Our Staff

Planet Forward engages young people to share the stories of innovators and solutions to the biggest challenges facing our planet. Through media, teaching and convening we empower new voices and elevate compelling ideas. This is the team that makes it happen on a daily basis.

Frank Sesno

Founder and Chief Executive, Planet Forward

Frank Sesno loves stories. He's been telling them all his life. In high school, through his student newspaper. In college, on the radio. In his 21 years with CNN, through pictures, interviews, and documentaries. As CNN White House...

Kim Ossi

Associate Director, Planet Forward

Kim is the associate director and former senior managing editor for Planet Forward. She joined the team as temporary help for the 2015 Summit and quickly decided she just wasn’t going to leave because she fell in love with the team and the...

Lisa Palmer

Education Lead, Planet Forward

Lisa Palmer is the National Geographic Professor of Science Communication at George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs. At Planet Forward, she leads education and outreach programs with the goal of improving scientific...

Imani Cheers

Director of Academic Adventures, Planet Forward

Dr. Imani M. Cheers is an award-winning digital storyteller with a passion for moving the planet forward. Dr. Cheers is originally from Chicago but grew up in post-apartheid South Africa. That's where her love for the environment...

Victoria Middleton

Digital Content Editor, Planet Forward

Victoria is a writer, editor, and multimedia producer who serves as Planet Forward's Digital Content Producer and Assistant Editor.

Victoria grew up in rural, southern Delaware, caught in between the Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake Bay....

Latest

Announcing the 2021 Planet Forward-Comcast NBCUniversal Sustainable Storytelling Fellows

Headshots of the 2021-22 Planet Forward Comcast NBCUnivesal Storytelling Fellows

Meet our Fellows (clockwise, from top left): McKenzie Allen-Charmley, Jelina Liu, Erich Eberhard, and Jennifer Cuyuch.

Frank Sesno

Founder and Chief Executive, Planet Forward

The four Fellows will create mini-documentaries on the frontlines of sustainability to be screened to an audience of academics, professionals, and students in the fields of science and communication at the 2022 Planet Forward Summit.

Indigenous academics gather over restoration for ecosystems and from injustice

A tree on the edge of a forested bluff which looks over a green valley below.

The view from a bluff in the Ponca Wilderness in Compton, Arkansas. These lands, like much of what is now the state of Arkansas, are native to Indigenous peoples including the Osage, Sioux, Quapaw, and Caddo. (Image courtesy of Thomas Shahan/Flickr https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/).

Victoria Middleton

Digital Content Editor, Planet Forward

Indigenous professor Dr. Bethany Henry Rosenbaum asked a powerful question: How do we bridge the Indigenous understanding that removal of Native people is still impactful today with the Western understanding that it’s in the past?

Peril & Promise: Al Roker on the urgency of the climate crisis

Graphic showing Peril & Promise, Planet Forward, Al Roker of NBC's Today Show and SUNY-ESF student Calvin Bordas

Frank Sesno

Founder and Chief Executive, Planet Forward

The Today Show’s Al Roker is not afraid to call climate change for what it is — an urgent crisis. Hear more in our latest episode of Planet Forward, seen on PBS's Peril and Promise and produced in association with ASU's Global Futures Laboratory.

Introducing our 2021 FAO Summer Storytelling Fellows

Staff fill boxes with food at Pittsburgh area food bank

As the need for food continued to grow during the pandemic, the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank called on the Pennsylvania Army National Guard and opened an additional, temporary food box packing site. Food access, food security, nutrition, and environmental justice challenges are among the topics our fellows will explore in their stories this summer. (Melissa Murray/Creative Commons)

Frank Sesno

Founder and Chief Executive, Planet Forward

Four students will produce stories at the nexus of food security, agriculture, and nutrition, and work under the guidance of GW’s National Geographic Professor of Science Communication, Lisa Palmer.