From the Ground Up A Call to Reimagine Our Place in Nature
43rd Annual Smith Nature Symposium Awards Dinner
Amy Morrison Heinrich, Honorary Chair &
Elizabeth Pruett, Chair
Honoring 2026 Environmental Leadership Award Recipient
KARENNA GORE
Author, Climate Activist, and Founder of the Center for Earth Ethics
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2026
5:30 PM – 9:00 PM
CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN
1000 Lake Cook Rd, Glencoe, IL
Join our movement for change! The Smith Nature Awards Dinner is Brushwood Center’s largest fundraising event of the year, and all funds raised from the evening directly benefit our programs for youth, families, and Veterans across our community.
Host Committee
Amy serves as Trustee of the Harold M. and Adeline S. Morrison Family Foundation (MFF), which is committed to equitable access to the outdoors, focusing on Lake County, Il and Western NC. Through the Nature Everywhere campaign MFF seeks to restore green and blue spaces for the reciprocal healing relationship between humans and the earth. She is also on the Lake County Community Foundation Board, helping to advance their mission of economic justice, community ownership and rapid community crisis response. Amy just retired from over forty years in the ordained Presbyterian(USA) ministry, leaving her most recent post at First Presbyterian, Libertyville. She has found inspiration and grounding for her earth care work through the dedicated scholarship of our esteemed Smith honoree, Karenna Gore. Amy feels called to inter spiritual work that bend lines into circles as we find the joyful impact of tending to our sacred planet in precarity. Amy is a part of her Alma Matre, Union Theological Seminary, NY’s New Dreams for America forum—a highly diverse group of luminaries embracing collective imagination for a more sustainable, equitable, just and compassionate world. She regards the Brushwood community as fellow pilgrims and partners in this critical work of dreaming our way forward.
Elizabeth serves as a Trustee of the Butler Family Foundation and is committed to education, health, art, nature, and spirituality. She has held leadership positions in various organizations and serves on boards within the Chicago area. Elizabeth is passionate about serving the underserved through education and helping others benefit from the beauty of nature, art and spirituality. She pursues the belief that health of humanity is inextricably linked to that of our Earth, and feels Brushwood Center is a key player in using nature to heal, educate and flourish in life.
in formation
Natalie Arriola
Kay Butler
Brandon Ewing
Russell and Joan Game
Janea and Eric Harris
Rob and Amy Heinrich
The Laksmi Project
Margot McMahon and Dan Burke
Adeline S. Morrison
Lois Morrison and Justin Daab
Shelby and Elizabeth Pruett
Ellen Rudnick and Paul Earle
Ruth and Mark Schlossberg
Angelica and William Sturm
Jessica and Chris Wollmuth
Sponsorship
Our Sponsors
Thank you to our 2026 Sponsors
in formation
PREMIER
Adeline S. Morrison
Shelby and Elizabeth Pruett
The Butler Family Foundation
COLLABORATOR
Kay Butler
Amy and Robert Heinrich
John Schneider and Jean Meilinger
AMBASSADOR
Margot McMahon and Dan Burke
Harold M. and Adeline S. Morrison Foundation
Lois Morrison and Justin Daab
Northwestern Medicine
Ellen Rudnick and Paul Earle
Adele Simmons
Angelica and William Sturm
Jessica and Chris Wollmuth
STAR+
Old National Bank
Lorra Rudman
STAR
BCU
Digital Pollen
Susan and Scott Garrett
Russell and Joan Game
Catherine Game and John Cawood
The Laksmi Fund
Ruth and Mark Schlossberg
YOUTH ENVIRONMENTAL LEADERSHIP AWARD SPONSORS
Crossroads Management
Rosalyn and Geoff Deigan
Angelica and William Sturm
Become a Sponsor
SPECIAL SPONSOR BENEFITS:
- Directly support programs in our community for youth, families, seniors, and Veterans.
- Name recognition opportunities on Brushwood website, social media, and materials.
- Brushwood Brunch with Karenna Gore at The Glen Rowan House at Lake Forest College.
