Mari Karjalainen is a Helsinki-based Burner. By day, she is a journalist, content planner and writer. By night she drifts away with techno music, relaxes with yoga and meditation or escapes to nature.
Mango helps Center Camp Café, Arctica, and Temple Guardians run smoothly all year by doing "all the things," as their Assistant Manager. She oversees logistics and budgets, and manages many volunteers while keeping tabs on all the details. Mango has been burning since 2005 and has participated in large-scale art projects. Some of her hobbies include blending essential oils and macro photography. On playa you can find her scurrying around the three departments with tangled hair and a bag of potato chips.
Born and raised in England, Lucy’s dream of saving endangered species from extinction led her to leave her hamlet in the countryside
to travel across five continents, where she picked up six languages and became an adventure tour guide and interpreter. Six years living
in 15 Hispanic countries left a deep impression on Lucy, due to the overwhelming hospitality and kindness she continually experienced.
She wanted to give back to the Latino community in some way and so, since moving to Southern California, has been working with
Latino-based nonprofits to assist with matters such as food waste and food insecurity. Since her first burn in 2014, where she helped build the Struts ‘n’ Bolts catenary dome, she has joined her local OC camp, Running of the Balls, where she was given the playa name ‘Squirrel’ - because she manages to engage with everyone everywhere, seemingly all at the same time, never needing to stop and rest for more than five minutes at a time! She aims to encourage the world to live in the moment, care for the environment and get to know the locals!
"Looking Up Arts Foundation” is a San Francisco-based non-profit organization established in 2018 dedicated to large scale art installations. Looking Up supports local artists for the production, exhibition, and public dissemination of exciting and extraordinary art projects, focusing primarily on art festivals and interactive exhibitions. Past projects at Burning Man have included "Sirasana” (2022), "Rainbow Bridge” (2018), and "Phoenicopterus Rex” (2017).
As Senior Communications Manager, Leslie’s focus is on designing and executing communications for Black Rock City participants, both on-playa and year-round. Leslie came to Burning Man Project from the nonprofit environmental sector, where she developed her communications chops by convincing people there was more to environmental sustainability than screwing in an LED light bulb and tossing single-use plastic packaging into the recycling bin. Leslie and her crew are responsible for the giant flaming BORiNG sign seen on playa since 2011, inspired by vintage Las Vegas casino signs and a healthy sense of irony. Leslie first attended Burning Man in 2004, and she’s been back every year since, joining Burning Man Project’s year-round staff in 2019.
Laura Day is the Associate Director of Operations at Burning Man Project. She is obsessed with sustainable organizational design and intentional event production. Her professional past lives include operating the first recreationally licensed cannabis company in Oregon, which was ranked as the 6th Greenest Workplace in the state and listed among the best companies to work for, setting standards for national best practices in the cannabis industry. Beyond weed, Laura is also the founder/director of Firefly Gathering, a sustainability-focused music, art, yoga, healing, and educational transformational festival in beautiful Flagstaff, Arizona. Laura has designed and implemented various business models around environmental stewardship, exemplary labor practices, diversity, empowerment, and operational efficiency. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from NAU with a degree in Environmental Science, focused on Sustainable Communities & Biodiversity. Her first Burn was in 2009, where she became inspired by the astounding human ingenuity and creativity on playa and made a revelatory commitment to bring her highest potential to everything she does in order to influence the greatest positive change possible.
Laura Dane is the Grant Program Manager for Burning Man Project. A former art major turned scientist, now she gets to combine her passions with her skills. Laura attended her first Burn in 2009 where she was given the playa name Daneosaur. After earning her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in Microbial Biogeochemistry (don’t worry, her parents don’t know what that means either), she was sprinkled with playa dust and re-named Dr. Daneosaur.
Laura C. Fallon is a People Partner at Burning Man Project. Despite spending over a decade of her formative years dancing, Laura’s first year in the dust was 2015. Content immersed in desert awe and appreciation, Laura has been participating in Black Rock City and Regional Events ever since. Laura joined Burning Man Project in 2018 and is a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach. She has woken herself up from laughing in her sleep and believes in the power of resonance.
Born in 1948, Larry Harvey grew up on a small farm on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon. In the late 1970s he moved to San Francisco, and soon discovered the city's thriving underground art scene. In 1986 he founded Burning Man at a local beach, and guided its progress from that moment until his death in 2018. Larry was Founding Board Member and Chief Philosophic Officer of Burning Man Project. He scripted and co-curated Burning Man's annual art theme and collaborated with artists in creating aspects of the art theme and the design of Black Rock City. Larry also wrote articles and essays for the Project's website. As spokesperson for Burning Man, he was frequently interviewed by reporters, and lectured on subjects as diverse as art, religion, civic planning and the rise of cyber-culture in the era of the Internet. Larry was also a political planner, supervising the organization's lobbying efforts and frequently attending meetings with state, county and federal agencies.