the NYC Perelman Arts Centre’s Democracy Cycle Awards, serving on the Social Prescribing Cultural Design Team for the New York Federal Reserve, and sitting on the board of Savanna Arts Trust. As a Theatre of the Oppressed practitioner, he has led programs across Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America using participatory theatre to influence social networks, law, and policy.