Karla Chambers co-founded Stahlbush Island Farms in Corvallis with her husband Bill in 1985. Today it is a nationally distributed, vertically integrated farming and food processing company that uses sustainable farming practices to produce more than 100 products for retail, industrial, food service, and home use throughout the United States. It has received both local and national recognition for the last four decades for its commitment to sustainability, safety, and agricultural innovation. While founders of Stahlbush, the Chambers are fourth-generation family businesspeople, with more than 135 years in Oregon agriculture.

Ms. Chambers was appointed as the first woman Chair of the Oregon State Board of Agriculture in 1996. She was recognized by Food & Wine Magazine as one of the top 25 Most Innovative Women in Food & Drink in 2014. In 2018, she was named a Woman of Influence by the Portland Business Journal. Karla served for 20 years on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Portland and San Francisco, and one of her paintings, “Nest Egg,” hung in Janet Yellen’s office in Washington D.C. She has also served as Chair of the Board of the Ford Family Foundation, Oregon’s largest family foundation, and recently served on Oregon’s Board of Forestry and the Governor’s Wildfire Council.

Ms. Chambers holds a B.S. in Agriculture and Resource Economics and a Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies in Agriculture and Resource Economics, Business Administration, and Political Science from Oregon State University. Today she serves on OSU’s Board of Trustees.

Phil Keisling’s career over four decades has included stints in the worlds of journalism, elective politics, the private sector, and academia. In 2019, he retired from his most recent job, as director of the Center for Public Service in the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University. He has devoted much of his time since to his volunteer work, including as founding chair and now current board member of the National Vote at Home Institute.

Keisling’s journalism career included four years as an investigative reporter for Willamette Week, followed by two years as an editor for the Washington Monthly magazine in Washington D.C from 1982 to 1984. Keisling then returned to Oregon, where he worked as a legislative staff assistant to Oregon’s Speaker of the House of Representatives, Vera Katz, prior to being elected a State Representative himself in 1988.

In 1991, Keisling was appointed Oregon Secretary of State by Governor Barbara Roberts. He was then elected and re-elected to this statewide position, whose duties included oversight of the state election system. During his tenure, he helped lead the successful effort to make Oregon the nation’s first state to conduct all elections by automatically mailing ballots to all active registered voters.

After leaving elected politics, Keisling worked as an Executive Vice President with CorSource Technology Group, an Oregon-based software services company, and then worked at PSU from 2010 through 2019.

Keisling graduated from Yale in 1977 with a Bachelors degree in American Studies.

Warren is president of Calbag Metals, a third generation nonferrous metal recycler based in Portland, Oregon. Started 115 years ago by Warren's grandfather, Calbag has facilities in Oregon, Washington, Ohio, Alabama, and North Carolina. Warren is co-founder of Shredding Systems Inc and Transformer Technologies.

Besides leading Calbag, Warren has served as a trade advisor to the Department of Commerce, a member of the Portland Planning Commission, and served for a decade on the Oregon Investment Council, the asset manager for the state's $98 billion public employees pension fund. 

Warren and his wife Sheryl have two kids that live and work in Manhattan.

John co-founded Portland-based Endeavour Capital in 1991. He has worked with companies in the Consumer, Industrials, and Technology & Business Services industries. John currently sits on the boards of Berkeley Research Group, Impact Fulfillment Services, Willamette Valley Company, and Portland Bolt & Manufacturing Company.

Before co-founding Endeavour, John was one of five General Partners at GTCR, one of the oldest and largest private equity firms in the nation. John also worked as a manager in the public sector becoming Undersecretary of Health and Human Services in Massachusetts. He also spent two years in manufacturing with Caterpillar Tractor in Aurora, Illinois.

John received an A.B. from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from Stanford Graduate School of Business. In addition to his roles on Endeavour boards, John currently serves on the non-profit board Sustainable Northwest. His previous board roles included The Nature Conservancy, The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Classic Wines Auction, and the Oregon State Board of Higher Education. John is married with four children and lives with his wife in Fort Klamath, Oregon, where they have a cattle ranch.

Brent Walth joined the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication (SOJC) in 2015 after more than 30 years as an editor, author, and investigative reporter. A native of Oregon, Brent has worked as a staff writer and managing editor for Willamette Week; Oregon State Capitol correspondent for the Eugene Register-Guard; and Washington, DC correspondent and senior investigative reporter for The Oregonian. Brent also was a 2006 Nieman Foundation fellow at Harvard University.

Brent is co-founder and co-director of the award-winning Catalyst Journalism Project, teaching students to bring together investigative and solutions-focused journalism to produce stories with community impact.  Brent also serves as co-director of the Charles Snowden Program for Excellence in Journalism, selecting and placing Oregon university students in journalism internships across the state.

Brent is a five-time winner of the Bruce Baer Award, Oregon’s top reporting prize, and a recipient of the Gerald Loeb Award, the nation’s top honor for business and financial reporting. At The Oregonian, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting in 2000, and in 2001 he shared the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for an investigation into abuses by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. He is the author of Fire at Eden’s Gate: Tom McCall and the Oregon Story, a portrait of the state’s most influential governor — a book President Bill Clinton called “a remarkable biography.” In 2008, Brent founded the Scholarship For Civic and Watchdog Journalism, awarded to SOJC students who demonstrate a commitment to in-depth reporting. The UO School of Journalism and Communication inducted Brent into its Hall of Achievement in 2014.

Sheryl WuDunn, the first Asian-American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize, runs an advisory business and is a best-selling author. She co-founded FullSky Partners, which advises double-bottom line ventures mostly in healthcare, med-tech and technology. Some of those ventures are on the forefront of developments in addressing cancer. She also helps run Kristof Farms, a young vineyard and cider apple orchard in Oregon.

Along with her husband, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof, she has written a series of best-selling books together as well as appeared in television documentaries of those books. Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope, explores the great challenges and opportunities for America’s working class. Another bestseller, Half the Sky, called “electrifying” by The Washington Post, draws a compelling picture of the trials and triumphs of women struggling worldwide for opportunity. A Path Appears explores the importance of early childhood education, outcomes-based research and how individuals can make a difference.

Previously, WuDunn was a vice president in the investment management division at Goldman, Sachs & Co. She also is one of a small handful of people who have worked at The New York Times both as an executive – in circulation and strategic planning -- and journalist.

She is on Harvard’s Board of Overseers, as well the board of BayFirst Financial Corp, The Oregon Public Broadcasting, and the Malcolm Wiener Center of Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. She is also a former member of the Board of Trustees at Princeton and Cornell University.

Zusman has been editor at Willamette Week for more than 40 years and is its co-owner. A graduate of Hobart College, he also earned a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Oregon. He has lectured at UO and at the Medill School of Journalism, and served many years as president of the University of Oregon’s Journalism Advancement Council.

Zusman is former president of two national journalism organizations and is also winner of the Bruce Baer Award and the national Gerald Loeb Award for Business Journalism. In 2013, Zusman was inducted into the University of Oregon School of Communications and Journalism’s Hall of Achievement.