Michael Zelniker is a lifelong environmentalist with long time memberships in NRDC, the Sierra Club, EDF and Greenpeace. Born and raised in Montreal, Michael is an award winning actor and filmmaker who after more than 30 years of working on film, television and theater stages all over the world and 14 years of training actors and filmmakers at the Los Angeles campuses of the New York Film Academy and AMDA College and Conservatory for the Performing Arts, he left his teaching job to work full time as a volunteer on the climate crisis. In 2018, after being trained by former Vice President Al Gore, Michael joined the Climate Reality Project’s Leadership Corp, serving for 2.5 years as the Co-Chair of the Los Angeles chapter.

His recently completed documentary, “The Issue with Tissue - a boreal love story” that he wrote, produced and directed about the boreal forest of Canada, the Indigenous Peoples who call it home and the existential imperative to protect and conserve it, is now in its early stages of release. He is currently in preproduction on a documentary about water and women on the frontlines who are waging a courageous, inspiring fight to protect and conserve it.