- Celebrate at the in-person Awards Dinner honoring author, climate activist, and founder of the Center for Earth Ethics, Karenna Gore
- Join a community of supporters committed to a thriving and equitable world for people and nature.
For more information about sponsorship opportunities, please contact Mirja Spooner Haffner, Director of Development, at mspoonerhaffner@brushwoodcenter.org
Karenna Gore
Karenna Gore is the founder and executive director of the Center for Earth Ethics and teaching professor of practice of earth ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Karenna formed CEE in 2015 to address the moral and spiritual dimensions of the climate crisis. Working at the intersection of faith, ethics, and ecology, she guides the Center’s public programs, educational initiatives, and movement-building. She is an adjunct faculty member at the Columbia Climate School.
Karenna is the author of Lighting the Way: Nine Women Who Changed Modern America (2006), and has written for numerous publications, including Slate, El Pais (Spain) and the New York Times. She serves on the boards of the Association to Benefit Children and Riverkeeper, an organization that protects and restores the Hudson River and safeguards drinking water. She is also an expert in the United Nations’ Harmony with Nature Knowledge Network, an online platform of practitioners, academics, and researchers.
Center for Earth Ethics
The Center for Earth Ethics works to change the dominant value system from one based on short-term material gain—no matter the pollution, depletion and inequity that result—to one based on the long-term health of the whole community of life. They work through education, convening and advocacy to raise public consciousness as well as to shift policy and culture.
They connect individuals and groups through four areas of focus: sustainability and global affairs; environmental and climate justice; Indigenous wisdom, values and rights; and ecology, spirituality and faith. They use their unique convening capacity to tackle pressing issues, not only to speak truth to power but also to amplify the voices of those building a different kind of power, often along the margins.
The Angelica Sturm Luminary Award
Brushwood Center announces the creation of The Angelica Sturm Luminary Award, named in recognition of Gail Sturm’s leadership and transformative tenure on the Brushwood Board.
This inaugural year, The Angelica Sturm Luminary Award will be bestowed on Bill Kurtis and Donna LaPietra at the Smith Nature Symposium.
Bill and Donna have been integral supporters of nature and the arts across Chicagoland communities and beyond, serving as Advisors to Brushwood Center as well as generous and compassionate supporters of Brushwood’s work. While Bill is best known as a legendary journalist, broadcaster, and writer, and Donna as a creative producer and civic leader, both are passionate voices for the arts and the environment, working with partners throughout our communities. They are the founders of the Kurtis Conservation Foundation, and have worked since 1990 to restore native ecosystems at their home, Mettawa Manor, in Libertyville, Illinois.
Bill and Donna have been steadfast champions of Brushwood Center’s mission. We are delighted to honor them as the first recipients of The Angelica Sturm Luminary Award.
Image: Bill Kurtis and Donna LaPietra
The Youth Environmental Leadership Awards
Each year, Brushwood honors exemplary youth environmental leaders, nominated by our community partners. These scholarship awards recognize their contributions to their communities and dedication to serving others.
Image: 2025 Youth Environmental Leadership Award honorees Victor Hinojosa and Ja’Harmony Johnson with Brushwood Center Executive Director Catherine Game and 2025 Environmental Leadership Award honoree Robin Wall Kimmerer.
History of the Smith Nature Symposium
On May 6, 1984, more than 350 people gathered for the first Smith Nature Symposium featuring Roger Tory Peterson. Organized under the leadership of Barbi Donnelley, Symposium Co-Chair, this jam-packed convening of nature-lovers became the first of four decades of annual Symposia memorializing the significant civic legacy of Hermon Dunlap and Ellen Thorne Smith, who donated their land and cabin to help form Ryerson Woods.
Hermon, or Dutch, was chair and CEO of Marsh & McLennan, and led The Chicago Community Trust, Newberry Library, and many other Chicago Institutions. Ellen was a philanthropic leader and champion of nature with organizations such as The Field Museum and Chicago Zoological Society.
For more than forty years, the Smith Nature Symposium has brought people together to celebrate nature and imagine healthy and thriving human and ecological communities.
