Regine is the executive Sous Chef at NeueHouse Madison Square. She was born on a small farm in Switzerland. Creatively, Regine was heavily influenced by her vegetable-growing mother who grew food to sustain her family before “sustainability” was a buzzword. She stopped eating meat in 1995 and that opened her tastebuds to a whole new world of flavors. Her search for creative vegetable expressions, along with a passion for travel, encourages her to keep expanding her palate. She continues to eat, cook, read, and grow all things vegetable.

Regine’s career was never stagnant and always moving towards creative expression. Her teenage urge to break out of farm life took her to the nearby city of Bern where she managed movie theaters and helped to bring them into the digital age. Encouraged by her success in Bern, and motivated by a love of challenges, she moved to NYC in 2000 where she started her New York journey by managing a rundown youth hostel in East Harlem. Her desire to work in the arts pushed her into a management position at the iconic Sunshine Cinema for the next nine years. In 2016, hungry to further express her creativity, she turned to a professional career in the kitchen. In 2018, she started collaborating on all things plant-based with Chef Morgan Jarrett at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden and moved up the ranks to the position of Sous Chef. This is where Regine really tapped into her passion, and, despite the Covid pandemic, she volunteered at a food pantry and held several pop-up food events to hone her skills and bring awareness to the natural beauty of vegetables.

Stefanie Hessler is a curator, writer, editor, and current Director of Swiss Institute / Contemporary Art New York (SI), an independent non-profit contemporary art institution in New York. At SI, she and the team are centering environmental consciousness in all facets of the institution, ranging from changes that reduce the organization’s carbon footprint to its artistic programming, with the understanding that this process is imperfect but urgent. Previously, as the Director of Kunsthall Trondheim in Norway, Hessler co-led the critically acclaimed research-based exhibition, Sex Ecologies, and edited the accompanying compendium on queer ecologies, sexuality, and care in more-than-human worlds (with Seed Box and MIT Press, 2021). Hessler has been a visiting research scholar at Westminster University in London, curator of TBA21–Academy in Vienna and London, and guest professor in art theory at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. Selected projects as an independent curator include the 17th MOMENTA Biennale, Sensing Nature, Montreal (chief curator); Joan Jonas: Moving Off the Land II, Ocean Space, Venice; the symposium Practices of Attention, 33rd Bienal de São Paulo (co-curator); the 6th Athens Biennale (co-curator); and Tidalectics, TBA21–Augarten, Vienna. Hessler is the author of Prospecting Ocean (The MIT Press, 2019), and has edited over a dozen volumes including Tidalectics: Imagining an Oceanic Worldview through Art and Science (The MIT Press, 2018) and Life Itself (Moderna Museet and Koenig Books, 2016). Hessler is a founding member of the Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC) New York, currently serves on the advisory board of the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM), and forms a part of the On Seeing Editorial Collective between the MIT Press and the Brown University Library.

Aka serves as the Engagement Officer at Climate Group, an international non-profit organization that works with governments and businesses to drive climate action. In her role, she oversees and coordinates outreach efforts for grant-funded initiatives and stakeholder activities across North America. With a deep commitment to mobilizing communities for climate action, Aka works to bridge the gap between people and the environment through strategic partnerships, network engagement, event planning, and content development. Aka also spearheads the implementation and operation of the wider week program at Climate Week NYC, the world’s largest climate summit that brings together 500+ events across the city of New York every year.