2022 Convention Speakers – Florida Communication Association

Plenary Speaker

Isaret Jeffers

Panelist, Founder -Colectivo ÀRBOL

Isaret Jeffers founded Colectivo ÁRBOL—a nonprofit organization to help provide food, clothes, and other services for field workers throughout Florida—in 2017. Jeffers is daughter of a field-worker. Her mother worked on Texas farms when she was 8. Her grandmother was the first to serve the field-worker community, cooking and feeding them for fee. Jeffers retired from her job as a construction worker to serve her community. Colectivo ÁRBOL recently partnered with the Consulate of Mexico in Orlando to help the Mexican immigrant community by providing field-workers with clothes, face masks, milk, water, and food while helping them navigate a successful path to US citizenship.

Mrs. Jeffers, Mexican Community Leader born in Leon Guanajuato Mexico in 1973, is a defender of rights for the Farmworkers community, for women victims of domestic violence, and for education of vulnerable children.

Keynote Speaker

Dr. Bart Welling

University of North Florida

Bart Welling received his B.A. in English and Spanish from the University of California, Davis, and his Ph.D. in American literature from the University of Virginia. Since 2003 he has taught at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. His teaching and research interests constellate around environmental writing, ecocriticism (Earth-oriented literary studies), the energy humanities, and animal studies. He is currently writing a book called Resisting Energy: The Long Struggle Against Irresponsible Power, which situates modern debates over fossil fuels and renewable energy systems in the context of authors' and activists' efforts to abolish racial slavery, stop the theft and abuse of Native lands--and the killing and exploitation of Native people--by colonists, and achieve a measure of justice for the workers who have been framed since the Industrial Revolution as disposable living machines. The book argues that we will need to rethink energy, including supposedly "clean" energy, from top to bottom if we want to build a livable future for human and nonhuman Earthlings. Welling is a committed bicycle commuter (yes, even during the summer), a mediocre but improving amateur classical guitarist, and the proud father of five wonderful kids, four of whom are currently in college. He is not a trained futurist, but he thinks incessantly about what the future holds for his children and the generations that come after them, and he has gained a lot of experience communicating about possible futures with his students.