About Us

Suzanne is the director of Transition Earth, a project of Earth Island Institute that promotes human rights and nature’s rights in a world of unsustainable growth.

Previously Suzanne was Senior Writer and Program Director with the Institute for Population Studies in Berkeley, CA, where her work focused on the interconnectedness of population growth with women’s empowerment, human rights, consumption, alternative economies, and the environment.

Suzanne’s writing appears on the blog 6 Degrees of Population. She is the author of several reports, including Peoples' Rights, Planet's Rights: Holistic Approaches to a Sustainable Population and Prioritizing the PHE Approach: Linking Population, Health, and Environment for a Better World. As research director with the International Forum on Globalization, Suzanne was a contributing author to Paradigm Wars: Indigenous Peoples' Resistance to Economic Globalization.

She has a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from American University and a B.A. in Business Administration from Portland State University.

Suzanne is a member (and former chair) of the Sierra Club’s Trade, Human Rights and Environment Teams and also the Sierra Club's Global Population Team.

Karen Gaia Pitts has lived in California most of her life. Her professional career was in information technology and web development.

She started traveling the world in 1995, with a trip to China, where she saw that every piece of land, except in the mountains, was in use by the population. Karen has traveled to most of Asia, parts of Africa, and Central and South America. She found her travels were most enjoyable in rural areas and everywhere she went she studied sustainability, women’s empowerment, family planning, and girls education.

In 1997 she started a website called World Population Awareness.

In 2016 Karen’s partner went to Tanzania and visited a former student he had once sponsored, who lived in a remote Maasai village. There, a woman stood up in front the assembly of villagers, and asked for several things, including education and family planning. Upon hearing that, Karen got hooked into supporting the Maasai project and helping them meet their many challenges.

Joshua Mirondo is a 24-year-old freelance blogger digital marketer and photographer. He is a graduate of Uganda Christian University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in public administration and management.

He also volunteers with Reproductive Health Uganda (RHU), where he is part of the communications team; Joshua has been a community-based reproductive health trainer and peer educator with RHU since 2015.

Joshua has a passion of using digital media for advocacy and has worked on several projects that seek to empower women, girls and young people to know their sexual reproductive health and rights in a country full of patriachy and cultural norms that hinder access these services.