Canary Live Chicago

Canary Media is excited to bring our live event series to Chicago! We invite you to join us on Thursday, March 27, 2025, 2:00–7:00 p.m. at mHUB.

Our journalists and panelists will have lively conversations on stage about clean energy and will explore interconnections with community resiliency, workforce and economic development, and industrial decarbonization.

There will also be ample time for networking with stakeholders from across Chicagoland's climate and energy community.

Speaker bios

U.S. Rep. Sean Casten represents Illinois’ 6th congressional district, located in western and southwestern Chicagoland. Rep. Casten serves on the House Financial Services Committee and the Science, Space, and Technology Committee. He also serves as vice chair of the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition and is a co-chair of the Sustainable Investment Caucus.

Naomi Davis is dedicated to self-sustaining Black communities everywhere. Her strategy begins with her aim to reinvent her childhood “sustainable square-mile” here in the Age of Climate Crisis. She is the founder and president of Blacks In Green (BIG™), an urban theorist, attorney, activist, and proud granddaughter of Mississippi sharecroppers. Her heritage forms the foundation for BIG's course in Grannynomics™, The 8 Principles Green-Village-Building™, and The Sustainable Square Mile™, which Naomi authored and teaches nationally in community lectures and workshops and at universities. Naomi serves as a bridge and catalyst among communities and their stakeholders in the design and development of green, self-sustaining, mixed-income, walkable villages within Black neighborhoods — so that every household can ultimately walk to work, walk to shop, walk to learn, walk to play — and neighbor dollars can circulate locally to help limit greenhouse gases associated with transportation and manufacturing pollution. She conveys the risks of global warming, the health/wealth opportunities of the new green economy, the power of neighbors to lead in their city’s enviro-economic policy and practice, and the primacy of land ownership.

A.J. Patton is an accomplished finance, sales, and capital-markets expert with more than 15 years experience in investment banking, endowment management, and real-estate analysis and development. He founded 548 Capital, LLC and 548 Development, LLC to combine his expertise with a personal passion for helping transform communities and their impact on the planet, developing solutions for the housing, environmental, and economic issues facing inner cities.

David Roberts, founder of the Volts newsletter and podcast, is a long-time writer and commentator on clean energy and politics. Previously, he covered climate change and clean energy for five years at Vox and 10 years at Grist. He lives in Seattle with his family, three dogs, and a cat.

Angela Tovar is the City of Chicago’s chief sustainability officer and commissioner of the Department of Environment. In her dual role, Angela is committed to centering the City’s climate and sustainability agenda on equity and mitigating environmental harm in Chicago’s most overburdened and underserved communities. Under Angela’s leadership, the City of Chicago released the 2022 Climate Action Plan, an equitable decarbonization strategy for buildings and transportation, allocated $188 million for climate and environmental-justice priorities as part of the Chicago Recovery Plan, and successfully restored the Department of Environment in 2024. With more than 15 years of experience in the non-profit and public sector, Angela traces her passion for social and environmental justice to her experience growing up on the industrial waterfront of Lake Michigan on Chicago’s Southeast side.

Host or Publisher Canary Media